Melissa Petro

A week or so ago I started shopping for a wedding dress, and guess what? Shopping for a wedding dress sucks!

Arran and I joke that no one wants to go to a wedding, not really— and maybe that’s true, but (perhaps naively) we had thought of the day as a gift to everyone involved, including ourselves.

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

Teaching sex ed the right way doesn’t have to be weird or hard.

Drunk or not, it’s a fact that white people are more prone to acting like assholes to authority figures—because we’re more likely to get away with it.

It's pretty well understood in 12 step programs that "who you see here and what you say here, stays here."

Use insect repellent, sleep under a mosquito net, and just don’t get pregnant — is this the best we can do for Latin American women?

"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."

How do you break up with a best friend?

There was nothing easy about recovery, but it helped that living the trainwreck lifestyle had stripped me of everything. Within sixteen months, I was unemployed with no job prospects, barely scraping through my last semester at school. I was drinking every day. Sex with classmates had led to casual encounters which bottomed out at trading sex for cash, something I spent a whole lot of time justifying.