Christine Schoenwald

I’m in an ongoing threesome with fear and anxiety.

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.

Sexual assault doesn’t discriminate based on body weight, and none of us should take our safety for granted. My fat doesn't protect me.

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

There isn't a competition between transgender women and cisgender women on who's the better woman. How you express your womanhood is up to you, as is whether or not you want to express it. It'd be better to widen the definition of a woman rather than limit it.

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

I know there are far worse injustices happening in the world, but getting weighed in front of people smacks of fat-shaming, and feels incredibly invasive.

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.