Everything has been good. I am six months pregnant and the crippling morning sickness I dealt with has faded to a faint, nightmarish memory. Things seem to be moving ahead in my career. I like my new, round body. But suddenly, in the midst of all this niceness, I began...

Don't get me wrong, I am a sucker for the message "seriously, though, you're beautiful." And I agree with the viral Dove Real Beauty Sketches clip, so many of us get distracted by all of our perceived flaws. We get caught up in criticizing our appearances and miss...

I am five months pregnant, and up until now, I was feeling pretty sexy. I was feeling a little glorious in all my pregnant majesty -- belly outthrust, butt and thighs cushioning, my breasts -- well, they refuse to grow for some mysterious reason, but whatever. I was liking how...

People think body image is only about girls and women.

When I say I write about body image, sometimes people say, "Oh, women's issues."

And they are right. And they are wrong.

We have imagined these big immigration fences around so many issues, as though no women can get out...

Pregnancy is so interesting. Immediately and constantly, people keep telling me that everything is all about the baby. I think that means I'm supposed to stop asking questions.

They said that when I was really sick for months, and I got a little depressed about not being able...

I read this book called Privilege about an elite prep school, and the part that really interested me was about how the girls who go there all have eating disorders. Well, you know, not ALL of them, but a shocking majority. They suffer from depression at a much higher rate...

I am lying in bed, sick, and watching Hulu. The holiday commercial for Victoria's Secret replays and replays. I can't look away. Supermodels with breasts like plastic fruit, so round, move in slow, calculated adjustments, their skinny flanks decorated with proud ribs -- a precise school of dolphins, surfacing suggestively.

I am always waiting for women to leave me.

Like the guy who doesn't call back after what seemed like a perfect second date, like the breakup that never makes sense even though the other person seems to be trying to explain, I am never sure of the reasons why...

I don't own a scale. I do own a bright turquoise bath mat that I refuse to put in the bathroom because it's too pretty. I recently ordered it from Crate and Barrel with a gift card someone got us a year ago. I am bad at remembering where I...

I am at a point in my life where I can order pasta.

I know, I know: There are bigger things. There are people starving in the world, and you want a pat on the back for eating some spaghetti? I can practically hear my Austrian great grandmother, who...

I grew up really healthy. My mom grew her own vegetables and I was forever picking basil for pesto. We got meat from a friend's family, who raised and butchered cows, and everything else (blocks of mozzarella, knobby carob treats, the occasional bagel chip, palak paneer) came by truck from...

My work clothes don't fit so well anymore. I bought a lot of them years ago, when I was skinnier. When my mom saw me in an old pencil skirt she said, "I don't think you're a pencil anymore, honey. You're more of a pen, or a marker."

We laughed...

The other day, a man wrote to me to tell me that I shouldn't worry -- I'm not that ugly. You're not stunning, he told me, but you're not hideous, either. So get over it. Men don't care. Men aren't thinking about this stuff. It's just a bunch of women,...

I got married without reading up too much on the whole thing. We were busy. We wrote our vows the day before. We were engaged after six months, married about a year after meeting. We said things in our vows like "you're really hot..." My husband, Bear, jokes...

I lose everything. Stamps especially. I know I have enough stamps to last a lifetime, but they're tucked away somewhere secret, somewhere clever that felt self-explanatory at the time. I lost my little proof of service slip from jury duty, and then I got another jury duty notice, but in...

Girl Model, a film from directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, is a bleak portrayal of the international modeling industry. Even the landscape is desolate and depressing, as the camera returns again and again to Siberia, where girls who hope to become models are growing up in flimsy,...

Sometimes I think letting myself be ugly is one of my biggest accomplishments. Which makes it sound like I will most likely not go on to win the Nobel Prize at anything (hey, it remains to be seen -- you never know).

As a kid, I thought that...

When I was really skinny, people were always telling me about it.

"You're so skinny!"

Just in case I'd forgotten.

Sometimes they said it like a compliment. As though if you peeled those words back the words underneath would say "you're so beautiful."

Sometimes they said it like they were...

My friend was flipping through a magazine, making appreciative sounds towards a series of photos of a model with a flower in her hair.

"These are so good! I love this!"

I looked over her shoulder. She paused on the next page, squinted, and tilted the magazine a little.

"Wait,"...

I want to know who the women are who can fit into jeans.

Seriously: REVEAL THYSELF.

Because I don't understand. They cost like $70. Sometimes they cost even more. But they are selling. Someone is buying them.

They are all skinny now; tiny, brilliantly-colored leg tubes like pipe cleaners. They...