Lynne Murray says “I wish I could have seen that when I was 16,” my friend said when I showed her this short clip of a photographer taking “before and after” shots on the same day. It still might not have saved her from forty years of diet madness. As of 2007, Reuters estimated fat-fighting [...]

Debbie says: Sorry for the slow posting around here; I’m healing from a significant injury and Laurie has an intense show schedule. But we haven’t forgotten you! The inimitable Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown has a post at The Awl on “Lady Nerds and Utopias”, and a “meta” follow-up at her own blog, and I [...]

Laurie says: I just got back a short while ago, and I’m leaving for World Fantasy Con on Tuesday. Won’t be blogging for a bit but wanted to put up the Photo Of The Week before leaving. I was just talking to my friend Pat Diggs, so it seems appropriate to choose her photo from [...]

Debbie says: Most people (or at least most U.S. readers) can probably recognize the cover of Twilight, the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s runaway success vampire series. I have to say I never gave the cover a second thought, until I saw this article. It turns out that Kimbra Hickey was the hand model for [...]

Lynne Murray says: The documentary Catfish set me to thinking about how people represent themselves on the Internet and also about how differently art work is received depending on the persona behind the art. Peter Steiner’s 1993 New Yorker cartoon has inspired dialog and homage (or possibly updating) I hope I’m not spoiling the fascinating [...]

Debbie says: My corner of the blogosphere is awash with this flowchart of the range of female-character stereotypes, originally from mlawski Overthinking It. (To read the chart, click on it and then enlarge it. I didn’t copy it here because it’s way too big to show up in a blog post.) The ideas behind the [...]

Laurie says: I was just visiting with my friend Umi, who was so helpful when we were writing  Body Image in Japan and the United States. So here is her choice for Photo of the Week from Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes: … For future folks should be aware that sometimes the Photo of [...]

Cross posted at Fukshot Marlene says: Unless you’ve been actively ignoring such things, you’ve probably gathered that the progressive left is more than a little disappointed with President Obama. The Gay left is especially disappointed. On the whole, I’m not. Perhaps that is a result of lower expectations, but I think it also has to [...]

Laurie says: All my portraits until now have been in black and white film and darkroom work.  The only color work I’ve done has been my present In-Camera Project digital work and except for cropping, it’s not manipulated. These prints are 5″ wide and printed on 8.5″ by 11″ paper.  The white space and the [...]

Debbie says: Sociological Images posted this photograph of two piggy banks. On the face of it, this is another in the never-ending stream of commercial images which remind us of who we’re supposed to be and what is supposed to be important to us: if you’re a boy, you are saving your money for college; [...]