Illustration by Michelle Simpson I’ve been a high school teacher for 16 years now. That means I’ve spent roughly half my life in high school something I’d never have predicted as a teenager. All I wanted then was to get the hell out. I was a fat teen in the 1990s, when “heroin chic” was […] More »

Photo by ISTOCK/YNGSA The thought only seems to come in the mirror. It plays out staccato, like a chess game, tennis match, sword fight. It’s helping. No, it’s not. It could be. It’s obviously not helping. Look, the spot there, a bit back from the front, to the left—no, the right—it’s barer than before. OK. […] More »

Photo by Dimitri Nasrallah Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline (Véhicule Press) transports readers to mid-eighties Montreal when weight-loss centres were a burgeoning industry, and “body image” and “health consciousness” were terms just entering the vocabulary of self-care. Muna Heddad, a French teacher by trade, takes a job as a hotline phone operator at meal delivery company Nutri-Fort […] More »

Photo by XURZON; Design by Valerie Thai At least 595 people died in B.C. from heat-related deaths during the summer of 2021. Most of these occurred during the province’s “heat dome” event, which took place from June 25 to July 1, and saw temperatures rise as high as 49.6 degrees Celsius. Many climate activists and […] More »

In Scarborough, Ontario, in Cedarbrae Mall, down the escalator and across from the Dollarama, there’s Frugo, a store that feels very much like a flea market. There you’ll find an assortment of items that range from vintage to essential. A few years ago, I found a small orange faux leather handbag and modelled it in […] More »

I think about bodies all the time. As a person who lives with chronic illness. As a newly plus-size person. As a person who got pregnant in an unconventional way. As a person who grew up in a mixed-race family. As a parent with a kid entering adolescence. I think about bodies in a political […] More »

No joy is more fulfilling for me than shattering the expectations someone has of me. To be unpredictable is to be individualistic. And in my skin, standing alone as an individual gives me the chance to take solace in myself. Because I am an unambiguous Black woman in a predominantly white community, escaping the stereotypes […] More »

Piercing through the chaos of chance and unexpected plot twists that we encounter throughout our lives, there is one stark and certain truth: we’re all going to die. Yet, our death-phobic society has taught us to fear the only thing we know for sure. Even talking about death evokes superstitious reactions, as if speaking the […] More »

Butterflies and flowers. Butterflies and flowers. Butterflies and flowers. I would repeat this phrase until I had forgotten that my skin was tingling for a scratch. My sister taught me this. She would tell me to think of lush green grass, with flowers too pretty to ignore and butterflies dancing with the wind. I stuck […] More »

I was a certifiable emo kid in the early aughts, where scene queens ruled Nexopia, a low budget early form of MySpace, and I was their eager subject. I yearned for skin tight jeans and layered stud belts. I saved my money to buy off-brand checkered Vans slip-ons and generously overlined my bottom lashline. Every […] More »

Michelle Kosak comes from a long line of artistic talent. Growing up, she remembers how her father inspired her and her brother to follow in his creative footsteps. Despite her artsy flair, she remembers kids at school bullying her about her appearance throughout her childhood. She eventually developed an eating disorder that stayed with her […] More »