The Black Hair Tax: No Breaks for Black Women Who Want to Avoid Breakage
‘Nudity Allows an Openness Beyond the Physical’: Reconnecting with My Body to Lead a Richer Life
Phenomenologists say that the body is a means of knowing. Through somatic, tactile engagement with the world, we learn things that do not need to be spoken and communicate sensorially in a way that transcends codification. The immediacy and honesty of our bodies allows an openness beyond the physical. Nudity allows an openness beyond the physical…
‘I Didn’t Have the “Desirable” Body I Saw Online or in Magazines’: Scoliosis, the Media, and the ‘Perfect’ Female Body
As time has gone on, me and all the women I have spoken to have learnt to love their bodies as they are. But that doesn’t mean the notion of the ‘perfect’ body on social media doesn’t still exist. There are so many women out there trying to change this narrative, and show women with all different body types to highlight that there is not one right way to look. This is what I hope to achieve for scoliosis…
‘Our Bodies Were Projects to be Worked On’: My Experience of Fatphobia and Disordered Eating Growing Up in Weight Loss Groups
The first time I set foot in a Slimming World meeting, I was young enough to be occupied by the toys in the corner of the room laid out for kids dragged along by their parents. It was there, in those meetings, that I first began to absorb the idea that fat was bad; our bodies were projects to be worked on, and if I tried hard enough it was perfectly possible for me to look like a Spice Girl…
Why Aren't Curvy People with Eating Disorders Taken Seriously?
No one believes curvier people can have eating disorders or body dysmorphia. Eating disorders are something only thin or anorexic people can have. Curvier people are expected to lose mass amounts of weight, expected to starve themselves to thinness. Our society and medical system are so fatphobic that they are okay with curvier people losing an unhealthy amount of weight…
Bullied into Silence for Not Feeling Beautiful: Experiencing Thin-Shaming, Weight Gain and Body Dysmorphia
I feel anger and resentment toward this narrative that is continuously pushed that women who fit into the traditional mould of ‘thin’ are not allowed to feel negatively about their bodies. Virtually my entire life, any time I have expressed unhappiness with my body, the responses have been overwhelmingly unsupportive…
How Body Neutrality Has Helped Me Reimagine the Way I Relate to My Physical Self
For me, body neutrality is a concept based on the idea of accepting and respecting your body by understanding that its importance is functionality rather than appearance, and it has undoubtedly changed the relationship I have with myself…
Algorithms, Archetypes and Aesthetics: How Your Online Lifestyle is Denying You Desire
There is no moral trophy awarded for inhabiting a certain type of body or seamlessly aligning with all of the ‘right kinds’ of media. No matter how you frame calorie restriction, you won’t have the energy or physical desire to have sex. But you will fit into the cultural understanding of what sexually desirable is – what matters is how desirable you are, not how much desire you experience…