Christine Schoenwald

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

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.

I’m a survivor — of fat camp. How terrible could a weight-loss camp be? Well, it was bad enough that I’m still dealing with its after-effects decades later.

A woman’s sexuality, especially a fat woman’s sexuality makes some people feel extremely uncomfortable, so they try to erase fat sexuality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.