Melissa A. Fabello

I was jealous of the dog. “That dog gets to be so thin,” I tried to explain, tearfully, to my partner, “and it doesn’t even have to try. I’ll never be that thin.”

In my experience dating and sleeping with straight, cisgender dudes who worship hegemonic masculinity, I’ve noticed that there’s something really — umm — special about how they go about sexuality.

5. Nervous Breakdowns Are Probably Inevitable. No one likes falling apart. It’s embarrassing and messy and a sign that you’ve gone too far and need to reel yourself back in. And if you practice self-care both as prevention and intervention, you might be able to keep these crying fits at bay for a long time — but eventually, school stress catches up with you.

Street harassment. Eating disorders. Rape — three times, including one storyline that involved Zoe being sexually violated at a party by two star athletes who filmed the assault and distributed the video online. Intimate partner violence. Sexist school dress codes. Police brutality and racial profiling. Islamophobia. Sexting and child pornography.

"A common response that folks struggling with eating disorders hear is something along the lines of “Just eat,” “Just stop purging,” or “Just stop overeating.” And that’s akin to telling someone with depression to “Cheer up” or someone with anxiety to “Calm down.” That is: It’s not effective. At all. It’s actually kind of offensive."

Not everyone who has had an eating disorder also has an issue with perfectionism, but the two are often linked: A persistent feeling of never being “good enough” and needing to do something — anything — to feel under control is a warning sign that a person might be susceptible to an eating disorder.

And it’s that last one that really irks me: that most people — and especially most women’s — new year’s resolutions center on dieting and weight loss as the key to happiness.

Being a person with a presence on the Internet is . . . weird. It fills your life with a lot of — well — weirdness. Being a feminist with a presence on the Internet is even worse – besides the general weirdness, there’s also a lot of backlash.

And so I slid the scale to the back of my closet, started freely eating doughnuts when I craved doughnuts, and simply donated the jeans that stopped fitting instead of holding out hope for them.