Melissa Petro

After gaining as much as forty pounds and pushing a cantaloupe out my vagina, I wondered: will my body ever be the same?

"We built a luxury dream home but can only afford to have two children."

The biggest fashion mistake of my lifetime may not be what I wore, but what I didn’t.

A lot has been written about what not to say to a pregnant person. Being on the opposite side of that, I’ve learned pregnant people make mistakes, too.

"I let your “Je Suis Charlie” avatar slide, but trust me: I unfriend people who can’t tolerate a complicated view of women’s participation in the sex trades and who don’t let “victims” speak for themselves. So it’s like Zuckerberg is purposely trolling the way all those ads for Punjammies are constantly appearing in my Facebook timeline, claiming my purchase of their culturally appropriating pajama pants will help some sad, far-off Indian women forge a new life. Without evidence, let’s just assume your PUNJAMMIES™ purchase is an investment in some ugly pajamas."

“If you believe in the decriminalisation of sex work,” Ian Dunt rightfully points out, “you will instantly come under a sustained and highly emotive attack on your morality and your identity.” In this vein, when a man comes out in favor of sex worker’s rights, he becomes “a betrayer of women, a gender Judas encouraging violence against them.”

Sometimes the fights I pick with my fiancé are really fights with myself.

Mark prayed to Saint Francis, a patron saint of drunks and (according to Mark) lost causes. Mark wasn’t religious, but he wore a St. Francis amulet around his neck, a gift from his father. Nights when he didn’t come home, I prayed to St. Francis, too.

If you missed my weekly column this summer all about getting engaged and planning a wedding, here’s the highlight reel: after doing

Guys, stop eating instant noodles. Seriously, they found lead in them. LEAD. Besides this, our stomachs can not digest them.