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 would want people to know that they don't have to hate their body and don't have to be afraid of it, but that it's also okay to feel uncomfortable with it at times. The body positivity conversation often gets sort of oversimplified and flattened into, "Yay! Everyone has to love everything about their body all the time!" And that's not realistic, that's not how bodies work, that's not how emotions work. It's fine to have these kinds of confusing and conflicting feelings.

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.

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.

We only get one life. Wasting someone's time is the subtlest form of murder.

Just live! Live now! Don't wait, and don't let anyone tell you that you're a work in progress.