Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Fashion model and "genetic lottery winner" Cameron Russell's TEDTalk presentation was a thought-provoking account of how the fashion world manipulates and manufactures unobtainable -- and ultimately...

Welcome to "Ask MISTER CARL." I'm Carl Sandler, the founder of the gay dating app MISTER and Daddyhunt.com and a relationship expert on The Morning Jolt on OutQ on Sirius XM Radio. In this new blog series I offer strategies and advice for anyone navigating the marvelous, messy and often...

All-American soap manufacturer Dove is known for many things: its fresh, clean scent; keeping skin oh-so-soft (thanks, one-quarter moisturizing cream!), and, more recently, its marketing department's rather uncanny ability to sell millions of bars to women by talking frankly to them about their self-esteem issues and the hang-ups they have...

Welcome to "Ask MISTER CARL." I'm Carl Sandler, the founder of the gay dating app MISTER and Daddyhunt.com and a relationship expert on The Morning Jolt on OutQ on Sirius XM Radio. In this new blog series I offer strategies and advice for anyone navigating...

Welcome to "Ask MISTER CARL." I'm Carl Sandler, the founder of the gay dating app MISTER and Daddyhunt.com and a relationship expert on The Morning Jolt on OutQ on Sirius XM Radio. In this new blog series I offer strategies and advice for anyone navigating the...

Welcome to "Ask MISTER CARL." I'm Carl Sandler, the founder of the gay dating app MISTER and Daddyhunt.com and a relationship expert on The Morning Jolt on OutQ on Sirius XM Radio. In this new blog series I offer strategies and advice for anyone navigating the marvelous, messy and often...

If you're like millions of other Americans, there's a good chance you'll be spending at least part of the coming holiday week with your family of origin. And like many of those same Americans, you're already bracing yourself for the inevitable drama that will come along with it. Parent-child dynamics...

Last week a friend posted on Facebook: "It's been an interesting life. HIV + (positive). 10/9/2012." He is 24.

Later, I asked my young friend if he had heard of Truvada, the drug recently approved by the FDA for use as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, against HIV. It's a...

Two weeks ago my good friend Kyle died from invasive meningococcal disease, commonly known as meningitis. He was 32. Kyle died not from the meningitis outbreak linked to tainted medicine that is dominating the news, but from a different meningitis outbreak right here in New York City that is spread...

This is difficult for me to write and maybe for you to read.

I'll start with a story.

I came out 23 years ago. My mother said, softly, "This is the worst day of our lives. The next worst will be the day we bury you from AIDS."...

HuffPost recently cited a report from OutSports on the number of out gay Olympians in the 2012 games: 20 women and three men, roughly 0.2 percent of the 11,000 athletes competing in London. We all suspect that there are hundreds of gay men and women competing...

Let's Get Gay-Married

2012 is the year of the gay destination wedding. But given what I do, I can't help but think that more and more of these amazing "I do"s started off as two syllables on a mobile dating app. Each day, millions of gay men log on to...

In the past two years mobile dating apps have transformed the lives of gay men worldwide. You can now be on a remote island, at Home Depot, at church, or even on another date and easily find someone nearby to meet (or, in some states, marry). Mobile dating apps are...