Winona Dimeo-Ediger

How does that old cliché go? “Love is not a noun, it’s a verb”? Loving your body is a verb. It’s an action — and in many ways it’s a sacred and defiant one.

Dear bikini manufacturers: Not all short, curvy women want to channel their inner Marilyn Monroe.

I grew up way out in the country, and lying in bed at night I used to gaze out my window and think, “Maybe someday I’ll live in a cool apartment in the city where I can walk to stuff.” That was literally my big dream of far-off adulthood.

"These days, I don’t shop at the mall very often, but every once in a while when I find myself at a mall — any — I’m overcome by a wave of nostalgia for my salad days (although perhaps “Sbarro calzone days” would be a more fitting expression here). In many ways, I grew up in these chain stores and pretzel kiosks. And sometimes I feel compelled to write melodramatic poetry about it."

In light of the news that the GOP’s Affordable Care Act replacement

When I felt a familiar wave of insecurity creeping up and threatening to mute my movements, I looked to you for inspiration, and I danced even bigger.

1. Only eat salad and grilled chicken. Salad and grilled chicken, as a general rule, don’t ruin lives. Salad and grilled chicken are great... sometimes. Unless you’re going to amazing restaurants all the time and ordering nothing but salad and grilled chicken — then salad is definitely ruining your life.

If you give a White girl a pumpkin spice latte, she’s going to ask for a gluten-free vegan apple spice muffin.

Dear Winona, I’m addicted to black. Exhibit A: my closet. Am I fashionably lazy? Or is it because it just goes with everything—mainly me?

You’re washing dishes or sorting laundry or grocery shopping, half-listening to a random Pandora station when it happens: Your favorite song from 7th grade starts playing.