Christine Schoenwald

I’m riding my bike around a local community center on a Sunday morning.

“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.

As a fat person, the thought that I’m already taking up too much space and that it would be selfish to ask for more is always in the back of my mind.

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.

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.

Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are nearly here. So, what do you do when your family doesn’t celebrate any holidays whatsoever?

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

When the formerly fat spoke of their hardships, I didn’t take them seriously. I thought that without the problem of weight, their lives must be perfect.

Now I know that just because I’m fat doesn’t mean that I don’t have moments of fatphobia. My own fatphobia has taught me a lot.