If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
I am more than a 39-year-old woman who is grossly underrepresented or pathetically caricatured in movies, magazines and on television. Someday, I will finally do something to help change an industry that objectifies women just to make a buck.
Revisiting Wolf's text now, 20 years later, evokes an all-too-common feeling I get when reading old feminist texts: Holy sh*t, nothing has changed.
Even though the media have reported on "thinspiration" -- a.k.a. thinspo -- websites for more than a decade, one of the first direct acknowledgement...
Now I have a daughter. And I realize that I am carrying more than the extra weight I gained during my pregnancy. I am carrying shame -- shame that I cannot pass on to my little girl. I do not want her to share the legacy of self-hate that so many women feel.
I'm not looking to be on the cover of MORE magazine. I don't need to look like Christie Brinkley or Marisa Tomei. I'm enjoying the new career I've cultivated during the second chapter of my life. I simply want to be comfortable with how I look and feel.
Women can get hung up on garment size and fit. But a clothing swap full of chatty, diverse, creative women can serve as a fantastic reminder that clothes should fit our bodies, not vice versa.
I can see absolutely nothing good about "thinspo." To me, Twitter and Tumblr should be doing all they can to shut down the pro-anorexia accounts, which just harm people.
I have had an exceptionally powerful arrival into what a broken-less life can be, but it was only made possible by transforming the piece within me that needed to realize I was never truly broken in the first place.
How do I raise my baby girl to love -- or, at the very least, not to hate -- the same features I have picked apart for so long?
Western standards of beauty are not universal standards of beauty. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and each one of us has a different standard of what is beautiful.
Just when I thought that I had heard it all, I learned about yet another disturbing trend among our teen girls. Teen girls are now afraid of having a hip dip -- a slight curve on the outside of their upper thighs.
How do we distinguish the angst and insecurities felt by most teenagers from the pain resulting from bullying? Does all teasing between kids warrant prohibition, or is there room for some joking and fooling around? When things clearly go too far, who should intervene?
The old and new guard did a lot of hypocritical slinging at each other during this past fashion week, which felt to me like the pot calling the kettle black. If you are perpetuating the same cold and distant veneer, what is the diffference if you are of the print or blogger ilk?
If I could go back in a time machine, this is the beauty advice I'd give to my clueless teen self. Until that technology is perfected, all I can do is share my hard-won wisdom with the teens of today. It's meant with love.
Thanks to the miracle of television, people are now talking about my ass. It's funny, because I've been talking about my ass for years, without a single enthusiastic response.
Remember, how you talk to and respond to your son's physical appearance has a profound impact on what he thinks and feel about himself.
