Melissa A. Fabello

As much as I can appreciate any excited person exclaiming that they love “FEMINISM,” that doesn’t really leave me with much to go off of when considering whether or not they’d be a good fit for a position.

Right now, today, as of writing this, I identify as queer. But I didn’t always.

Uh, in case you haven’t noticed, the body acceptance movement has a bit of a body rejection problem. Namely, anyone who isn’t a thin, white, able-bodied, straight, middle class, cisgender woman gets left out of the movement altogether — which, in my opinion, isn’t very accepting.

And so I slid the scale to the back of my closet, started freely eating doughnuts when I craved doughnuts, and simply donated the jeans that stopped fitting instead of holding out hope for them.

I wake up hungry, but I also wake up lighter, emptier. Something about it makes me feel purer. This is one feeling that’s positive in a sea of negative.

I finally looked at my syllabus today. It’s been sitting in my inbox for over a week, flashing at me to find out what I have to look forward to this upcoming fall semester – which books I need to buy (and how much money I’m going to drop on them), how many assignments I’ll be graded on, what I need to have prepared before our first class meeting.

"Because diet culture is so ingrained in our society, and therefore our psyches, a common misconception about eating disorders – and particularly those of the restricting and purging varieties – is that they’re choices that people make with the end goal of losing weight."

Dirty talk takes practice, but practice makes perfect. And watching your partner orgasm over video is almost as satisfying as it is in real life. I promise.

Being a person with a presence on the Internet is . . . weird. It fills your life with a lot of — well — weirdness. Being a feminist with a presence on the Internet is even worse – besides the general weirdness, there’s also a lot of backlash.

5. Nervous Breakdowns Are Probably Inevitable. No one likes falling apart. It’s embarrassing and messy and a sign that you’ve gone too far and need to reel yourself back in. And if you practice self-care both as prevention and intervention, you might be able to keep these crying fits at bay for a long time — but eventually, school stress catches up with you.