once again I’m seduced by the power of words and today, this first day of March, text finds its perfect match in the fashionable world of street style…
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Body Image Warrior Week: Kate of Eat The Damm Cake
Welcome back to Body Image Warrior Week. A project organized by Sally McGraw of Already Pretty, BIWW brings together 11 amazing, inspiring bloggers who write about body image, why it matters, and what it all means to us.
Today's post comes from Kate Fridkis, of Eat The Damm Cake. Kate has a straight-from-the-hip writing style I have long admired, and she writes openly and honestly about body image. Be sure to visit her blog and read her posts.
I write about body image because I love eating cake, but women around me are always dieting.
I write about body image because I have been told it doesn't matter, but every year, more girls have eating disorders.
I write about body image because everyone cares about beauty, no matter how much we tell ourselves we don't. And because, really, we are beautiful, no matter how much we tell ourselves we aren't.
I write about body image because I moved to Manhattan, where suddenly everyone was very thin and very careful about eating and always going to the gym and suddenly it occurred to me that I was not thin enough and not pretty enough and very bad at going to the gym.
I write about body image because I noticed that after I noticed that I was maybe not thin enough, I stopped eating some of my favorite foods. They slipped out of my diet. I said no to dessert. I felt guilty when I gave in and made pasta for dinner. I felt guilty all the time, because all the time, I was cheating. There were all of these rules about what I could and couldn't eat, and how much of it was OK, and I had somehow memorized them without even being aware of it, and now, when I broke them, I was ashamed.
I write about body image because I got a nose job because my big Jewish nose seemed like the opposite of beauty. Because when I told people that famous, beautiful women never have big Jewish noses, they always said, "What about Barbara Streisand?" and that was a long time ago. No one can think of anyone more recent. And also, because when my boyfriend who became my husband told me over and over that my nose was beautiful, I didn't really believe him, even though I should have.
I write about body image because people make fun of people who get cosmetic surgery, even though when I got cosmetic surgery, there was nothing funny about it. I hated my face. I wanted to destroy my old face.
I write about body image because I don't look like a model, but sometimes, automatically, I really wish I looked like a model. And at the same time, I really wish I didn't wish that.
I write about body image because when I was a little girl, I thought I was gorgeous. I thought that I was gorgeous because I was me.
I write about body image because women are always complimenting each other by saying, "You look like you lost weight!" and because it's so hard to think that what you are is already enough.
I write about body image because the more I write about body image, the more letters I get from girls and women who tell me how important this topic is. I get letters from women who don't want to go outside because they feel so unattractive and women whose mothers told them they weren't ever going to be pretty enough and women who were told by the world that they weren't worth as much as they actually are, and women who feel fantastic about the way they look and are so relieved. And because the more I write about body image, the better I feel, when I look in the mirror. The better I look to myself. The better I realize I am.
That's why I write about body image.
And also, cake is just delicious. We really shouldn't ever give it up.
Kate Fridkis is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work appears regularly on The Frisky and the Huffington Post. She blogs at Eat the Damn Cake. You can follow her on Twitter @eatthedamncake.
Image via Holy.
February 27 – March 3 is Body Image Warrior Week. Throughout the course of this week, you’ll read posts from an inspiring group of women who fight hard against body image oppression through their own words and work.
Participants in Body Image Warrior Week are:
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
tempting turquoise
Anyone else mad about this colour? It’s strongly associated with nature and the sea, a sense of tranquillity and serenity. It’s peaceful and calming, yet still vibrant and refreshing. When I think of turquoise, I conjure up thoughts of Turkish glazed tiles, Noordhoek beach with its crystal clear water and my one of my favourite gemstones. The term for this colour stems from the French word for Turkish. So in harmony with all these soothing characteristics for the colour Turquoise, here are some inspiring colour-themed images for my guest post over at Freeworld Design Centre.
Body Image Warrior Week: Patti of Not Dead Yet Style
Welcome back to Body Image Warrior Week. A project organized by Sally McGraw of Already Pretty, BIWW brings together 11 amazing, inspiring bloggers who write about body image, why it matters, and what it all means to us.
Today's post comes from PattiG of Not Dead Yet Style. She reflects on how certain body parts become a "problem" for us. This post struck a chord for me, as it shines a light on just how pervasive negative body conditioning is in our culture.
Today's post comes from PattiG of Not Dead Yet Style. She reflects on how certain body parts become a "problem" for us. This post struck a chord for me, as it shines a light on just how pervasive negative body conditioning is in our culture.
We Don't Have "Problem Areas"
Oh boy, this is a pet peeve. I hear it mostly on the home shopping channels (gulp, if I ever, um, happen to have the TV tuned to one of them while I am, errr, polishing up an article for the New York Times). The cheery host or model points to the latest tunic top (two easy payments!) and delivers the good news: it covers all those problem areas!
I know they mean our midriffs, in this case. Other garments mercifully cover over our problem hips, "derrieres", thighs and upper arms. Sometimes the salespeople make little unhappy faces as they mention the offending body region, or they smile ruefully and pat their own (perfectly nice) hips.
Of course, I don't want to expose all my body secrets to the waking public. What a world it would be. I like to drape garments over my body to make a pleasing line. Because I have a relatively small waist, I like to wear clothes with waists, and/or I add a belt. I don't wear clothing that clutches on to my hips and thighs because it's 1) uncomfortable and 2) unprofessional in my workplace.
My thighs are not a "problem" however! Sometimes my finances are a problem, my cat having allergies can be a problem, and new construction making me late for work is a . . problem. My pale, slightly dimpled thighs are just mine. My upper arms have lost a bit of their struggle vs. gravity but they are not a problem. They are . . . interesting. I choose to show them or not, and for work I choose not.
I rarely hear any garments for men, of any size or shape, touted as covering up their troublesome bits. "This polo shirt will not cling to that problem tummy, guys, so grab two!"
We want to dress to look better, or we wouldn't be reading and posting on fashion blogs. It's natural to want to look good, we're built that way. Do I sound grumpy? I'm not. I am a happy woman who objects to the problem-ification of my body parts. Does that mean I have a . . . problem?
Patti is a 50-something blogger and mental health professional from Central Florida. Her blog celebrates the over-40 woman; visit her at Not Dead Yet Style, and follow her on Twitter @PattiNotDeadYet.
Patti is a 50-something blogger and mental health professional from Central Florida. Her blog celebrates the over-40 woman; visit her at Not Dead Yet Style, and follow her on Twitter @PattiNotDeadYet.
Image via DollMakersJourney.com
Participants in Body Image Warrior Week are:
Monday, February 27, 2012
showcase: Mikkel Mortensen
I have just spent an inordinate amount of time scrolling through the portfolio of Danish photographer Mikkel Mortensen of Yellows Photography. Not time wasted, but inspiration gained from the clever compositions and unexpected twists in both his commercial and creative work. The beautiful contrast of light & dark, the juxtaposition of hard & soft, and the textural variations make Mikkel’s work thought-provoking and visually intriguing.
all images from yellows photography
Body Image Warrior Week: Autumn of The Beheld
This post comes from Autumn of The Beheld. I had the pleasure of meeting Autumn in NYC this past fall, and her posts are thought-provoking, incredibly well-written and deeply researched. Read on for Autumn's contribution to Body Image Warrior Week.
I don’t write about body image.
I’ll write about beauty, any day of the week. I’ll write about what goes on from the neck up; I’ll cover the myth of men preferring long hair, or why I wear makeup, or Gen-X beauty trends. And of course every so often bodies worm their way in: One can hardly talk about the annoyances of “dress your figure” pages in magazines without talking about figures, after all.
But I specifically did not want to write about body image. For one, there are already so many excellent voices out there doing good work; I didn’t know what I could add. But the larger reason was that I didn’t feel qualified to write about body image, mostly because my own body image isn’t particularly good. Oh, I know how to walk the walk and talk the talk: I don’t put down my body out loud, ever. I don’t let women around me get away with it either; I’ve mastered phrases like That’s not what I see and Where is this coming from and even, when I’m feeling testy (which body put-downs tend to make me), I’m sorry, I can’t listen to this. I am pretty sure I’ve never, ever said something unkind about another woman’s body, and I’m certain that whenever I’ve thought something unkind, I’ve immediately asked myself why. I don’t know how many papers about body image I wrote in college, how high my mental cartwheels turned when I met one of the editors of Adios Barbie, how many tortured turns of phrase I created while working at women’s and teen magazines in order to avoid the implication that even a single reader should dislike her body.
I used all this reading and knowledge to try to help my own cause, of course. I’m better off for it. My body image is still mediocre at best.
But here I was wanting to write about what happens to women after we try to get past the beauty myth. My solution was to minimize how much body image writing I did. I never want any readers to walk away from my blog feeling worse about themselves, and I know that bad body image can be contagious, so I just don’t talk about it much. But neck up? Sure, I’ll talk about that. That’s beauty. That’s social construction, psychology, genetics. It’s age, race, personal history, communication, expression, social class, philosophy, aesthetics. I’m not exactly in love with myself from the neck up, but neither am I, like, messed up about it. So I’ll write about beauty, and I’ll leave the body image stuff to the pros. Deal?
I was trying to explain this to my boyfriend the other day. Someone—again—had categorized me as a body image blogger, and I was sharing my confusion. “I write about beauty,” I said. “I don’t write about body image.”
“You write about body image all the time,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I replied. “I write from the neck up.” I put my hand to my throat as emphasis, and saw a mental image of myself: Me and my writings above the neck; body image and its myriad, talented proponents below it. Except, in my mental image, my head and body were completely separate. My head was floating above my body, disconnected.
In a flash, I remembered a study I’d read last year: Women with eating disorders are more likely to draw self-portraits of themselves as disconnected. Their feet were missing or disconnected; their necks were separate from both head and body. In some cases, the self-portraits had no neck at all. The theory was that women with eating disorders—who are often thought to be overly preoccupied with their body image—in fact felt utterly out of touch with their bodies, to the point where when asked to create a literal image of their form, they didn’t dare connect their body and mind.
I’ve argued before about how eating disorders aren’t as linked to body image as many would have us believe, and it’s something I’ll continue to argue. My own experience backs this up: I went into a treatment program for an eating disorder in 2009 because I no longer knew how to eat normally, not because my body image was poor. I now know how to eat normally. I still don’t know how to truly be at peace with my body.
But by insisting that I am damn well not a body image blogger, I was drawing myself without a neck, over and over and over.
I can’t claim that recognizing my schism will make me veer more in the direction of body image. I like focusing on the neck up; it’s an area not yet as explored from a feminist perspective as our bodies. In the much-needed counterattack on women’s bodies, the potency of our faces—individually, collectively—often goes examined, and I’m eager to correct that. What I do know is that identifying my eagerness to keep the face and body separate has illuminated the impossibility of ever separating them. I knew some fellow bloggers considered me a body image writer, and I’d always thought that was just because The Beheld was difficult to categorize; now I see that they considered me a body image blogger because I am. If any of us—body image bloggers, beauty writers, feminist critics, or thoughtful readers—are to explore the issues behind appearance as thoroughly as we’d like, we owe it to ourselves to not lapse into neck-up thinking. Specifically, I owe it to myself to not treat the topic of the body as something distinct from the issues of visibility, feminine performance, and beauty that are at the core of what I try to deconstruct. Body image is important on a personal level, sure. It’s also essential as an intellectual issue: How can I look at the performance of femininity without looking at the ways in which women try to minimize space by minimizing our bodies? How can I look at modern-day incarnations of the discredited science of physiognomy without examining the personality traits we ascribe to women’s forms?
My own body image path hasn’t made it easy to consider the messy ways that body image is relevant to the more generalized topic of women and being seen. I’d rather keep my body image private, as flawed as it is, presenting it in public only when it’s tidy and shiny and perfectly wrapped (and is it any surprise that perfectionism is another key component of eating disorders?). But if I don’t start to draw a neck—today—my picture will forever be incomplete.
Autumn Whitefield-Madrano’s essays have appeared in Glamour, Marie Claire, Salon, and The New Inquiry, among others. She examines concepts of personal beauty at The Beheld.
Image via Brian Crews.
February 27 – March 3 is Body Image Warrior Week. Throughout the course of this week, you’ll read posts from an inspiring group of women who fight hard against body image oppression through their own words and work.
Participants in Body Image Warrior Week are:
Already Pretty
The Beheld
Decoding Dress
Dress with Courage
Eat the Damn Cake
Fit and Feminist
Medicinal Marzipan
Not Dead Yet Style
Rosie Molinary
Virginia Sole-Smith
Weightless
Body Image Warrior Week
This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. According to NEDA, “The aim of NEDAwareness Week is to ultimately prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment.” This week is extremely important to me, as someone who has struggled with anorexia and bulimia, and writes regularly about body image. You can click on the logo below to get more information about events, participants, and goals of this important ongoing event.
Both as a means of supporting NEDA’s work during awareness week, and as a way of introducing you to a group of amazing women who fight hard against body image oppression through their own words and work, Sally McGraw, author of the incredibly insightful blog Already Pretty, decided to coordinate Body Image Warrior Week. Throughout the course of this week, you’ll read posts from bloggers who have chosen to share their stories and wisdom, both here and on other participating blogs.
Here are some facts about eating disorders in the United States:
PREVALENCE
- It is estimated that 8 million Americans have an eating disorder – seven million women and one million men
- One in 200 American women suffers from anorexia
- Two to three in 100 American women suffers from bulimia
- Nearly half of all Americans personally know someone with an eating disorder (Note: One in five Americans suffers from mental illnesses.)
- An estimated 10 – 15% of people with anorexia or bulimia are males
- Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness
- A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5 – 10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18-20% of anorexics will be dead after 20 years and only 30 – 40% ever fully recover
- The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate of ALL causes of death for females 15 – 24 years old.
- 20% of people suffering from anorexia will prematurely die from complications related to their eating disorder, including suicide and heart problems
- Only 1 in 10 people with eating disorders receive treatment
- About 80% of the girls/women who have accessed care for their eating disorders do not get the intensity of treatment they need to stay in recovery – they are often sent home weeks earlier than the recommended stay
- Treatment of an eating disorder in the US ranges from $500 per day to $2,000 per day. The average cost for a month of inpatient treatment is $30,000. It is estimated that individuals with eating disorders need anywhere from 3 – 6 months of inpatient care. Health insurance companies for several reasons do not typically cover the cost of treating eating disorders
- The cost of outpatient treatment, including therapy and medical monitoring, can extend to $100,000 or more
Participants in Body Image Warrior Week are:
Already Pretty
The Beheld
Decoding Dress
Dress with Courage
Eat the Damn Cake
Fit and Feminist
Medicinal Marzipan
Not Dead Yet Style
Rosie Molinary
Virginia Sole-Smith
Weightless
The Beheld
Decoding Dress
Dress with Courage
Eat the Damn Cake
Fit and Feminist
Medicinal Marzipan
Not Dead Yet Style
Rosie Molinary
Virginia Sole-Smith
Weightless
I will be publishing posts from these smart, insightful women throughout this week. Be sure to click through to their blogs to read even more posts regarding body image, struggles, and insights.
Naturally, this is just a small group of warriors and all are welcome to contribute to this project. If YOU’D like to participate in Body Image Warrior Week, just grab this code and paste it at the top of your post.
<a href=”http://www.alreadypretty.com/2012/02/body-image-warrior-week.html”><img title=”bodyimagewarrior_banner” src=”http://www.alreadypretty.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bodyimagewarrior_banner1.png” alt=”" width=”502″ height=”102″ /></a>
I'm incredibly proud to be included in this project. It's so important to take a moment and reflect upon the importance of cultivating a positive body image. I hope you join me as I share posts from these bloggers, whom I so admire.
Sky high ...
jeans: bershka,
floral shirt: zara,
coat: stradivarius,
bag: zara,
rings and bracelets: ti sento ( zlatara Topalovic)
sunglasses: accessorize
ph. Marina A. ( Frashion by Marina)
Guilty as i am! ;)
Temperatures are finally beginning to rise , and with the first sun here i am.
On Saturday i went with one of my blogger girls, lovely Marina to the center, you know how it goes: checking the stores, having a coffee break, gossiping about the past week ..etc . And of course, outfit post was included with that lazy package day! ;) So, prepare for the photos overload cause we were trying out her new lenses! You know how much we love our toys! ;)
I was wearing completely new things, Zara floral shirt, Mango heels and Bershka skinny jeans, which i bought last two months, but i didn't had chance to show you. The coat was the part of my "Stradivarius&Chicisimo" gift box. Also the newest addition to my jewelry are these gorgeous pastel rings, im in love with them!And i also love "sale" time! ;)
Last night i was watching the Oscars , and my favorite was Gwyneth Paltrow without any doubt! In the meantime happened that strange thing called "Angelina's right leg" and i needed to recreate it immediately, click Here! ;)You know how much i like to goof around! ;)
Hope you will like the new photos and cute gif (huge thanks to Marina) and im hoping that i will hear your best dressed from last night!
Enjoy in this sunny day!
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