6 ways to tell your girl to lose some weight, and other musings.

Hello my gorgeous ladies and gents!  I'm back!

As many of you may have noticed, I've been absent from the blog-sphere for far too long!  I was planning on just taking the semester off as I struggle to pass my required physics course (yuck!), but, as usual, I've stumbled across something that hit such a bad note with me, I just had to write about it!

And what is that "bad note," you might ask?  Just a little article on AskMen.com, a website dedicated to giving all the dudes out there some guidance on how to "become a better man."  Trust me, you're going to laugh when you see what kind of advice they're doling out.

The article in question is titled: "6 Ways to Tell Your Girl to Lose Some Weight".

Are you offended yet?  Maybe you're sitting there thinking (like I was), "alright, this sounds bad, but maybe there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.  After all, it's not necessarily immoral for a boyfriend to be invested in his woman's health."  Or something along those lines.

Well guess again, ladies!  While Mr. Chris Lumsdon, the author of this masterpiece, has omitted any explicit reason as to why you would want your girlfriend to lose weight, the fact that many of his suggestions revolve around simply shaming your beloved into realizing she looks gross leads me to believe he has a little more than mere health concerns at heart.

By now you're probably wondering, what are these ways in which I should: ruin any sense of trust my girlfriend has placed in me/ set myself up for a gnarly kick to the groin/ tell my girlfriend she's getting fat?  Well, dear readers, here they are: {In case you don't believe this, here's the original.}

1. Tell her her favorite outfit looks bad on her.  If she doesn't look good in her "go-to getup," she'll realize she doesn't look good in anything!  From there you can relax and "watch her forever skip the nachos and cheese."
2. Tell her YOU feel fat.  "She'll become fat-obsessed by osmosis." (I'm not even making this up.)
3. Pick one of her not-so-skinny friends and announce that because she's fat, she's ugly.  "She'll be thinking that if you find her bookworm buddy hefty, perhaps a diet should be on her docket."
4. Announce you have a hot new female trainer at the gym.  She'll be so jealous she'll go the gym with you every time you go "just to keep an eye on you."
5. Buy her a piece of clothing that is obviously too small, and subtly announce that the sales clerk said it's only meant for "smaller women... she'll work morning, noon and night to fit into that cursed thing."
6.  Tell her you want to lose weight together.  This suggestion was the most reasonable of the bunch, until Mr. Lumsdon added that your girlfriend will be so overwhelmed to see that you're invested in her health (by worrying about the couple of pounds she gained over the holidays) that she'll go out of her way to spoil you and treat you and show you she's invested in you, too...  I don't know about you ladies, but if my boyfriend told me I was looking a little "flabby," tickets to his favorite sports team would be the LAST thing he'd be getting!

I want to say I don't even have words for how I feel about this list, but the fact is, I have far too many!  I could go on for days about how misogynistic, backward-thinking and offensive this is, but I'm going to try to keep it short: no man (or woman) in your life should ever, ever feel it's okay to shame you for the way you look, regardless of your weight, your shape, or any other aspect of your body.  Women have been fat and skinny and short and tall and curvy and straight and everything in between for hundreds of years.  Just because the media has decided that the way your body looks it "out" right now does not mean that it's "wrong." 

Beauty has been coming in all forms before you, and it will continue to come in all forms long after you're gone. You are a beautiful woman exactly the way you are, and you should never give anybody the right to tell you any differently.  It may be a cliche but it's true: never let anybody steal your happiness, and never let anybody dull your sparkle.  You are wonderful and beautiful and amazing and incredible, and if someone around you doesn't see that, it's their loss.  Even if you agree that you would like to make some changes to your body or your appearance, that's your choice to make.  It should not be influenced by magazines or Victoria's Secret or, heaven forbid, a shitty dick-head boyfriend who happens to think you would look more do-able with a flatter stomach.  It is your right to stop worrying about your extra little jiggles here and there, learn to love your body and learn to love the way it lets you enjoy life!  And you should never let anybody ever convince you of anything different.

P.S.: There is an awesome bright side I forgot to mention: of the 500 men who read this article online and chose to participate in a poll, more than 50% of them voted that the "tips" the author doles out make them either "sad" or "furious."  Further, only 13% claimed it helped make them a "better man."  So just take heart that, for every total jerk out there who is judging you by the size of your jeans, there's a whole other guy who is digging your self-acceptance, and would never ask you to change! Now that sounds like the world I want to live in!

Stop telling your friends you're fat.

We all have that friend.  The one who is constantly talking about her diet, her workouts, her appearance.  The one whose body issues are never far away.  And while you may think that indulging her a little and letting her vent about her recent lack of gym motivation or finals-induced chub is healthy, it turns out you're wrong: not only is it bad for her, it's bad for you too.  Really bad.

A recent study from Mount Alison University in Canada has discovered that the single most significant factor in a woman's body image, moreso even than her actual weight or body shape, is how her friends feel about their own bodies.

Let that just sink in for a moment.   Then, to give yourself an idea of how true this is on a personal level, just think about how often body issues come up in your conversations.  Now imagine that nobody ever discussed their weight, their latest diet, or their gym routine.  You wouldn't have nearly as much to compare yourself to, and if you read this blog regularly, you should know by now that comparing yourself to others leads to a multitude of body-acceptance sins.  I think Theodore Roosevelt said it best:

 This is actually surprisingly good news! Let me just break this down for you: you know how you've always thought that if you were just a little bit skinnier or a little bit taller or a little bit more this or a little less that, the world would somehow magically become a better place and flowers would bloom wherever you walked and birds would land on your shoulder and sing to you on the way to work?!

It turns out it's a lot easier to get there than you thought!  All you need to do is purge the negative body energy from your life and you're on your way! (Cue songbirds.)

In all honesty, we girls know that on some level those kinds of conversations can't be good for us... but it's just so much easier to feel like a fattie if your best girlfriend is feeling the same way too, right?  Unfortunately, it turns out that by entertaining those kinds of feelings, you're hurting both yourself and your closest friends.  And nobody wants that!

The incredibly positive side to this new research is that it also that proves you yourself can be a major source of body-accepting inspiration to your best friends!  All you need to do is display the kind of self-loving attitude that this blog is all about whenever any body-negative talk comes up.  You don't even have to feel it 100% genuinely- just putting out that kind of presence and energy will make a world of difference.

Try this: the next time your galpal goes in for the kill on her new love handles or the fact that she hasn't hit the gym in over a week, interject with something along the lines of, "well I think you look beautiful exactly the way you are right now."  

Or take a page from the book of one of my favorite modern feminists, the one and only Ellen Degeneres:

Simple, direct, and oh so true!  It will most likely stop your friend in her tracks, and even if she doesn't respond in the moment, I promise it will sit with her and sink in later on.

So there you have it ladies!  Not only is there a way to start feeling better about your body and yourself immediately and without hardly any effort, there is also an easy way to help inspire your girlfriends to join you on the pursuit to self-acceptance!  Now take what this blog has taught you, go out there and spread some body-positive love!  Namaste.

Victoria's little secrets.

As many of you know, this past Tuesday was the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, something I definitely do not partake in, and I can tell you exactly why: in the hours after the VS Fashion Show, I saw my social media accounts blow up with something along the lines of the following updates, which I pulled directly, word-for-word, from Twitter:

• "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is Tuesday, bye bye self esteem."

• "Time for Victoria's Secret Fashion show.  Also known as me crying and wishing I looked like them all."

• "Just shed an actual tear while watching the VS Fashion show." 

• "If I had a boyfriend and he was watching the VS Fashion Show, I wouldn't show my face for a week until he forgot what the Angels look like."

• "Watching the VS Fashion show and hating myself."

• "If the VS Fashion Show doesn't make you want to work out, I don't know what will."

• "Post- Victoria's Secret Fashion Show depression."

• "Well that didn't last long... My post-VS Fashion Show diet couldn't survive finals season."

And my personal favorite, from a dude: "If you're a girl out there watching the VS Fashion Show and thinking you're not pretty enough, I have one thing to say to you... you're right."

Alright ladies.  Enough is enough.  First of all, I don't think I need to tell you again that the women you see on the VS Fashion Show are paid millions of dollars to look the way they do.  They spend their entire day in the gym with personal trainers, and they come home to professional chefs who monitor them down to every last calorie.  I can guarantee you that, beyond a doubt, if you had that kind of treatment you would look close to how they do.

Why close?  I'm glad you asked!

I recently stumbled upon a blog that a professional make-up artist writes, and with the upcoming show she detailed what goes into looking like a Victoria's Secret Angel.  Think they just roll out of bed looking toned, tanned and fabulous?  Think again.

Here's the before:

 

Now I'm not going to go through the step-by-step process of her transformation, because that isn't really what I support with this blog, but I will give you a little insight into what goes into making a Victoria's Secret Angel, so you have some perspective.

First, tons (TONS!) of fake hair:

Second, all-over body make-up that tans and tones... This particular make-up artist claims it can reduce the appearance of your body by 20 pounds.

 

And, of course, an incredibly complicated hair and make-up process including professional techniques meant to highlight and contour, ie. slim your non-supermodel features and dramatize the more desirable ones.  (Apparently this model's nose is completely crooked and "seriously needed to be fixed.")

 

And finally, after more than three hours of professional work, the after photo:

 

Before you do anything else, scroll back up and look at the "before."  The "before" girl is someone you would meet in the supermarket or the locker room at your gym, right?  The "after" girl is a professional model.  In case you were bemoaning the fact that the Angels in the fashion show must actually look like they do, since it's broadcast live, here's the truth: they undergo the equivalent of real-life airbrushing prior to the show.

Now I know what you're thinking: you're sitting there going, "But even if all that is true, I still weight 132,485,926 pounds more than any Victoria's Secret Angel!"  But another thing you don't have any perspective on is how significantly our standards of beauty have changed in the past 20 years.

Here's the Victoria's Secret Angels of the 1990's:

And here's some of the most recent girls:

You know that stupid game they always have in the last few pages of celebrity gossip magazines where they ask you to spot the differences between two photos?  Well I can tell you one I spot: in the second picture, each girl is missing about 30 pounds.  Victoria's Secret used to feature women in their 20's and 30's at healthy weights.  Now, they feature eating disorder-laden teenagers.  Let me tell you one thing: if you hadn't hit puberty yet and you were starving yourself, you'd have a hell of a lot better chance of looking like an Angel.  Remember what you weighed in junior high?

My point is this: the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show really, genuinely should not be the make-it or break-it of your self-esteem for the week.  Victoria's Secret has built a multi-billion dollar industry by selling you a fantasy, and nothing else.  If every women looked like a VS Angel, Victoria's Secret wouldn't be making any money.

So! It's time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps my beautiful ladies.  If you've got stress that needs to be used up, channel it into finals season, but please stop with this "I wish I magically looked like a supermodel" nonsense.  If your body gets you up in the morning, gets you through the day, and allows you to do the things you want to do with your life, it is perfect and beautiful and amazing.  It's time you started treating it as such.

P.S. Here's the kind of tweets I expect to see from all of you this time next year!

Food additives (a long one).

And now for something completely different!

Hello and welcome back!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, full of good food and good times with family old and new.

To keep the theme of Thanksgiving going, today I want to talk to you guys a little bit about food.  Not your relationship with food, but the actual food you eat.  I've recently recieved a number of requests to write on nutrition and healthy/clean eating, and while I definitely don't claim to be an expert, and it's certainly not what I usually write about, I know a good deal about the food industry, so I figured I'd tackle the subject!

As many of you know, I'm a bit of a stickler about healthy eating.  While I genuinely believe you can (and should!) love your body and feel confident in your own skin at any size, I also believe that it's incredibly important to take good care of your body so that it can keep doing for you everything you ask of it.  And what's the easiest way to take care of your body? Food!

Ann Wigmore once wrote, "The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison."  And she could not be more right.  Fueling your body with the right foods is the fastest way to feeling better about your body, both physically and emotionally!  When you give your body good food, it runs well.  When your body is running well, it's happy.  If your body is happy, you'll be happy.  It's as simple as that.

That being said, there is no way for me to cover everything I know about food and the food industry in one post, so for now I'm just going to pick one topic to address, and today that topic is food additives.  I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you that processed food is "bad."  By "bad," I mean poison.  It is no coincidence that the exponential increase in processed food consumption has corresponded with unprecedented levels of obesity, heart disease, cancer, cardiac and gastrointestinal issues, and systemic illnesses throughout the modern world.

You most likely already know that processed foods aren't great for you, but what you probably don't know is why.  It's not the calories or the fat content that is making you sick, it's the food additives. Food corporations add tons of unnecessary chemicals and toxins to otherwise healthy food because they help enhance flavor as well as alter the nutritional content.  (Whenever you see "low fat," "sugar free," "low calorie," etc. what you should really think is "chemical shit storm.")  

Before I dive in, I want to acknowledge the fact that everybody has their own ideas about what is good for you and what isn't.  I certainly have my own idea about the kinds of food my body runs best on, and everybody's ideal diet is going to be a little different.  That being said, the fact is that there is a plethora of independent, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that has shown again and again that the chemicals we are consuming as part of our processed foods are leading to an unprecedented level of sickness that we have never seen before.  If you read this blog, you realize that the media has led you frightfully astray with regard to your body perception and self-esteem.  Is it so hard to believe they would do the same with regard to your health and wellness, if there are a few extra dollars in there for them?

But fear not!  Not only I am lucky enough to be the girlfriend of a man whose family has dedicated their lives and livelihood to uncovering the truth about food and medicine, and I myself became immensely interested in the topic about five years ago.  Dozens of food nutrition and environmental science classes later, and I have a pretty good grasp on food nutrition. 

With all that said, and without further adieu, I give you...

Four Food Additives to Avoid Like Your Life Depends On It! (because it actually does.)

1. Hydrogenated oils: These are the oils that made Costco muffins so fluffy.  Hydrogenated oils are fats that are manufactured in a lab, and common sense should tell us that any food made in a lab is probably not good for you.  What the food corporations don't want you to know is that these babies kill over 100,000 people annually, and the World Health Organization has been trying to ban them globally for decades.  Hydrogenated oils, which are also sometimes listed as "fractioned" oils,  cause a systematic cell-by-cell failure by destroying the flexibility and porosity of each cell, literally tearing your body down from the inside out.  Consuming hydrogenated oils leads directly to cancer, birth defects, heart disease, and diabetes, and promotes a slew of other illness indirectly.  Fortunately for us, Costco has since removed hydrogenated oils from its muffins, so at least there is less guilt involved! (I'm a sucker for the giant double-chocolate ones.)

2. MSG: Mono-sodium glutamate.  Many people think MSG is limited to darkly-lit, hole in the wall Chinese restaurants.  However, that could not be further from the truth.  MSG, which also masquerades under the names "natural flavor," "artificial flavor," "seasonings," "broth," "autolyzed yeast," and "spices," is used in virtually all processed foods because it helps to enhance flavor and give foods a more well-rounded taste.  And while I'm all for tasty food, MSG comes at a steep price: not only is MSG a neurotoxin, it inhibits your body's ability to receive the signal that it's full.  Just in case poisoning your brain isn't enough for you, you're also eating up to ten times more than you naturally would and getting fat in the process!  MSG even has a sugary offshoot, maltodextrin, which is found in a plethora of "diet" foods (think "sugar free," "low calorie," etc.).

3. Sucralose: Splenda!  If you thought a "zero-calorie sweetener" was too good to be true, you were right!  Sucralose is actually first and foremost an insecticide, and in case baking an insecticide into your foods isn't scary enough, chlorine is added to the sucralose during its production to produce Splenda.  Chlorine is a known carcinogen that also causes severe respiratory and intestinal issues.  Imagine mixing some DDT into a public pool and then serving it to your kids.  That's close to the toxicity of Splenda.  Splenda/sucralose is found in a majority of sugar-free foods as well as many diet foods because it has "zero calories," but since your body has never processed a food with no calories before, you end up gaining the weight you would from normal sugar anyway.  So if you're going to have a treat, might as well make it natural sugar!

4. High fructose corn syrup/ corn syrup: This one shouldn't come as a surprise to most of you guys. Because of the way HFCS is produced, when you consume it, it not only spikes your insulin level higher than any natural food can (leading to diabetes), it also heads straight to your liver to promote more disease, unlike normal sugar.  HFCS has been proven over and over again to lead directly to all major diseases: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. and there is a direct connection between the introduction of HFCS and the obesity/diabetes epidemic in the United States and beyond.  Take those pro-HFCS commercials with a grain of salt: while natural sugar can be dangerous in massive quantities as well, our bodies have not evolved to process laboratory sugars like corn syrup the way we have evolved to process natural sugars.

Beyond each of these additives being toxic to your body, they are also a good indication of the quality of food you're buying.  As a general rule of thumb, if the food you're looking at contains these ingredients, it's probably all-around not a very good product.

One of the important things to keep in mind with regard to food additives is that if you're a big nutrition fact reader, you might be disappointed: removing chemical additions to food means you have to use real ingredients, and real ingredients have more calories, fat, sugar, and carbs than anything that can be made at a lab bench.  But you know what?  You're much better off eating more calories- or carbs- or whatever you measure-worth of real foods than the toxic stuff you've been replacing real food with.  Trying to create "no calorie" foods we can eat unlimited quantities of is just another symptom of our complete inability to get in touch with our own body and what it needs.  It's time we get back to eating real foods. Trust me on this one, your body will thank you.

So there you have it, as requested!  Who am I to deny the readers what they want? A word of warning: everything in moderation, including moderation.  While you should generally try to avoid these additives when you can, even I allow some of these to slip into my diet every once in a while.  Are a few oreos or a carton of Chinese food going to kill you? Absolutely not.  I in no way want to encourage any kind of body aversion, and never allowing yourself a single indulgence is just as bad as binge eating, degrading yourself, or any of those negative behaviors.  That being said, I can promise you that if you implement these changes in your eating habits, even if you only make one change, you will see and feel a real difference. 

Feel free to contact me with questions/ comments/ for references/ more information!
sonjadobbs2009@yahoo.com

Note: if you're going to do your own research, which I certainly encourage, be sure to check who funded each piece of research.  Many of the studies you'll come across have been funded by major food corporations who want to keep their foods on the shelves.  The best studies are independent, double blind, and peer reviewed.

Holiday food fever.

Well folks, it's that time of year.  Halloween has passed which can only mean one thing... the holidays are here!!

The holidays are my absolute favorite time of year, for a multitude of reasons: getting in some quality time with family (a serious issue when you're a college student living away from home), exchanging gifts, the lights, the music, the feeling in the air, and, of course, the amazing food!  My mom and I have been Christmas cookie fanatics for as long as I can remember.  Every year we buy all the Christmas cookie magazine publications and try to bake our way through them before the big day arrives.  And for as long as I can remember, I have spent the holidays stressing more than any other time of the year about my weight and my body.

For the few of you out there who have no idea what I'm talking about, breathe a deep sigh of relief.  For the 98% of you who, like me, have been in a love-hate relationship with your diet for years, the holidays are just an extra source of stress, emotional and otherwise; not only is there a multitude of incredible food around that you don't usually have, you're often going to parties and other social gatherings with people you haven't seen in a while and, of course, as a chronic dieter, you're once again hoping to impress everyone with an incredible body transformation.  Not by coincidence, every women's health magazine on the shelves right now has some feature or another on how to "control" yourself during the holidays.  Tips range from eating before every party so you're not "tempted" by the food offered, all the way to wearing clothes that are slightly too tight so you're feeling just "tubby" enough that you're too embarrassed to eat.  I don't know about you, but that does not sound like a fun party to me.

Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those of us who deal with the deliciousness of holiday food by letting ourselves go entirely, binging over and over again with the plan of simply waiting until January to deal with our food problems.  There is, after all, the opportunity to resolve once again to "lose the weight once and for all" come January 1st.

Here's the deal: the holidays are supposed to be the one time of year you can get together with those you love, relax and enjoy yourselves together, and believe it or not, part of that enjoyment includes eating.  Indulging in a few holiday meals with your friends and family should be a source of pleasure, not one of stress and anxiety.  While there is no need to partake in the American notion that Thanksgiving is not a success unless you've eaten to the point of making yourself sick, neither is letting yourself off the hook for a few meals going to lead to any kind of dire consequences, besides perhaps a little apprehension about consciously breaking from your "diet."

I know we're all at different points in our journey towards body acceptance, but no matter where you are, try to have some compassion in your heart for yourself this holiday season.  Keep in mind that the stress you're feeling over your body and your eating has nothing to do with what your body actually looks like, or how beautiful you actually are.  That, and let yourself enjoy that peppermint bark, eggnog latte or second helping of stuffing without worrying about your food log or your waist.  I hope that by now you're all trying to break away from the constant dieting, but if not, take the first steps this holiday season by letting yourself enjoy a few meals without worrying about calories, fat, carbs, or anything in between.  The holidays are a time of celebration, so I can't imagine a better time to celebrate the fact that you are beautiful and amazing just the way you are, and no slice of pumpkin pie with extra whipped cream is going to change that.  In fact, it might even make you just a little better! #

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Today, I found definitive proof that I'm right about this whole-body-image-being-depleted-by-the-media thing!  While I was surfing around looking for blog inspiration, I found a study just published by Durham University, based in the United Kingdom, which found that body preference can be radically changed simply based on the images you see of others regularly.

Let me explain.  It's long been apparent to body-acceptance proponents and scientists alike that the effect of the "thin ideal" in advertising has played a substantial role in breakdown of self-image in women everywhere as well as in the creation of eating disorders.  What's new about this research is that it resolves the issue of what came first: a preference for thinness among the general population, OR the mass use of thinner-than-average women in the media.  Researchers enlisted 100 women to view pictures of models at various sizes.  The more images of thin models the women viewed, the more they preferred thin bodies.  Here's where it gets pretty revolutionary: the more images of average or even plus-sized models these women viewed, the more likely they were to accept these bodies as just as beautiful as much thinner ones.  It gets better: even among women who "strongly" preferred thin bodies over any other type before the beginning of the study, by the end they were "significantly less keen" on thinner body types and some even began to prefer normal and plus-size bodies!

Here's what this means: the cultural obsession with extremely thin female figures could be drastically altered, or even eliminated altogether, if advertising began to flaunt much more "full-figured" women.  According to the study above, we each see over 2,000 images a day in advertising alone.  2,000!  Think about it like this: when was the last time you saw an ad that featured a women who was anything more than skinny?  Can you even remember?  Even if it was only a few days ago, that means that you've processed thousands of images of thin women since you saw that ONE image of someone who looks more like you.  But just imagine: what if for every thin model you saw, you saw one normal-sized woman and one plus-sized woman?  Do you think you'd still stand in front of the mirror and pick your body apart for all its flaws?

With that in mind, here are some photographs of absolutely stunning normal- and plus-sized models that will hopefully counteract at least a few of the super-skinny images you've seen today.  Instead of just scrolling through, take a few moments to really process each image.  According to Durham University, it may be a major step (and an easy one at that!) towards self-love and body acceptance.

 

And a bonus, just because you guys are so amazing and encouraging: here's super celebrity Demi Lovato on her latest beach vacation.  Pretty sexy, huh?  And not a rib in sight!

Every single women featured here is 100% natural and, as far as I'm concerned, 100% gorgeous.  So the next time you're beating yourself up because something is too big or too small, too chunky, lumpy, wiggly, or anywhere in between, remember that the major reason you're feeling this way is because you're bombarded with thousands of images every single day that are leading you to believe that that's true.  But you know that?  It's not.  If advertising didn't exist and the only frame of reference you had for how women's bodies are supposed to look were the normal, everyday ones you're surrounded by, you would have realized long ago that we really do come in every shape and size imaginable. And you know what?  That's okay. #

Don't hate, congratulate...

Quick question.

Do you think Kate Upton is fat?

If you answered yes, then you're in the wrong place.  See that little red button with an X through it at the top left of your screen?  Go ahead and click that right about meow.

If you're still here, then you must be of the persuasion that no, she is not indeed fat.

According to one of the web's most ruthless "pro-skinny" blogs, if you answered no, you're grievously misinformed.  Here's what an anonymous writer who goes by the name of Skinny Gossip has to say about this exact picture:

"Huge thighs, NO waist, big fat floppy boobs, terrible body definition – she looks like a squishy brick... lumbering down the runway like there’s a buffet at the end of it."

 She goes on to say, "is this what American women are “striving” for now? The lazy, lardy look? Have we really gotten so fat in this country that Kate is the best we can aim for?"  She later suggests that a picture of Kate eating a hamburger is "canniablism" because she is clearly "a cow."

Appaled yet?

Wait, there's more:

Here's what she has to say about this pro-body acceptance campaign...

"I’m really glad I can’t read the number on that measuring tape. Eww… can we say fat rolls!? Do you have any idea how much someone has to eat to look like this?"

It gets worse.  Not even the thinnest of thin is safe...

"Skinny Gossip" posted this picture of Emma Watson on her blog with the caption...

"She is such a beautiful girl but she would look amazing if she lost about 10-15 pounds.  She is only 5’6″ so she isn’t blessed with much height to help her look skinny.  She’ll end up like Hayden Panettiere if she doesn’t watch out!"

Oh, and by the way, here's the exact picture of the god-awful fate "Skinny Gossip" is hoping poor Emma Watson will avoid...

Oh, the horror!

-

If you're like me, you should be sitting at your computer reading this in disbelief.  If you're like me, you should also be furious.  What this blog promotes is pure, unadulterated body-shaming at its worst, and there is simply no excuse for that.  "Skinny Gossip" may just be one girl, but this kind of perpetuation of body hatred is far from isolated.

The irony of the matter is that, the girls who are spending their time maintaining these blogs, posting pictures of beautiful, strong, confident women and tearing them to pieces, are the same girls who have been taught by our own society that it is not okay to be anything but skinny.  They have been taught that being fat is far and above the most horrible thing a person could be, and so out of fear, not only have they started starving themselves to prevent this from happening (Skinny Gossip brags that by following her own "starvation tips of the day," she has finally reached her goal weight of "5'7 and 100 pounds"), they have gone so far as to start shaming others for their appearance.

While I in no way condone the words of this blogger, or any girl who thinks body-shaming other women is acceptable, I feel that this blog is a symptom of the greater evil: a society that has so completely ingrained a fear of fat in us that we are willing to turn on each other, picking each other apart and preying on others' imperfections to give ourselves a little boost.

Ladies.  Do you really think criticizing another girl makes you better than her?  If you're following this blog, then you agree with me that our society needs a change, one that will allow us to learn how to love our bodies as a whole, instead of denigrating them until they're only a collection of flaws.
Well here's some cold, hard truth coming at you: that movement not only starts with you, but with how you treat others.  I don't care if you'd never actually tell your lab partner she has some gnarly cellulite goin' on.  If you are thinking it, even though it isn't even about you, the only thing you're doing is perpetuating feelings of body shame and body hatred as a whole.

For a self-love movement to really work, it has to include not just your self, but everybody's self.  And that means putting an end to the body hatred you're keeping alive not only in yourself, but also in the judgment of others.  Just as you have to practice looking in the mirror and accepting yourself exactly as you are, so you need to practice letting go of the negative judgments you make about others.  If you genuinely believe that every woman has the right to feel beautiful in her own skin, it has got to start with you, and not just realizing that you yourself are a beautiful, powerful and incredible woman, but that all the other lovely ladies around you are too.  That is the only way we're going to achieve any unity in this movement, and that is the only way we're ever going to make any real, lasting change. #