Basically my new litmus test for people is, do they make me hear about a blow job they gave in the first ten minutes of us talking? And if they didn't then I can feel excited.

I have never been a physically engaged person. Like, I was not an athletic kid. I was the kid who came up with a thousand excuses not to take a gym class. Even now, if I could, I would do all my work from bed.

It completely sickens me what our culture is doing to women. Last week I wore a big top and little shorts and a bunch of stuff came out saying I was without pants. 'The No-Pants Look,' it said. And I didn't go out without pants, I had shorts on... If Olivia Wilde had gone to a party with a big silky top and little shorts she might have been told her outfit was cute... What it was really: 'Why did you show us your thighs?'

I think that people in the phase between being someone's kid and being someone's parent have always been uniquely narcissistic, but that social media and Twitter and LiveJournal make it really easy to navel-gaze in a way that you've never been able to before.

It's a very specific body. Even great reviews will be like: chubby, portly, overweight. . . . Sometimes I'm like, 'Ugh, how did I make myself the guinea pig for this?' But on the other hand, hating my body has not been my cross to bear in this life. Which I feel very lucky about.

I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence.

But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.