Christine Schoenwald

Anxiety isn't something people choose to experience — it's connected with how their brains see the world.

A new study conducted by Offir Laufer, David Israeli and Rony Paz (of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel) has found that individuals with anxiety see the world differently, and this difference is because of a variance in their brains.

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.

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.

Some of our happiest moments are those when we think that no one is watching: when we sing at the top of our lungs in our cars, or we dance down the frozen-food aisle of the supermarket allowing ourselves the freedom to let our inner child out. However, when you’re fat and the fat person’s representative, you don’t get any of those times of abandon because you’re always trying to lead by example and show that you’re the perfect fat person.

“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.

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

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.

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.

When the formerly fat spoke of their hardships, I didn’t take them seriously. I thought that without the problem of weight, their lives must be perfect.

"Throwing tons of time and energy into dieting instead of working on my novel."