Author: Ella Dawson

Ella Dawson is a sex and culture critic and a digital strategist. She drinks too much Diet Coke.

Wesleyan’s Herpes Joke Problem

.Reading time 7 minutes.

We need to talk about herpes jokes. In particular, we need to talk about herpes jokes and Wesleyan, my dear flawed alma mater. As my younger friends moved into their new dorms in Middletown this weekend, I searched tumblr for posts about STIs. I’m involved in tumblr’s sprawling sexual health support community and track the tags for […]

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flash fiction: tinder tale

.Reading time 4 minutes.

They match on Tinder because they recognize each other from high school and both think it will be funny and harmless to swipe right. He messages her to ask what she is doing here, so far away from their stuffy little hometown, and she answers (career opportunities more affordable) on her walk home from work. […]

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Picky Eater Disorder

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Here’s a fun fact: I have an eating disorder. I feel co-optive whenever I use that term—several of my friends live with ED’s and are the bravest souls I know, and my comparing my bullshit eating habits to theirs has always felt disrespectful. My eating disorder has nothing to do with body image, or with control, or […]

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Writer’s Block

.Reading time 3 minutes.

I haven’t been blogging much the past week or so. Things got hectic moving back East on short notice and I’ve spent the past few days seeing friends and settling in at home. I have a few ideas churning for future posts, like an essay on the differences between loneliness, being alone, and being single. […]

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Bye Bye Berkeley: Sexual harassment, self-esteem, and social media

.Reading time 12 minutes.

I move home next week. After two and a half months in the Bay Area I’ll board a plane at SFO direct to JFK and start the next, next chapter of my life. I wanted to write a blog post to acknowledge this, to talk about how important and intense this summer has been, but […]

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I’M GETTING PUBLISHED HOLY F*CK

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, look! It’s a table of contents! The kind folks over at the NewSmutProject are putting together not one but two smart, realistic anthologies of erotica this fall, and I am lucky enough to be included in their collection of character-driven smut. Heart, Body, Soul features nineteen stories, listed […]

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