Will The New Diverse Barbies Actually Change Anything? (IMAGES/VIDEO)
Much has been made of Mattel’s new redesign of the Barbie doll to recapture the public’s imagination and pad their shrinking sales. The move has been lauded in such publications as Time and the New York Times as a strong boost to feminism and the continuing battle against women’s body dysmorphia and body image issues, but how strong is Mattel’s message, and is redesigning a doll going to change all that? Barbie is an iconic doll. From her introduction in 1959, where her job was as a teenage fashion model, until now, she has been…
The Paradox of #WeighThis
Cyndi Springford is the founder of Love Your Body Project: Peace, Love and Food and an ACE/AFAA Certified Personal Trainer, RRCA Certified Running Coach, Certified Eating Psychology Coach with training from the following organizations: www.acefitness.org, www.afaa.com,www.psychologyofeating.com, www.rrca.org. Having worked in the fitness industry since 1993, her unique background in eating psychology and her own unique journey with food, I felt Cyndi was someone whose words would really resonate with all of you. This is a fantastic post from her blog, Cyndi Lou Running. A friend of mine posted a link on my fb timeline today,…
What A Photoshop Class Taught Me About Impossible Beauty Standards
I was sixteen years old when I finally decided to confront the horrible body image issues I’d been fighting for the last ten years of my life. I was tired of looking at advertisements, music videos and magazines that never reflected my body type or features. I was even more tired of being depressed about it. That’s when the idea for BeUtiful came to me, and that’s when I started to release myself from those impossible beauty standards. I tried to educate myself on what was behind those picture-perfect images, but…
PacSun Selling Racy T-shirts
Judy Cox was shopping with her son in a mall in Utah. When they walked past the PacSun store something caught Cox’s eye. Staring back at her on a t-shirt marketed to boys in junior high was a half naked woman in erotic positions. Outraged by the shirts, she complained to the store’s manager, requesting them be taken down. The manager’s response was that it had to be approved by corporate before he could remove the items from the window. Cox then preceded to purchase every last shirt in the…
Photographer’s Provocative Series Challenges What “Attractive” Means To Viewers
What makes someone “attractive?” As we become more and more saturated with media-propagated imagery, people are starting to push back and question why there is only one standard of beauty. One artist, Gracie Hagen, has created an amazing project addressing the root of “attractive”. In an effort to explore the unrealistic images in the media in comparison to the reality of real human flesh, Gracie has produced a photo series called “Illusions of the Body.” For the project, Gracie recruited women and a few men of varying shapes and sizes and photographed them…
