"So as a teacher for example I face waves and waves of sadness coming at me and through me from rooms and rooms of students who are sitting there hating one thing or another about their bodies. It’s a great sorrow to me. One of the MANY revolutions we need in this country and everywhere is a CORPOREAL revolution — a radical revisioning of bodily existence with a new value system and a new aesthetic that prioritizes being and knowing rather than appearance and trite fadism. Tantamount to sadism. Why are we continually torturing the one thing we’ve got in life that carries us through the glory of a life? My list of how we got this way is quite long and involves righteous ranting. Religion. Gender codes. Social organization. Consumer culture. The cult of proper citizenship and mating. Somebody get me a soapbox."

Lidia Yuknavitch in the new Dear Sugar column.