It was an unremarkable afternoon in the Noughties, and I was working a slow shift at my Saturday job. There I was, behind the tills at Matalan, waiting for my next customer to appear, when I felt it.

I was in the dressing room at American Eagle when the panic set in. I was a junior in high school. All I wanted was to be thin and pretty and well-dressed, and the fact that I was muffin-topping over ...

As a teenager, the coolest thing you could do was to get your belly button pierced. Unfortunately, with a strict Zambian mother, I was forced to skip that edgy phase, and more than a decade on, I find ...