Tag Archive for "Body Image"

Posts Tagged Body Image

Vagina, by any other name.

When you opt to chronicle the cultural and scientific life of the vagina, surely, your finger is on the zeitgeist. Naomi Wolf’s new book, Vagina: A New Biography, released today has already introduced us to some interesting reviews.

Here’s Zoe Heller’s take:

… Wolf’s belief that the vagina is integral to a woman’s sense of “core self” is predicated not just on the mystical experiences that the vagina “mediates” during orgasms, but on the continuing, salutary effects that orgasms have on the rest of a woman’s life. Wolf claims to find strong evidence in the biographies of women writers and artists (Georgia O”Keefe, Emma Goldman, Edith Wharton) that women often “create best after a sexual awakening or a ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

Feminist Fuck Yeah: In response to 8th grader’s petition, Seventeen magazine agrees not to digitally alter images

A serious Tuesday Feminist Fuck Yeah for Julia Bluhm and activists at SPARK. A couple months ago, the 8th grader launched a campaign calling on Seventeen magazine to feature one photoshop-free image per issue. Now 84,000 signatures later, the magazine seems to be hearing the message. Via Change:

After over 84,000 people signed Julia’s petition and she and her fellow SPARK Summit activists hand-delivered the petitions to the executive editor of Seventeen, the magazine has made a commitment to not alter the body size or face shape of the girls and models in the magazine and to feature a diverse range of beauty in its pages.

Teenage SPARK activists are now turning their sights on Teen Vogue–so you should probably ...

By Vanessa • 11 years ago

80% of 10-year-old girls in the U.S. say they’ve been on a diet

Tell me there’s not something seriously fucking wrong with this fact.

This is just one of many that have compelled Miss Representation, SPARK, Endangered Bodies and other organizations to host a 3-day long challenge to encourage the public to push women’s and girl’s magazines to take accountability for their direct impact on the epidemic of shame, self-loathing and starvation among young women in the U.S. And things aren’t getting better.

Their ask? A pledge by these magazines to use at least one unphotoshopped image in each of their issues. This is a larger follow-up campaign to 14-year-old Julia Bluhm’s quest you may have heard about, where she asked for this very thing of Seventeen magazine; while she ...

Tell me there’s not something seriously fucking wrong with this fact.

This is just one of many that have compelled Miss Representation, SPARK, Endangered Bodies and other organizations to host a 3-day long challenge ...

By Chloe Angyal • 11 years ago

Quick hit: What’s with all the naked dudes?

I have a piece at the Australian site Daily Life today, about the increase in the amount of substantial male nudity on offer in romantic comedies lately.

Before 2009, shirtlessness was pretty standard for men in romantic comedies (why do you think chronic shirtophobe Matthew McConaughey makes so many rom coms?) But in the last two years, we’ve seen the barely-clad bodies of Justin Long (Going the Distance), Jake Gyllenhaal (Love and Other Drugs), Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal), Ashton Kutcher (No Strings Attached), and Justin Timberlake (Friends With Benefits). In What’s Your Number?, producers appear to have forgotten to make room in the budget for a wardrobe for Chris Evans, who spends most of the movie stripped down to ...

I have a piece at the Australian site Daily Life today, about the increase in the amount of substantial male nudity on offer in romantic comedies lately.

Before 2009, shirtlessness was pretty standard for men ...

By Vanessa • 11 years ago

Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: Julia Bluhm

Julia Bluhm is one bad-ass 8th grader. You may have heard about the petition the SPARKteam activist recently started, calling on Seventeen magazine — in the effort to include real girls in its pages — to feature just one photo-shopped spread per issue. After 30,000 signatures, Seventeen editor Ann Shoket invited Julia to meet on Wednesday — though not actually agreeing to address Julia’s request at all. (Not to mention including a kinda condescending statement about the meeting, methinks.)

Nonetheless, Julia handled the outcome of the meeting with grace, saying:

“The fact that Seventeen‘s editor-in-chief met with me in person proves that the voices of teen girls everywhere are getting through … While I would still change some of the ...

By Lori Adelman • 12 years ago

CLPP 2012: Our Bodies are Beautiful, Our Bodies are Political

What do a teenaged sex ed advocate, the executive director of an FGM advocacy organization, and a self-identified fat writer and activist have in common?

More than first meets the eye, I learned at the 2012 CLPP Conference. They are all activists advancing sexual freedom and challenged media culture by sharing stories and building community. They are all engaging in activism that is multi-generational and transnational, and that has created vibrant fat communities and communities of color, redefining sexy and demanding bodily autonomy.

Speakers at the “Our Bodies are Beautiful, Our Bodies are Political” panel included: Sabrina Andrus, Sanaz Shaghaghi, Zeinab Eyega, MSc, and Andrea Dre Domingue.

Sanaz spoke first.

“What is radical sex ed?” she asks. “It’s young women talking about loving ...

What do a teenaged sex ed advocate, the executive director of an FGM advocacy organization, and a self-identified fat writer and activist have in common?

More than first meets the eye, I learned at the 2012 CLPP Conference. ...

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Lady Gaga’s twitter confession: she eats salad when she wants cheeseburgers

Lady Gaga’s tweet about exercise and diet has turned some heads and with good reason. Not only is she perpetuating unhealthy ideas about health and exercise, but for someone committed to fighting for the underdog–you would think she would be sensitive about making casual mention of not eating enough. And as a role model, you would hope she would realize how much people internalize her words. But despite these transgressions and what she may want us to believe, Gaga is a human being–one that is functioning under extraordinary pressure to fit into a certain body type. Despite, concocting an image that is supposed to be anti-mainstream, she still embodies mainstream standards of beauty, namely being thin. And it shouldn’t be ...

By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

There is no right way to hate your body

This weekend, I had the great honour of speaking on a panel with the incredible Hanne Blank and the estimable Therese Shechter.

We were there – at Momentum – to talk about sex and body image online, and our panel was what Hanne called a confetti conversation: we threw a bunch of bright and diverse but related ideas up in the air and watched them float around the room.

Therese spoke about how online spaces are often the only place where you can find fat bodies being publicly sexual in a way that is depicted as good and desirable and sexy. I spoke about the privilege that I enjoy when I write about body image, and how I ...

This weekend, I had the great honour of speaking on a panel with the incredible Hanne Blank and the estimable Therese Shechter.

We were there – at Momentum – to talk about sex and body ...