It occurs to me how often, implicitly and explicitly, a woman is told never to be full. Full of food, full of confidence, full of sex, full of herself, full of a burgeoning self. Even when we have literally donated our bodies to the science of sustaining the human race for 10 months — an extraordinary and ubiquitous act of selflessness — we are constantly reminded, by institutions and individuals alike, that we had better not be too much. In her essay on Kim Kardashian’s “unruly” pregnancy and the cult of “cute celebrity pregnancy”, Anne Helen Petersen articulates the “contradictory messaging” pregnant women in our diet-obsessed culture are given: “you’re hot, but on the border of obscene; you’re perfect, but you’re huge; don’t feel bad about yourself, but your thin body is better.” I want to say enough and yet I know I will still struggle with it, will still surveill myself, will still feel imprisoned by images of my unpregnant body. Though it sounds absurd to put it so plainly, it’s still not easy to prioritize how I feel over what the scale says as a measurement of my value.