The messaging campaign that stigmatized the term feminist definitely worked on me when I was a teenager. I always believed in equality, but there's such intense pressure to be cool and not alienate boys, to not be a pain in the ass  -  to not be "that kind of woman."

I didn't stop hating my body because my body changed; I stopped hating my body because my mind changed. I realized that the beauty standards I'd grown up striving and failing to meet were artificial and arbitrary, and I could choose to simply say "no" and define my own value.

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.

In my freshman year of college, when a male professor asked the class, "Who here identifies as a feminist?" Only one girl raised her hand, and the rest of us just sat there. He basically just shamed us for the rest of the class   -   in a constructive way. He went around the room and said to each girl, "Why didn't you raise your hand? Feminism means men and women deserve the same rights, and that the balance in the world is currently tilted in men's favour.

There are women who live in U.S. with maybe one abortion clinic. The right wing is trying to make it impossible for women to get abortions, even if they are technically legal. This is done in a literal way  -  you can't get to a clinic, you can't afford it, you have to tell your parents  -   and by making it something that young people feel they can't talk about, can't ask for help with, can't do anything about but try to either induce abortions on their own, alone and unsafely, or have children they don't want and can't care for. It's just an assault on all sides.

There were moments from my childhood when I remembered realizing that I was too big. I carried them around as weapons to use against myself, to remind myself there was something wrong with me.

When I started to internalize fat positivity and believe it, my response was the same one I had when I started to understand the scope of gender inequality: deep indignation.