There is no dictionary in the world that includes the words ’skinny’ or ‘fat’ under the definitions of ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’. So, focus on being healthy and stop the self-criticism.

While most people are playing it safe and doing everything they can to avoid pain, successful people know that they must face their fears and do what needs to be done regardless of how they...

A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement

Proper posture sends a positive message since 90% of all communication occures through body language and how you carry yourself.

All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful.

We may not be able to control life’s circumstances, but we always have a choice about how we use our minds to respond to them.

Choose this life. Choose this body. Say yes to all of it. Say yes to the beauty and the good and the ugly and the difficult. Choose what you have, what you are. Choose this...

When [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in...

It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language,...

Your lowest moment and life can be your best if you survive it and learn from it

Beauty shouldn’t be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It’s about knowing...

The human body is the best work of art.

Whatever is deeply, essentially female–the life in a woman’s expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin–is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease....

In a sexual double standard as to who receives consumer protection, it seems that if what you do is done to women in the name of beauty, you may do what you like. It is...

It’s my choice to be beautiful. It’s my choice to be ugly. And it’s my choice to decided what those words actually mean.

The skinnier and more toned I got, the fatter I felt.The more in shape I got, the more out of shape I felt like I was.And the more I made myself look good to the...

You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won’t discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and...

Value yourself for what the media doesn’t – your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it’s not just valuing yourself for your ability to...

Health makes good propaganda.

Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their...

Believe it or not, your body has nothing but unconditional love for you. The proof? Without any effort on your part, your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, and the rhythm of life is...

I’m fifteen and I feel like girl my age are under a lot of pressure that boys are not under. I know I am smart, I know I am kind and funny, and I know...

This body needs me to say yes to it, just as it is right now. No more singing that same old jingle of body-shame and dieter’s promised lands.

The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an...

Claims have been made that I’ve been on a strict workout routine regulated by co-stars, whipped into shape by trainers I’ve never met, eating sprouted grains I can’t pronounce and ultimately losing 14 pounds off...

Telling yourself you like the way you look is easy. Believing it is an entirely different kettle of whales.

good” body. Your body didn’t do anything wrong. What’s fucked up about your body is not your body at all, but that your body has to live in a society that thinks it has a...

Be patient. Your skin took a while to deteriorate. Give it some time to reflect a calmer inner state. As one of my friends states on his Facebook profile: “The true Losers in Life, are...

The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today’s woman has become her “beauty.

If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community.

What if my boobs decide to grow WHILE I’m at school?

I’ve been chained to my bathroom scale for two decades now. I’ve used the number on my scale to tell me if I’m valuable or not. I’ve let the number on my scale destroy many...

When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being...

Our bodies were printed as blank pages to be filled with the ink of our hearts

A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men’s appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis size, personal grooming, or taste in clothes–all of which we do. The fact...

‘Never,’ enjoins a women’s magazine, ‘mention the size of his [penis] in public… and never, ever let him know that anyone else knows or you may find it shrivels up and disappears, serving you right.’...

While your ego is always trying to figure out its place in the world, your true self knows that your place is always right here, right now.

She was every inch the skeletal goddess that had been promised by the bones of her feet.

I choose this body just as it is.

Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women.According to Appel, cult members develop…”an attitude of moral superiority, a contempt for secular laws, rigidity of thought, and the diminution...

I try to stay fit and eat healthily, but I am not anxious to starve myself and become unnaturally thin. I don’t find that look attractive on women and I don’t want to become part...

Eating is not a crime. It’s not a moral issue. It’s normal. It’s enjoyable. It just is.

good” bodies. In the process, we torture our bodies, and do everything from engage in disordered eating to invasive surgery to make ourselves okay. Nobody wins in this kind of struggle.

When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy...

Is the beauty myth good to men? It hurts them by teaching them how to avoid loving women. It prevents men from actually seeing women. It does not, contrary to its own professed ideology, stimulate...

The surgeons’ market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women’s faces or bodies that social change won’t cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.

I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I...

. . . hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it...

Eating – overeating – saved me. It comforted me when I was at the mercy of grown-ups who didn’t know how to give what I needed. Food was something to which I had ready access,...

Their [girls] sexual energy, their evaluation of adolescent boys and other girls goes thwarted, deflected back upon the girls, unspoken, and their searching hungry gazed returned to their own bodies. The questions, Whom do I...