The-F-Word.org - Food, fat and feminismThe-F-Word.org - Food, fat and feminismA forum to discuss the relationship between women, food, power and body image 
Articles
Angelina Jolie: It?s grief, not an eating disorder
2007-12-21 02:08:00 The tabloids and even some so-called reputable media outlets have been rife the past year with speculations that Angelina Jolie has an eating disorder - The National Enquirer even went so far in May as to diagnose the star with anorexia nervosa. But in a portion of an interview posted by Digital Spy, the ... More About: Eating Disorders , Eating
Losing weight, losing myself
2007-12-20 16:49:00 Fillyjonk at Shapely Prose has linked to and commented on a personal essay submitted to Newsweek’s My Turn feature. The article is titled ?My Secret History: I may be thin now, but that doesn’t mean I share your opinions about fat people,? written by Megan Northrup. In the article, Northrup recounts a lifetime of ... More About: Personal , Weight , Eating Disorders , Losing Weight , Weigh
New research on anorexia as brain disease
2007-12-17 15:59:00 A study published this month in The American Journal of Psychiatry sheds new light on the anorexia-by-super-thin-models controversy. A team of psychiatrists, led by Walter Kaye, of the University of Pittsburgh, conducted the study, which suggests that the brains of anorexia sufferers behave differently to those of the rest of the population and that certain people ... More About: Research , Anorexia , Eating Disorders , Disease , Brain
Rewarding what really matters
2007-12-13 22:51:00 Neither my husband nor I have an iota of fashion sense, but we?re both addicted to Project Runway. Last night?s episode, ?What?s the Skinny,? challenged the designers to re-style the favorite but now-too-big outfits of 12 women, all of whom have lost a significant amount of weight. Each woman introduced herself along with ... More About: Fashion , Matters
It’s official: Janice Dickinson is crazy
2007-12-12 22:49:00 Perhaps Botox ought to come with a warning: Caution, may destroy part of brain capable of making rational decisions. Blogs and media sites across the nation and beyond are all hashing and rehashing the latest debacle starring the Queen of Crazy , Janice Dickinson - see here and here. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the former model-turned-scary-reality TV star weighed in on the much-criticized bikini photos of Jennifer Love Hewitt in an episode of The Today Show: “These are unflattering camera angles on her,” said Dickinson, 52. “You want to see someone who’s fat? I’m sorry, Tyra. Tyra Banks is fat. This girl is not fat.” Seriously, with women like this, who needs the patriarchy? With the latest brouhaha still raging, I settled the remote last night on an “all new” episode of Dickinson’s Oxygen reality show, in which Dickinson conducts an open call for new models. After signing a model who clearly has self-harming issues, Ja... More About: Official
A note to my husband
2007-12-11 17:42:00 Dear honey, For Christmas this year, I do not want health cooking cookbooks nor do I want a consultation with a nutritional therapist wherein I am weighed, measured, and otherwise poked and prodded to determine my daily caloric intake and diet plan most conducive for weight loss. Okay, so the spa package might be ... More About: Health , Note , Nutrition , Husband
Pay attention to the (business)man behind the curtain
2007-12-10 18:01:00 The husband and I caught the tail-end of a Book TV discussion this weekend with Shannon Brownlee, a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the newly published Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. I have not read Brownlee?s book, only reviews of it and the synopsis ... More About: Business , Attention , Sine
Reminder: Stories of Our Bodies
2007-12-08 18:32:00 I’ve had a warm response to my call for Stories of our Bodies . Just to let everyone who submitted a story know, I am in the process of reading them all and will get back to you shortly. I’m also trying to decide on the best format in which to present these in ... More About: Pop Culture , Reminder , Remi
A sense of perspective
2007-12-08 02:36:00 You wouldn’t think I’m a pacifist, considering I’ve managed to piss off both the Dan Savage loyalists and the pro-anas all in the same week. For this, my husband has warned me to never insult the Trekkies. I’ve received some pretty hurtful, insulting, and all-around ugly comments in response to both the Savage Love debacle ... More About: Personal , Sense , Perspective
A case for pro-ana/mia sites
2007-12-07 05:45:00 While perusing my website referral logs, I noticed a link from a site that sounds as if it could be a pro-ana site. I don?t care to give the name or link to the site for obvious reasons. In order to view the forums included on the site?s messageboard, you first had to register and ... More About: Health , Sites , Nutrition , Eating Disorders , Case
Fat hatred abounds in advice columns
2007-12-06 17:19:00 It seems fat-hating advice columnists are on a rampage this week. First Dan Savage, now Ask Margo. If you, like me, had no clue who Ask Margo is, here’s a primer: Margo Howard is the daughter of Eppie Lederer, who wrote an advice column as Ann Landers for more than 40 years. Howard ... More About: Advice , Columns , Hatred
Dan Savage: Pot, kettle, black
2007-12-06 05:37:00 Dan Savage ’s follow-up note last week promising to revisit the issue of a spouse who no longer finds his fat spouse attractive initially gave me cause for optimism. His advice, reaffirming spousal weight-gain, really disappointed me, but I had hoped readers would help him see the error of his ways and he’d set things ... More About: Pop Culture , Black
Totally irrelevant but exciting news
2007-12-05 18:46:00 Okay, so long-time readers might remember my husband and I were married this summer on Mackinac Island, Mich. July 25. Yes, yes, I did all the nauseating wedding gushing, from making a wedding announcement page to an online wedding photo gallery. Anyway, my mom just called me to let me know she saw ... More About: News , Irrelevant
Newsflash: It?s fitness, not fatness
2007-12-05 17:19:00 A study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association reinforces what I, and other followers of the Health at Every Size movement, have been saying all along: It’s fitness, not fatness, that’s key to good health. Researchers, led by Dr. Xumei Sui of the University of South Carolina and Columbia, studied ... More About: Fitness , Nutrition , Fatness
B & Lu: If you design it, they will come
2007-12-04 17:44:00 Being the fashion-unsavvy simpleton that I am, I had never heard of B & Lu until Kate started singing their praises. But, according to an article in the StarTribune, it appears as if I’m in the minority. In eight years, the company has gone from one order a day to bringing in almost ... More About: Design
Memo to Santa: Girls want Bob, not Barbie
2007-12-03 05:45:00 New marketing research by toy manufacturer Martin Yaffe gives some cause for celebration. The company put this year?s top Christmas toys to the test, with seven out of 10 girls opting to play with toys designed for boys over the traditional girls? alternatives. All disgust at the perpetuation of gender roles aside, here?s ... More About: Girls , Eating Disorders , Santa , Barbie , Memo
Call for action: Hungry Hank board game
2007-12-02 17:58:00 Sandy Szwarc alerted readers this week to a troubling new board game out geared for young children. The game, Hungry Hank , not only reinforces prejudicial stereotypes of fat people, it also teaches children to think like anorectics and compulsive exercisers, writes Sandy. Players come away learning that foods, especially ?bad? foods, make them fat. The ... More About: Action , Board , Game , Call
A brief recap of the historical war on fat (people)
2007-12-01 22:55:00 During the early stages of my eating disorder, I found myself wandering the marbled halls of the Cincinnati Art Museum every Saturday afternoon. There is something so inherently calming in wandering alone amongst such treasures of antiquity. Before long, I noticed what struck me as an uncanny similarity amongst the works of great ... More About: People , Historical , Recap
Call for submissions: The stories of our bodies
2007-12-01 07:49:00 A couple years ago I took an honors seminar on the culture of eating disorders. As to be expected, the class was comprised entirely of women; some were openly eating disordered, and many of the rest, I suspect, were secretly disordered or, at the very least, possessed disordered thinking about food. Our first ... More About: Stories , Call , Bodies , The Stories , Bodie
Designer diets run amok
2007-11-30 15:25:00 Speaking of our distorted ideas about body image, I just stumbled across the wonderfully clever cartoons of Mikhaela B. Reid. Who says feminists don’t have a sense of humor? Click for larger image On the inspiration for the cartoon, Mikhaela writes: Partly inspired by the disgusting facts about the weirdly popular diet drug Alli, but partly by ... More About: Diets , Designer
The world in weight: The weekly round-up
2007-11-30 00:00:00 The (intended) weekly round-up of related F-word topics in the news. As reported in USA Today, consumer test trials are now being conducted on ?smart carts? ? electronics-equipped carts tricked out with computer screens barcode scanners ? which customers can use to scan item packaging to view a display of nutritional information, means of production and ... More About: Health , World , Weight , Round Up , Eating Disorders
The hijacking of Body Image Month
2007-11-27 18:01:00 It?s always an interesting study in sociology to examine how popular mass media interprets the concept of ?Body Image ? campaigns. Take the celebrity news and gossip show Access Hollywood, for example. Now in its twelfth season of syndication, the popular newsmagazine and half-hour television show has declared November to be Body Image Month . Here?s a ... More About: Pop Culture , Eating Disorders
Eating disorders inspires laughs
2007-11-26 00:57:00 People who know me describe me as a fairly positive and gasp, even perky kind of person. You kind of have to be a ?people person? if you?re going to be a reporter; I mean, who wants to talk to a sour-faced prude, right? When my circle of friends and I first began blogging years ... More About: Eating Disorders , Disorders , Eating , Diso
Another fashion model dies of anorexia - the world yawns
2007-11-23 19:11:00 Another fashion model has died from anorexia-related complications. Israeli fashion model Hila Elmalich died Nov. 14 of heart failure. The corpse she leaves behind is the average weight of a seven-year old child. If you didn?t read about it in the newspapers or hear it on the evening news, ... More About: Fashion , World , Pop Culture , Model , Anorexia
A letter to Dan Savage
2007-11-21 21:16:00 Dear Dan, It?s been a couple years now since my husband turned me on to your deliciously clever and sarcastic column. It was, I thought, the beginning of a long and loyal writer/reader relationship. I remember happy times sipping steamed soy milk while browsing through your books at Barnes & Noble? those ... More About: Pop Culture , Letter , Savage , Sava
Vote for Connie Sobczak and The Body Positive
2007-11-19 19:29:00 Connie Sobczak nearly lost her life to bulimia. But she was lucky. She recovered. Her sister Stephanie did not. She died from eating disorder complications at the age of 36. In memory of her sister, Connie founded The Body Positive , a nonprofit organization that promotes healthy living and body acceptance - ... More About: Vote , The Body , Connie
Sarah Hartshorne weighs in on ANTM experiences
2007-11-18 21:09:00 First, Sarah Hartshorne wasn’t fat enough for plus-size. Then, when after living in a house full of weight-obsessed women, she not-so-surprisingly started to lose weight - a whopping three and a half pounds - judges criticize her for losing said non-existent “plus-sized” figure. Not fat enough for for plus-size and too hefty for regular ... More About: Experiences , Erie , Weigh , Horn
When a photo expresses a thousand feelings
2007-11-17 23:05:00 We’ve talked before of the therapeutic role art plays in recovery for many girls and women with eating disorders. The Miami Herald reports today on another case of art as empowerment, that of 22-year-old Jessica Aron, who uses photography as a therapeutic outlet. Several of Aron’s self-portraits use a measuring tape as a ... More About: Photo , Thousand , Feelings
10 Questions for Gina Kolata
2007-11-16 15:55:00 Gina Kolata is an award-winning science and medicine reporter for the New York Times and the author of many books, including, “Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead”, “The Baby Doctors: Probing the Limits of Fetal Medicine“, “Sex in America”, the best-selling “Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and ... More About: Interviews , Questions , Book Reviews
Site redesign launched
More articles from this author:2007-11-16 15:28:00 After a few frustrating nights spent hunched over my laptop finally comes the redesign I’ve been planning for months. I’ve known that I wanted to use the girl in the header graphic for months in the new site design, but just wasn’t sure how I wanted to structure the rest of the site nor ... More About: Administrative , Site , Redesign , Launched 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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