Christine Schoenwald

I’m fat, but I have no fat friends. It’s not that all my friends are height-weight appropriate — it’s just that I can’t describe them as fat.

"Throwing tons of time and energy into dieting instead of working on my novel."

My swimsuit phobia started in middle school — that breeding ground of body shame and fear. One minute I’m a kid excitedly putting on my pink two-piece and running into the ocean, the next, I’m avoiding any place where people are known to live in their swimsuits and I might be forced to wear one.

“You’re fat and ugly,” I’d hear, or, “Look at your stomach, it’s disgusting!” This wasn’t a neighborhood bully taunting me on my way to school — this is what I said to myself all day long, well into adulthood.

Before I started to write for Ravishly, I never used the word fat, and I rarely mentioned by body-type. But since then, I’ve tried to be more honest and have worked towards self-acceptance which includes coming to terms and owning the word fat.

Some of our happiest moments are those when we think that no one is watching: when we sing at the top of our lungs in our cars, or we dance down the frozen-food aisle of the supermarket allowing ourselves the freedom to let our inner child out. However, when you’re fat and the fat person’s representative, you don’t get any of those times of abandon because you’re always trying to lead by example and show that you’re the perfect fat person.

The truth is, we want our cats fat and our women skinny.

A woman’s sexuality, especially a fat woman’s sexuality makes some people feel extremely uncomfortable, so they try to erase fat sexuality.

I still went to the painful place of being fat-shamed and decided that was why he had refused to kiss me. The pain never fully went away.

We all want someone who will appreciate our curves, voluptuousness, strength, and beauty without fetishizing us. I’m fat, I’m fabulous, but I’m not your fetish.