Christine Schoenwald

As if parenting wasn't challenging enough, sometimes you actually have to talk to your children. Not only do you have to speak with them, but you want to do it in a way that will have positive and lasting results.

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.

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.

“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.

I grew up in a fatphobic household — one that was created by my mother’s fear of getting and staying fat.

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

We all want someone who will appreciate our curves, voluptuousness, strength, and beauty without fetishizing us. I’m fat, I’m fabulous, but I’m not your fetish.

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.

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.