beauty standards

Tree So Horny

Kyla — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:00:00 -0400

What you think about Fuck for Forest, a Berlin-based website that lets subscribers watch videos of environmental activists doing the nasty, depends in part on what you think about porn as a whole. If you think it’s liberating, empowering, and fun for the folks involved, then you can feel good about supporting an organization that channels its massive earning potential toward worthy antideforestation efforts—unlike regular internet porn, the dollars you spend aren’t paying for the gold plating on some smarmy webmaster’s hot tub.

Weighing Reality

Kyla — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 02:00:00 -0500

“Obesity,” declares Charlotte Cooper, author of 1998’s Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size, “is just a word used by people to medicalize fat.” Extra weight, once considered a genetic short straw, is increasingly characterized as a crisis threatening the physical, political, and moral health of our nation—even as large bodies are becoming increasingly visible in popular culture.

Hog Heaven

Kyla — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

You’ll recognize the female silhouette that leans against the title on the cover of Ariel Levy’s new book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. She’s the girl who in recent years has made the move from the mud flaps of big rigs right into pop culture, gracing trucker caps, baby tees, and gold necklaces as an emblem of sexy, empowered womanhood. Or at least that’s what she’d like you to believe.

Love Guns, Tight Pants, and Big Sticks

Kyla — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

cock rock: To some, the term conjures up images of rock gods in white jumpsuits, long hair haloed by a rainbow of lights, fans waving their Bics in unison as an immaculate guitar solo screams out from a tower of amps. To others, it evokes backstage legends of drugs and debauchery, the triumph of malecentric hedonism over social conscience, the unapologetic celebration of sleaze. To still others, it’s shorthand for memorable riffs with a backbeat that makes you want to throw some devil horns and bang your head.

Hail Harper's

Kyla — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

My arm fell asleep, I got so engrossed. This issue of Harper’s Bazaar is about as big as a bible—and just as full of prophecy.

I fall in love with the models, their blackened eyes and plaster pigment, all pinched and compressed into vinyl and leather, looking hot hot hot and totally unfazed. They are the visions of me that I will never see.

Of Kegels, Kotex, and Kate Moss

Kyla — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Allure

Irony of the month: While the Editor’s Letter says, “Shut up and eat,” and bemoans the fact that women are always “self-surveilling” their caloric intake, the mag gives information about: “Aromatrim” products (you smell them and they make you eat less); a new diet pill; “liposhaving” (you can guess what that is).

Mad As A Wet Hen #1

Kyla — Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

How about that new Taco Bell ad featuring 11-year-old boys on the beach ogling a shapely lifeguard as she consumes a quesadilla, twirling the cheese around her finger and sucking it off? Yeah, 18-year-old women exist only for the amusement of pubescent boys. And when the kid faints when he gets near her? Oh, we almost forgot-sexy is good, but too sexy is scary and dangerous.

Unbearable Weight

Kyla — Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Have you found that all the books you read on eating disorders and body image advance theories that don’t mesh with your own experience? Do the authors of said books make statements that make you feel like they live in an alternate universe?