You Have a Body
Nowadays, when I sit down to write about body image I hear a cacophony of passionate and conflicted voices in my head. This is because I read articles on the topic nearly every day, and the current rhetoric is extremely polarized. Some feel that how you...
The Right to Bare Arms
I'll fess right up: I'm not terribly fond of my arms. I lift weights every week based on a regimen created for me by a personal trainer, and there's loads of muscle in there. Seriously, just ask me to flex. But there's also loads of jiggle. And although I don't want...
Reader Request: Contradictory Figure-flattery Advice
J. added this question to the suggestion box: What about advice for when your sense of what's flattering is self-contradictory? Most advice only addresses one dimension at a time, and sometimes the applicable bits of advice directly contradict one another. To give an...
Youth, Body Image, Aging
I had to live through my own body-centric worries for many years and come to understand things through personal experience. I can’t honestly say if a body image intervention at age 16 would’ve helped me. It might have. But it might have bounced right off of me because I needed to work through those lessons on my own.
The Photographed Body
A few months back, reader K emailed me about posing for photos. She told me that overall, she really loved her body, loved how it looked, and felt confident that it was lovely and strong. But whenever she saw still photos of herself, everything shifted. I would wager...
Makeup and Professionalism
Over the past few months, I've read several essays linking makeup and professionalism. Written by stylish women working in corporate America, these articles insist that daily makeup application is a must for working women, and that going without it may degrade...
It’s OK to Have Pores
Time for a little reality check. Let us examine: This is a typical makeup ad, of the kind usually found in the front sections of monthly fashion mags. People talk a lot about rampant Photoshopping of bodies in ads and editorials and this is, indeed, a practice that is...
Curly Hair Bias
My hair is naturally curly/wavy and has been since I was a baby. My mom's hair is naturally pin-straight and I have literally never seen her without a perm. I grew up in a household that revered curls, had a long string of boyfriends who adored my curls, and have...
On Being a Tattooed Person
It's been several years since I wrote about tattoos - mine or anyone else's - and a few recent comments have reminded me that people are naturally curious about ink. I've got many tattoos myself, two of which are readily visible during the summer, and am fairly...
A Pale Girl’s Confession
So I've written about being a pale girl before. And as we head into true summer and the Minnesota air heats up, I watch as the people around me become tanner and tanner while my own skin stays nearly as colorless as it was all winter long. But I will now, finally,...
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