Gemma Hartley

At Santa Rosa Christian School, dancing was a gateway drug. The gyrating, the slow romantic swaying...

Anti-choice folks love to say that these laws aren’t about controlling and punishing a large portion of the population, they are about the sanctity of life. And life, according to those who are anti-choice, begins when sperm meets egg.

A breakup, Mom, a cheerleading competition, and Valentine's Day...

Sometimes, I think back to all the ridiculous things I did for boys when I was younger and cringe.

My husband and I have been together for 12 years, eight of them married, four of them teenaged.

It wasn’t the name I would have picked — not originally, at least — but as days turned into weeks, it grew on me.

My six-year-old son got into the car after school and declared he only wanted to have one kid when he grew up.

I felt unique in my passion for martial arts, my affinity for Call of Duty, my go-with-the-flow attitude toward boyish adventures. I wanted to be “one of the guys,” while still retaining the distinction of my sexuality. I longed to be the quintessential cool girl — desirable yet approachable. But in retrospect, all that really amounted to internalized misogyny.

We are often so focused on what we say to girls, that we forget the impact our words have on our boys. One flippant mention of my son’s “skinny” figure has turned into a source of unnecessary turmoil for him, and has lead to this difficult but important conversation about body image.

Back when I had my first child, back when he was still a baby, I imagined us moving to the mountains. I was thinking about having three more kids, living off the grid, and soaking up every last bit of their wild childhood. It was a fantasy, through and through.