Somewhere between Codie Young and Robyn Lawley.

Sans platforms, I stand a slight sliver over 5'7.

I have never been called "overweight," "heavy" or "fat." However, with the exception of women who identify as plus-size and mistake women as belonging to one of two ideals, the last time anyone referred to me as "thin," "slim," or "skinny" I was prepubescent.

I am a medium-sized woman.

Unless I sit in the slumped pore posture that so rightfully characterizes my generation, my pudge remains largely unnoticeable. The way opaque tights showcase their strength and muscularity, the height they bring to my frame, even the simple mobility they allow me, my legs remain my favorite part of my body. My hips are more than suitable for childbearing and my ass is thick. Numerous lingerie store clerks claim I ought to be wearing a 32DD, which makes me feel slightly sexy, slightly cartoonish, slightly fearful of what I'm going to look like while nursing.

My closet is home to small, medium, and large size tags. Every couple weeks, I consort my body into a size 2 hand-me-down skirt because it is grunge gold, but even knowing these facts about my wardrobe, if a perfect dress presented itself to me that was either smaller or larger than my normal size 6, having convinced myself that I'd either suffocate or drown in it, I would hesitate to even try it on. I find skinny jeans unflattering and unappealing in all their stretchiness.

There are pockets of my body that move and sway during sex, and sometimes, my ass makes a clapping noise against my lover's thighs. If I put my legs straight into the air, my stomach pudge becomes slightly more noticeable. Although I doubt they knew it at the time, I am fairly certain I've slept with a man that weighs less than I.

Curvy used to mean well endowed, a full bottom, a narrow waistline (think Marilyn Monroe), but recently, fat activists have claimed the word as their own. This is problematic, because a woman may have a curvaceous body type, but not be a plus-sized woman. A woman may be a plus-sized woman, but still comfortably wear training bras and have a straight up and down silhouette. See, this redefinition of "curvy" has left many women marginalized and ignored, as this new meaning simply does not accurately fit many of the women's bodies it has grown to supposedly describe.

I am Kat Dennings before Hollywood ate a good twenty pounds of her.

I am a medium-sized woman. A sexy, medium-sized woman. I have not experienced the discrimination and hate that overweight women in my society often experience on the daily, but I do feel the repercussions of not being a size 2, or looking like the women in (most) advertisements.

So, fellow medium-sized women, you all are hot as hell, but we need to unite and start an acceptance movement for women of our type. We need a category, a label if you will, that accurately describes both how we look and how we feel about our bodies. We deserve to be marketed to, thus our faces and our bodies need to be represented in the media and models between size 2 (runway) and size 12 (plus-size) must exist.

Please and thank you,

Sarah

It's not the subject matter, but the formation in which the letters march that'll make you cringe.

There is nothing more I want than an unsevered hymen and unexplored frame, but you can not grant me such a rebirth. You are neither my God, nor my creator. But instead, you offer me a pinch and a prick, so I can forget for an hour or two, when and why, who and how, what exactly was it I so eloquently wished for, spent decades blowing birthday candles out towards in hopes of obtaining? Can't remember for the world is such a pretty place behind those dope tinted glasses. It was free, so I took all I could. Slice after slice of lost hope I gorge myself on, until my whole existence blurs into a lullaby of calm numbness. Can we filter this experience, grind it into a fine sand until a murmured steady stillness clenches my spine?

Does a silly sloppy label even exist for such an endeavor? I imagine myself with a swollen stomach, my entire reality nothing more than something to be stamped down into the scrapbook of a future generation. I will never come to you with a teary white damp face and knobby broken knees nor will your arms ever be stuffed with the softness of young flesh or your nose filled with such a sweet innocence, but as a lie down for the final time, neither will mine.

So now, I leave you to choke within the cocoon of your own creation.

Self Reflection in True Blue Middle Class Fashion.

In high school, I started going to a lot of punk shows in the Cleveland area. They were always held in one of three holes in the wall located in the abandoned forgotten areas of downtown. That’s what’s special about Cleveland; it leaves behind ruins and spreads outward and onward like a plague. Strip malls and strip joints. Chain-link fences that lead to series of chain stores. My best friend played the guitar in true brute fashion and I was beginning to devote my life to all the movements so closely associated with punk rock. So together, along with all the other attendees, we acknowledged that music is better when played faster, louder, more aggressive, and more passionate.

The majority of the crowd was composed of bored middle class young people drawn together by a common understanding that the world is far from the way it should be. However, the promise of college and a stable income didn’t steal us all away, and when you went to a show, you could always find a handful of true blue die-hards. The rest of us? We would grow up to vote Democratic, our registered so-called loyalty to the Peace and Freedom Party leftover from idealism at the age of eighteen as lingering notions of social equality guilt us into pitiful charity donations. The beauty of the whole punk movement, however, is the few that never make that leap. Their honest and sincere work ethic, the extent of their commitment and devotion, their punk squats and communes. They had made it, as we all grabbed our coats, sold out, and went home.

I remember when one of these die-hards kissed my mouth and took me out for coffee the following day. He was outstanding in his audacity, confusing in his perfect blend of both adorable cuteness and chiseled sexiness, hilarious in his rebellion. Evan was fast, sharp-witted, and spoke with a sword of a tongue. As we drove around in his wrecked Chrsyler always one sharp breath away from complete collapse, he made me feel gross and guilty. Our outings concluded in altercations with other small minded locals of my small town. I remember him yelling, “Burn the rich for warmth!” Laughing and running clumsily in my thick platforms, I imagined that line as a tried and true authentic punk phrase. Regardless, it stuck with me. Something about making a use out of useless people (not that all the rich are useless, but you get my point) and consuming the people who consume too much made perfect sense to me.

Now, it dawns on me that I have never again heard anyone utter that phrase, nor have I seen it tagged beneath a bridge or aside a building. I know of no Anarcho-syndicalists that upon a moment of triumph, shouted it in the greedy face of their boss and I have never seen it scrawled in white-out on the back of a leather jacket amongst handmade patches and crass pins. I have never heard it anywhere except the sincere in-it-to-win-it mouth of that dirty die-hard.

Today, as I sit curled up in my private liberal arts school dorm room, my Jeffrey Campbell boots that cost about the same price as a Georgian minimum wage worker would earn in a week glaring at me, a plastic bank card that knows the extent of my Tazo tea addiction happily residing in my Urban Outfitters wallet, I am a sell out. My eccentric donation record, a callback to my punk roots, cannot justify my lifestyle. Abolish rape culture, construct shelters for runaways, legalize gay, none of which hinder my consumption. Just like my hometown’s landscape, my consumption is a plague upon the world. In stereotypical middle-class fashion, my ability to seek new revelations upon looking back at my youth indicates a freshly heightened ego. All the sitting and thinking, sitting and writing, in the world cannot remedy the fact that I have grown old and comfortable, and all because I was afraid.

Don't Tell Me To Smile.

Piles of men who harass women on the daily justify their actions with claims that their intent is to simply compliment such women. Okay, why then, do men rarely "compliment" women accompanied by other men, and most commonly "compliment" women traveling alone? And why then, if this behavior is as innocuous as a compliment, do men grow angry when another man "compliments" his female significant other when she walks alone and/or accompanied by him?

The fundamental purpose of a compliment is to acknowledge your appreciation and to flatter someone else; brighten their day a little. So, if these men are attempting to acknowledge their appreciation or provoke flattery, why do they fly away in their cars, or turn the corner, as soon as they spit out their so-called compliments? Aren't such speedy runaways halting the very purpose of a compliment by disallowing the complimenter from viewing the reaction of the one complimented? Street harassers have no intention to be complimentary, they harass women to exert their power that, as a man, they have the right to publicly evaluate a stranger, as long as such stranger is female, and they may even please their friends and provide entertainment along the way.

So, what's the best way to respond to street harassment? As tempting as it is to respond with a middle finger and a big ol' "Fuck you douchebag!" such responses only encourage hostility and leave the perpetrators entertained. Instead, assume ignorance is to blame and give the man in question the benefit of the doubt. Then, educate him on why his behavior makes women feel uncomfortable. You may try something like "From early ages, women deal with men on the street yelling, staring, even following them. I realize you may not have any harmful intentions, or may be trying to be complimentary, but it makes many women feel unsafe, targeted, or victimized. It would be great if you could stop making women feel this way."

Sure, there are many men out there who are just 100% beyond repair skeeve-balls, who may even use this information as momentum (hey, my actions have the power to make others feel less than and that makes me feel powerful READ:BULLY), most of the men will respond with apologies, and even embarrassment. See, most men have no desire to be horrible to women. Sadly, they're victims of a patriarchal society that teaches women exist solely for male entertainment. In affect, men fail to comprehend why women don't want to be perceived and treated as such. Again, most men do not have the same experiences as the women do with street harassment. Rather a muffled catcall from a pick-up truck, or a "Suck my dick bitch" accompanied by some crotch-grabbing, most men never have these experiences. Thus, as man cannot comprehend the female experience within a patriarchal society, man struggles to understand the offensive nature of his unwanted attention and conversation or why women aren't flattered by his public catcalls.

This is exactly the reason why what Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is doing is so kick-ass revolutionary. Her street art project, "Stop Telling Women to Smile" provides a counter-voice to street harassment precisely where the harassment occurs, the streets. Tatyana's images work so well because they manage to be informative, yet straight-to-the-point and easy to digest (meaning one can understand their message regardless of age, race, ethnicity, education, or class). Where Fazlalizadeh's work differs from her peers is in that it is displayed in the same environment as the "enemy" hunts his prey. Instead of being presented as an academic theory to a limited demographic of individuals within a stuffy college classroom, the directness of her work has the power to honestly change how men treat women.

Fazlalizadeh's website (http://stoptellingwomentosmile.com/) mentions a handful of our nation's biggest cities that she plans to attack using the money she raised through Kickstarter. However, we all know street harassment happens in our hometowns (rather big city or rural townships), so why don't we spread Fazlalizadeh's message, by either printing out her project's portraits via her website, or creating our own from either our own experiences, or from the experiences of the women we love and care for, and utilize public space putting them around our hometowns wherever street harassment takes place. Get your friends, both female and male, involved. Why do they think street harassers do what they do? How do your male friends and female friends experiences with street harassment differ? Do the experiences of your friends differ due to race, class, and/or sexual orientation/identity?