I have a superpower. I am immune to the power of media. Yes, you heard me correctly. Bring on your Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows and Hardee’s ads and watch their influence fall harmlessly away from me. For as a lesbian, I “do not care about the standards of beauty created for me by society.” Wait…what?… Continue Reading →
Fictional food is more real than you think
What does Winnie the Pooh have in common with Lorelai and Rory Gilmore? They all love food. In fact, they don’t just love food—food is their ticket to winning the hearts of their audiences. From Popeye, to Garfield, to Kevin Malone from The Office, food is a means for fictional characters to express themselves and… Continue Reading →
Think only white women get eating disorders? Think again.
In popular culture, stories of eating disorders are dominated by white women. But what about the other sufferers? Women of color have been sidelined in eating disorder funding and research, and have therefore been underestimated in our perception of the affected demographic. In the new Slate article “Eating disorders do not discriminate“, Michelle Konstantinovsky explores… Continue Reading →
You are not a number: How scales can become large-scale problems
How would you react if you saw the number on your scale go up five pounds or down five pounds? It has become common for people to react to minor weight fluctuations with extreme measures (i.e. “I gain five pounds, and I go on a fast.” or “I lose five pounds, and I eat way… Continue Reading →
The earth isn’t flat… and neither are stomachs
I can honestly say that almost every female stomach I have ever seen in the media has been flat. And this is a fact that makes me sick. In no way do I have anything against flat stomachs or people who have them. I accept all body types. I just wish that the media would… Continue Reading →
Dear fitness center, the BMI chart on the wall is NOT okay with me
I have a HUGE bone to pick with my fitness center; a fitness center that I was drawn to because, at the time I joined, I thought that its focus was health and physical activity, not weight loss and numbers. This was incredibly important to me as an individual recovering from a severe eating disorder…. Continue Reading →
How low can you go? Scouting for talent at eating disorder treatment clinics
Recently, as I was scrolling through news articles on my cell phone, I came across an article that caught my eye. The article was on the scouting of new talent by model agencies at the one place that they should NEVER be looking for talent: an eating disorder treatment clinic. As someone who is in… Continue Reading →
A relatable disclosure of an eating disorder from NYC powerhouse
It’s not easy to disclose an eating disorder, much less discuss in detail where you feel its origins are and how you coped with addressing it. Doing this as a public figure—and a political one at that—is even more difficult. As someone who researches eating disorders, I have to say, I was both proud of and… Continue Reading →
The un-American weight-loss story
Once upon a time, there was a Milwaukee photographer named Julia Kozerski. At 25, she was classified as morbidly obese. She made healthy lifestyle changes and lost 160 pounds. And lived happily ever after as a weight loss success in her svelter shape, right? Wrong. Julia Kozerski began documenting her weight-loss journey in one of… Continue Reading →