Big Summer

The trick of the internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real... which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all.

I’m not brave all the time. No one is. We’ve all been disappointed; we’ve all had our hearts broken, and we’re all just doing our best. Make sure you have people who love you, the real you, not the Instagram you. If you can’t be brave, pretend to be brave, and if you can’t do that yet, know that you aren’t alone. Everyone you see is struggling. Nobody has it all figured out.

There were things you could be hungry for besides food.

I was going to eat to nourish myself, I was going to exercise to feel strong and healthy, I was going to let go of the idea of ever being thin, once and for all, and live my life in the body that I had.

In space, nobody could hear you scream; on the Internet, nobody could tell if you were lying.

And here’s the good news: even if things don’t get better, you can always make them look good on the internet.

When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re angry, everything looks like a target. There are a lot of angry people in the world. And these days, they’re all online.

Everyone tries to put the best versions of themselves across. To fake it. And when they’re not doing that, they’re sitting behind their screens, passing judgment and feeling superior to whoever they think’s being sexist or racist that day.

Make sure you have people who love you, the real you, not the Instagram you.

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're angry, everything looks like a target. There are a lot of angry people in the world. And these days, they're all online

You are fine, just the way you are... Bodies come in all shapes and sized. Don't let anyone make you feel any differently. I wanted to believe him, but by then, of course, the damage had been done.

Research shows that shaming fat folks into thinness doesn't work. And come on if it did, most of the fat women in the world would have probably disappeared by now

The air smelled like the inside of the cabins at the summer camp in Maine: must from the off-season, wet wood and mold, bug spray and sunscreen, sunshine and sweaty kids. The essence of summertime.

For all women—or maybe just all plus-size women, or maybe just me—there’s a moment right after you put on a new piece of clothing, after you’ve buttoned the buttons or zipped the zipper, but before you’ve seen how it looks—or, rather, how you look in it. A moment of just sensation, of feeling the fabric on your skin, the garment against your body, knowing where the waistband pinches or if the cuffs are the right length, an instant of perfect faith, of pure, untarnished hope that this dress, this blouse, this skirt, will be the one that transforms you, that makes you look shapely and pretty, and worthy of love, or respect, or whatever you most desire.

When you have excluded the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth,

It was a shame: by September, the ocean was finally warm enough for swimming, especially if it had been a hot August,

No one wanted to see anything that raw. The trick of the Internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real… which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all.

I thought my body was unacceptable, and that I had to hide. That's what the world tells us, right? But, now, maybe, if enough of us stand up and show ourselves, just as we are, if we post about our thriving, busy, messy, beautiful lives, our daughters won't have to swallow the same lies.

I listened, thinking this was a Drew I’d never seen. One who saw her own privilege. One who was trying to do better.

Social media means we’re listening to different voices. It’s not just the same, old, powerful white men who all went to the same places for college. It means everyone gets a soap box and if you’ve got something important to say, you can get people to listen.

I knew what it was like to be the center of Drew Cavanagh’s universe. How her regard could make you feel like the brightest, shiniest, sharpest, most perfect version of yourself. And how she could turn an ordinary day into an adventure.

I wouldn’t be able to write about this for my blog or instagram stories. Not anytime soon at least. Not while it was still so raw. It hurt. And nobody wanted unvarnished pain omg their feed unless it was served up with a side dish of uplift or some kind of lesson.

Sometimes at night when we were watching TV, he would speak to his belly as if it were a pet, giving it a little pat and asking, “A little popcorn? Another beer?

But if, in the end, she never lived the glittering, rich-lady life of her youthful imaginings, she’d have a life that made her happy.

when she’d been that big. “That was me,” she would begin, her voice serious and quiet. “Oh yes! Oh yes it was!” she’d say,

I’d been on the Internet long enough to know that these things never lasted, that the outrage being poured onto, say, a New York Times columnist who’d overreacted to a mild insult could instantly be redirected toward a makeup company whose “skin tone” foundations only came in white-lady shades, before turning on a professional athlete who’d sent a tweet using the n-word when he was fifteen. The swarm was eternally in search of the next problematic artist or actor or fast-food brand, and nobody stayed notorious, or canceled, forever.