Laurie and Debbie say: Stefanie sent us two related links, one to a blog called Going Gray and one to a discussion on Pandagon about gray-haired young women. Going Gray is a celebration of women who don’t dye their hair, liberally illustrated with pictures of women spanning a range of ages. Amanda at Pandagon is [...]

Laurie says: In 2001, when I had my exhibition “Meditations on the Body” at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, John Wells, a Kyoto filmmaker, did a short documentary film with an interview of me by Professor Rebecca Jennison from Kyoto Seika University. The film includes lots of conversation and photos, and some shots [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Our friend Lizzy lent us Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa|Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating by Steven Bratman, M.D. with David Knight. We’ve been aware of the concept of orthorexia (which means “eating by rules,” just as “anorexia” means “not eating) for some time, but neither of us knew that the [...]

Debbie says: Laurie is much better and she and I will be blogging again by the end of the week. Meanwhile, I am deluged with superb links from stringers and others, so I hereby deluge you with the same. The New York Times has discovered the fat-positive blogs. I think they should have mentioned Body [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: We’re looking for someone who can help us redesign our blog page. The blog runs on WordPress, and the style sheets to match it to the rest of the site are (obviously) already written, but we want to change some of the look and feel. This is not a paying gig, [...]

Debbie and Laurie are delighted to have Liz Henry guestblogging here! *** The first time I began to identify as disabled, I learned a little bit about the medical industry and politics, and become a bit more politically radical. People with spinal cord injuries in the U.S. go through hospitals and rehab, where they meet [...]

Debbie says: When you’re fat, it’s easy to believe that people everywhere are eyeing you, just waiting for a chance to tell you how you should improve yourself. And it’s sometimes true. This week in New York City, it’s truer than usual. The Ad Council and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are [...]

Debbie says: (Laurie has a cold and is taking a few days off from blogging.) The rallying cry of corporations is “find new customers,” and in the last decade or so, the cosmetics and beauty industries have been organizing a full-court press to bring in male customers. Since these industries thrive on body hatred, the [...]

Debbie says: Last week, Body Impolitic stringer Kerry passed on this article from the BBC. I glanced at it, and was immediately struck by this sentence: “The findings held true regardless of how overweight or poor they were.” This is in the second paragraph of the article. The “findings” are that not smoking, eating lots [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Maybe there’s been another piece of exploitation and body-hatred news in the years we’ve been doing this work that has outraged the two of us more than this one has … but neither of us can remember it. Last year Nair, makers of hair-removal products, released their Pretty range, aimed at [...]