fueled by diet coke

snow white and the twisted self-image.

why “snow white” is both the best and worst fairy tale ever.

a shirt a day keeps the drama away.

can you survive in the same shirt every day for a year? my friend nathan did.

i haven’t been able to exercise since tearing my ACL three weeks ago and i feel disgusting and fat. my jeans are tighter and my belly is squishier and it’s giving me a lot of anxiety. *breathe in, breathe out*

but. hey. it’s okay. i’ll get surgery (soon i hope?) and then i’ll be recovered in a month or so and then i can start training for the disney princess half marathon and i’ll lose like a hundred pounds and everything will be okay. RIGHT? right.

(oh and i know there’s that whole “i am not my body” thing but seriously right now i’m having a hard time focusing on that since it seems as though my body is taking over my life.)

okay. there. i said it once. and i don’t have to say it again.

carry on with life, y’all!

[see also: this post didn’t happen.]

Though I’ve already written about comparing ourselves to other people and how dangerous it can be, I’ve gotten a lot of emails/Facebook messages about this topic recently, so I believe it’s worth revisiting.

A few months ago, a very dear friend of mine was “banned” (for lack of a better word) from Facebook by her husband. He changed her password so that she could only respond to messages, wall posts, and notifications through her Facebook app on her phone and not access the full-blown website. Why did he do this? Was it because he’s a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad husband who wanted to control his wife’s Internet usage? Did he find out that she was cheating on him with a dude she met on Facebook? Did she have some sort of an addiction to social media?

No. Not even close. He did it to protect her from insecurities born out of unrealistic comparisons.

In this day and age, I feel it’s safe to say that we are at a disadvantage when it comes to comparisons because of the Internet, most notably social media. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace (lol), and even blogs really set us up to fail.

(Read more…)

Lisa Bloom: How to Talk to Little Girls

Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.

Good Morning America ran a story about a six-year-old girl who thinks she needs to lose weight. My heart is broken for her. Click the link and watch the video. The worst part is when the reporter gets a group of little girls together and shows them pictures of other girls and asks them to evaluate them. Sigh.

Why is this happening with our little girls? Girls aren’t born worried about their weight. We teach them to be. Something needs to be done. Now.

galadarling:

Blogger Beautiful? An Examination Of What It Means To Be Beautiful & Valuable In Fashion Blogging… I’ve been thinking about this one for a couple of weeks now, & I think it’s a really important issue. Just wait until you read tomorrow’s follow-up!

The first time I remember comparing myself to others and trying to change to be like them was a complete disaster.

I was around four or five years old. I grew up the only girl in my family, surrounded by a brother and endless boy cousins including my cousin and best friend Brian. Since Brian and I were so close in age and in relationship, we were practically joined at the hip. Everything was fine and good, except for one thing: Brian peed standing up. So did the rest of my cousins and my brother. I didn’t understand why I was trained to pee sitting down. Even though I was obviously an anatomical outsider, I hated feeling like I was different from Brian and the rest of my family members. I was convinced that even though everyone called me a girl, I could be a boy if I wanted to. All I had to do was pee standing up. Then I could be just like everyone else.

How hard could it be? I mean, it seemed pretty straight forward. So I marched into my mother’s bathroom, closed the door, pulled down my pants, faced the toilet, and went.

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(via confidencecreatesbeauty)

On weeks where I don’t particularly love my appearance it’s most likely because I’m comparing it to that of Scarlett Johansson. (Why Scarlett, you ask? Well, partly because my husband has mentioned how hot she is and partly because I feel like in the normal world, we’re in the same beauty pigeon-hole. That is, we’re both blonde-haired and blue-eyed with big boobs. She just somehow manages to do it way better than I do.)

BUT! We must remember that underneath stage makeup/Photoshop/personal stylists, celebrities are actually people. Take Scarlett Johansson, for instance. While I spend hours staring longingly Scarlett, wishing on every star that twinkles that one day I could wake up and look like her, she is a regular woman. Just like me. We’re on the same team. We probably both stress about random zits and menstrual cramps and unruly eyebrows and uncomfortable bras.

In fact, this golden-haired goddess probably has it a lot worse off than I do.

(Read more…)