One of the most irritating things about America is this bravado we have  -  like, "You guys, we're amazing! We're the most amazing country in the world!" And I'm like, "Are you sure? Because we're garbage and backward in a million areas that other developed countries left behind years ago!"

I'm fortunate to have a hilarious, fun, brilliant family that I love spending time with that keeps me in a healthy head space. The internet can be so enthralling in a bad way, in a toxic way, where you feel like your brain is submerged in this sewer and you can't climb out of it. The main thing is spending time with real physical people who remind you who you are. It can be so tempting to believe that you are who the internet says you are.

When I started tentatively dipping a toe into fat-positive internet spaces, I learned that reclaiming the term was the quickest and most powerful way to make it stop hurting. If you can say, "Yes, I am fat, and it's okay to be fat," then all of a sudden it doesn't hurt when someone says it to you. And it's also just a descriptor. It's like tall.

Being fat just a fact. It feels important to me to speak the truth about that, and to not use a euphemism. Euphemisms are things we use when we want to dance around something or don't want to say it. I don't want to be something that is avoided. And I am my body.

One of the most irritating things about America is this bravado we have  -  like, "You guys, we're amazing! We're the most amazing country in the world!" And I'm like, "Are you sure? Because we're garbage and backward in a million areas that other developed countries left behind years ago!"

Ashley Graham on the cover certainly better than nothing. It would have felt revolutionary to me as a teenage girl, for sure. But really, all they've done is include a very conventionally attractive woman who is two to three sizes bigger than the model they would usually use.

The narrative for girls is that you just hang around and wait to be "chosen" and then you belong to somebody and you live happily ever after. There isn't room for more nuanced concerns about the creepy proprietary nature of that relationship model, or the breadth of what fulfillment really means for women.