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.

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

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.

My candy addiction is always with me, but the period between Halloween and New Years is the most challenging time of year.

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.

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.

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.

Depression isn't just about being unhappy about something or feeling blue; it's a legitimate and very serious medical condition with many emotional, physical, behavioral and cognitive symptoms. It isn't inevitable for anyone living in the modern world, and it also doesn't mean that you're a bad or weak person if you suffer from depression.

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.