The First Book: Melissa Petro
In our culture, motherhood is presumably sanctified, and I thought I’d experience social acceptance beyond anything I’d ever imagined. Instead, I felt under constant surveillance and yet utterly invisible....
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Melissa Petro
4 posts
Melissa Petro is a journalist whose writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, Good Housekeeping, The Guardian, InStyle, and many other national publications. She was a finalist for the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize, and she holds a bachelor in Women’s Studies from Antioch and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School. She lives with her husband and two young children in Upstate New York.
The Other One Percent
I’m at NYU Dental waiting to get a cavity filled. I’m at NYU Dental because I’m poor, although if I were really poor — I am thinking — I wouldn’t…
A Ritual for Being Born Twice
Melissa Petro lost her job last summer after publishing an article on The Rumpus about her former life as a sex worker.
Not Safe For Work
Today, I realize the truth — that it is not sex work that society fears is dangerous, but sex workers. I recently had the experience at my job of being…