Announcing Binge Eating Disorder Week, May 27-31

Hopeless…desperate…defeated…disgusted…guilty…ashamed These are the words with which I open an article I wrote explaining binge eating disorder (BED), as part of the upcoming BED week, May 27-31. These words describe the difficult feelings that plague those who struggle with BED.  And the feelings can go much deeper than that, to increase risk for depression and [...]

The Blessing of Affirmations

When you look in the mirror, what’s the first thing you say to yourself? If you are like most women, it’s not something kind or complimentary. Most of us are WAY too hard on ourselves, and the media doesn’t help with that. Think about it…can you recall ONE company that promotes happiness with what IS [...]

Black Women and Fat and a Photo of a Girl Wearing Someone Else’s Face

This Guest Post graciously submitted by Kate Fridkis. It is not totally rare that I am moved to tears, but this time it was for a good reason. I was standing in a sleek little gallery on the Lower East Side, music beating in the background, as I looked at an enormous photograph of a little black girl [...]

Weight Bias in the Workplace: CVS Employees Threatened to Reveal Weight or Pay Penalty

CVS Caremark’s new employee health policy requires participants to provide their weight, body fat, and glucose levels…or pay the penalty of $50 per month. This coercive strategy forces employees to pay a fee in order to maintain health-related privacy. The weight centered bias in this plan is clear. “Going forward, you’ll be expected not just [...]

Binge Eating Disorder Help & Hope

The title of my post today is a bit redundant.  Help is hope for people who struggle with binge eating disorder, and hope is help, too.   I can get caught up in the semantics of things very easily but this time, I think it’s worth it.  What I really want to talk about is the [...]

BODY EMPOWERMENT – “Government & Weight Stigma”

As part of the weekly Wednesday posting of my ongoing YouTube series “Body Empowerment,” here’s “Government & Weight Stigma” originally posted May 7, 2012, on YouTube.com by Caroline Rothstein. This video responds to a viewer’s question about government pressures to be thin. The viewer asked, “…With BMI Charts and ‘fat’ labels everywhere and being overweight, I find [...]

Neutralizing Your Response to Your Body

     There are thousands of messages in the world that tell us that we are not perfect enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough. Most of these messages originate with the media. The media has been shaping our cultural norms for decades. The media preys on our humanness, our desire to fit in, our desire [...]

Worth the “Weight”?

I never thought I could learn so much about myself from a cactus! Upon a recent trip to Arizona, I learned something about the Saguaro cactus (the really tall ones that can have a bunch of “arms”, once they are 75 years old). They can shrink and expand, based on how much moisture they hold [...]

2013 Healthy Weight Week Body Image Awards

Next week is Healthy Weight Week and along with it come the annual Body Image Awards, given to those who are making a difference when it comes to how we think about beauty, weight and ourselves.  This year’s winners are: Israel received the Redefining Beauty award for its new law (!) that requires models to [...]

Do We Have Secret Fat Envy?

This guest post graciously submitted by Virginia Sole-Smith Rebecca DiLiberto (producer/executive editor of The Ricki Lake Show, which my inner ’90s child is randomly a bit excited about although I usually consider myself strictly an Ellen girl) has a post up over on Huffington Post called Why You Can Have Everything You Want (Even Though You’re Fat).  [...]

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