Rhumba Panty - $ 26.95
From: HipsAndCurves.com

Panties, knickers, undies–whatever you call them, this is their day. August 5, 2008 is FreshPair.com’s 6th annual National Underwear Day, “the ultimate avenue for celebrating underwear” (because there wasn’t enough underwear celebrating in the world before?).

I always seem to end up back at Lane Bryant for my panties, but I thought that the Rhumba Panty from HipsAndCurves.com seemed appropriately celebratory. And, kudos to FreshPair.com — they carry plus sizes, so you may find some party panties there, too.

Where do you get your favorite undies? Any recommendations?

If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably noticed the lovely, leather-clad (yep, that’s a leather dress–sizes 1X and 2X) model peeking around the corner of the sidebar to the right. I’ve been experimenting with placing advertising on the site, and when I saw this skyscraper banner for Hips & Curves, I just couldn’t resist featuring it. And when I saw the full-size image below, I was completely captivated.

I’ve always loved Hips & Curves. How can you not love a company that greets you like this:

You’ve come to the right place if you are looking for intimate apparel and plus size lingerie in the newest, sexiest and hottest styles. We believe your gorgeous curves are made to be flaunted, caressed, adored - and adorned - in the latest and greatest plus size lingerie styles.

They have a tremendous selection of styles from bridal to bad girl, and they even feature extended sizes. I love sexy lingerie, and this is definitely the place to go if you’re feeling a little naughty.

But, there is more to this particular ad than just a hot leather dress. The model in this photo is absolutely stunning. I love the power of her pose, with legs for days and real-looking thighs (I have thigh issues). Hips & Curves is using the tag “Provocatively Powerful” on their home page, and I would say that this model fits the bill. She’s in no way plus size, but when was the last time that you saw anything other than stick thighs in a bathing suit or lingerie ad? Not that there’s anything wrong with stick thighs, but they aren’t the only thighs that deserved to be photographed.

So, enjoy the glamazon. And if you want to buy that leather dress or just want to check out Hips & Curves, you can click on the ad or on the picture below.

She’s keeping it curvy–hope you’re keeping it curvy, too.

Corset Leather Dress - $ 129.95 Corset Leather Dress. Leather corset dress has boning for shaping and support, lace-up back and detachable garters.

The blurb for this episode says: “A tall beauty hopes to gather confidence and live out her dream of performing a sexy tango.”

While I could write volumes about each episode of this show, three points really stand out in my mind:

1. Grae likes her body only when she doesn’t know it’s hers.

Grae’s attitude illustrates that body dissastisfaction has very little to do with actual body appearance. She has nothing but good things to say about her body when she thinks it belongs to someone else. Why are we so unkind to ourselves?

2. Body loathing keeps Grae from being fully engaged in the world.

How many of us think that we are “too fat” to try something new, or to pursue our dreams? What about her body would make Grae think that she couldn’t dance? Let’s quit hiding and get out in the world and claim our space and our dreams.

3. It’s all about confidence.

I love the moment in the electronics store, with Grae’s picture on every screen, when the cute guy approaches her and tells her that her body is fine, that all she is lacking is confidence. And her transformation is really based on gaining confidence, even more so than getting a makeover.

Keep it curvy, Grae!

Me, trying to “Keep it Curvy”

I had coffee with a fabulous new curvy friend today.We had a great discussion on clothing woes–If only H&M had curvier clothes–the importance of confidence–A confident woman will never want for male attention–and the need for positive role models relating to curvier body types–we need more curvy romantic heroines in movies and on TV. When we parted, she turned to me and said, “Keep it curvy!”

What a great catch phrase! It captures the idea of “curvy confidence,” that our curves our positive and worthy of praise. Further, “curvy” can be a state of mind. A wise man once said to me, “A curvy road means you take your time and enjoy the ride. The same could be said for a woman….” Rather than speed down the highway of life, wind your way down the scenic, curvy route.

So, I’m going to add “Keep it Curvy” to my repertoire of phrases, with the idea of honoring the curvy-ness of life, in all its shapes and forms.

I’d love to hear about any other phrases that capture your fancy. Body love–let’s speak it into existence.

I’m so glad that “How to Look Good Naked” is back on for Season 2 (full episodes available online). I applaud the honesty of the women who appear on the show for revealing the depth of the pain created by body loathing. And I applaud the program for being one of the few (if not only) shows on television to feature a variety of female body types in a positive manner. How beautiful are the models in Kelly’s mirror exercise? Gorgeous, curvy women portrayed in a favorable light? Yes, please, may I have some more?

And how stunning is Kelly in her sexy, black lingerie?

As for the second season of the show, I like the changes, especially the move to hour-long episodes. I also like the addition of the catwalk–I hope that this is a regular feature. This allows for a more in-depth exploration of the impact of body loathing on the featured women’s lives.

In the first season, every time I would watch this show I would find myself wishing for the nude photo shoot. Now, I want to walk the runway in my undies and high heels!

Thanks to Kris Shock at EDIN Atlanta for sending me the information on this FREE body movement workshop in Atlanta on July 21, 2008. The workshop looks amazing, and I love the FLOW tagline: Love Yourself, Move Your Body, Live Free.

Writing with the Body: Words and Movement
Monday, July 21, 2008
7-8pm
EDIN’s Decatur office:
124 Church Street, Decatur, GA 30030
*free

Join FLOW Training for a workshop
combining gentle movement and writing.
Drawing or coloring is also an option.
Practice tuning into your mind-body connection.
Let your body and your heart speak.

*Bring your journal and yoga mat.

Connect with your body, connect with yourself, connect with others. FLOW Training offers a variety of fitness training and workshops focusing on connecting the body, self, breath and community. For more information:

FLOW Training
404.210.6752
carolineflow@gmail.com
www.mybodyflow.com

*For more information about EDIN (Eating Disorders Information Network), please visit www.myedin.org

Rachel at The-F-Word.org mentions the movie Disfigured, a movie about women and weight (on DVD July 29). Disfigured is the story of “an unexpected friendship between two women - one obese, the other anorexic.” (If you are interested in whatever happened to the winner of the first season of the biggest loser, definitely read Rachel’s article.)

The movie materials describe this friendship as “unexpected”–the perception being, as the fat girl says in the film, “I’m your worst nightmare.” In the past, I’ve thought it myself: even though thin and normal-weight women who suffer from eating disorder, well, suffer, at least they’re not fat. I never held bad feelings for thin women, but I may have minimized their pain.

Thus, the movie begins with Darcy (the woman with anorexia), seeking to join a Fat Acceptance group because she feels that she is fat. And she is refused admittance to the group.

Coming from the point of view of a woman who has always been larger than the norm, there have been times that I have said (in jest), “If I didn’t have low-blood sugar I would have been an anorexic,” as though anorexia is a condition to be desired, rather than a debilitating disease. Later in the film, Lydia (the larger woman) asks Darcy for “anorexia lessons.”

Thanks to my exposure to the stories of women with eating disorders (mostly through the blogosphere) I’ve learned that language that minimizes anorexia or bulumia is as insensitive (and offensive) as “No fat chicks.” And the more you compare the experiences of women around issues of the body, the clearer it becomes–we are all the same under the skin.

I look forward to seeing how this movie treats these and other issues relating to women and weight.

A special thanks to Megan Underwood and Stephanie Davis of skirt! Atlanta for inviting me to the 2nd annual anniversary party for the magazine. I love the message and the beauty of skirt!, a free monthly magazine available in print in Charleston, SC; Atlanta, GA; Augusta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Savannah, GA; Jacksonville, FL.; Columbia, SC; Knoxville, TN; Memphis, TN; Richmond, VA; Houston, TX;  Boston, MA; Lexington, KY; Winston Salem, MA, Ventura/Santa Barbara, CA; Tampa Bay, FL. Not only will you love reading it, you’ll want to frame it!

The party was very “Sex And The City” — held on the rooftop of Atlanta’s MidCity Lofts, trés chic ladies (and their gentlemen friends) sipped pink drinks by the pool and hobnobbed with all sorts of interesting and talented people. I did remark on an absence of big girls at the party - I don’t know if that says something about skirt!’s audience or shyness on the part of curvier girls.

I was invited as a member of a great organization, Ladies Who Launch, an international organization with local “incubators” that offers in-person events and an online social network to support entrepreneurship as a lifestyle for women. Without the support of the lovely ladies in my incubator group I would have never gotten this blog out of my head and onto the Web. I highly recommend them if you want support in launching your dream, be it for business or otherwise.

Thanks, also, to Kyle at Multi-Tasking Woman for adding our picture to her news page.

Just wanted to share.

Have hot pink Post-Its, will travel. (See earlier article: Body activism works to reduce the “thin ideal”)

I’m leaving “You are beautiful” notes on mirrors everywhere.

What have you been doing in the name of body activism? I’d love to hear about it.

I am always trying to challenge myself regarding my own comfort level with my body (thus my foray into a women’s nude yoga class–a story for another time). So, at the end of swimsuit season last year, I decided to buy myself a cute, skirted bikini.

I’ve wanted to wear a two-piece swimsuit since, well, forever, but I’ve never had the nerve. However, when I saw a version of this cute INC International Concepts suit in a size 16, I took it to the dressing room to try it on.

Even under the cold flourescent glare of the fitting room lights, the suit looked cute. I liked the cut and the skirt was just the right amount of flouncy. I took it on and off several times, and each time I liked it on more than the last. The thought crossed my mind: this suit is meant for tall, lean, size-16s, not 5′5″ size-16s. But, I let that thought go, and bought my first bikini.

I took the suit for a test drive at the complex pool last season when I figured that no one would be around. I was pleased.

But the real test came this weekend, at our homeowner’s association pool party. Did I have the nerve to wear my (not so)-itsy-witsy-teeny-weeny black-and-white skirtini in front of all my neighbors? Could I sit in a lounge chair by the pool with 30 other people?

I rarely feel self-conscious around clothes and public settings. If I like how I look, that’s good enough for me. So, I screwed up my courage, put on my cute sarong cover-up, and headed to the pool. My reaction when I arrived really surprised me: I couldn’t bring myself to remove my cover-up.

I had the following dialogue with myself:

Just take off your cover-up and get in the pool.

But, I don’t know if I’m ready to be known by my neighbors as “the fat girl in the bikini?”

Didn’t you make peace with the whole “fat girl” thing a long time ago?

Yes, but, remember what they say on “What Not To Wear”: You may not care what you look like, but the rest of us have to look at you.

Anyone offended by you in a bikini by the pool can avert their eyes. Just take off the sarong and do it.

So, I did. And no one screamed out in disgust or ran in horror.

And how did I look in my bikini?

Curvy me in a bikini, do I dare? I did, and I do.

Thanks to Rachel at The-F-Word.org for her article on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s (CNN) report in Time magazine and on his CNN blog. Gupta reports enthusiastically on the success of the Body Project, an eating disorders prevention program that not only educates women as to the source of “the thin ideal” (marketing messages) but also incorporates “civil disobedience” in its curriculum.

Since 2001, more than 1,000 high school and college students have participated in the Body Project, which works by getting girls to understand how they have been buying into the notion that you have to be thin to be happy or successful. After critiquing the so-called thin ideal by writing essays and role-playing with their peers, participants are directed to come up with and execute small, nonviolent acts. They include slipping notes saying “Love your body the way it is” into dieting books at stores like Borders [and on mirrors in public restrooms] and writing letters to Mattel, makers of the impossibly proportioned Barbie doll.

Gupta remarks that the Body Project is “seeing remarkable progress so far in an area that has seen few if any truly effective programs at all.” What makes this project more effective than most? Studies have shown that media education is not enough ( See the previous post: Media images make us feel bad–and it’s getting worse). Women and girls are more educated than ever about the plastic nature of media images; however, our body dissatisfaction continues to increase. Could it be that the effectiveness of the Body Project is the combination of education and activism?

Knowing that we are daily manipulated by media images can create a feeling of helpless and powerlessness The activism of the Body Project gives the participants a sense of personal power in the battle against external messages.

What I love about this approach is the simplicity–a Post-It note on a mirror is about as easy as it gets. So, I challenge everyone: be a body activist. If you must, begin with your own mirror, and move from there.

I’ve got my Post-Its–mirrors of the world, watch out!

Last weekend, when I was waxing poetic to an activist friend about how I loved the “Sex And The City” movie even more the second viewing than the first (yes, I went to see the movie two days in row), she replied:

Why would you care about the lives of rich, skinny, privileged women who spend $100,000 on shoes?

That’s a great question, and the the reason that I didn’t invite her to see the movie with me. In fact, both times I saw the movie, I went by myself. I am not the “typical” SATC fan (if there is such a thing): I was late coming to the show—I didn’t start watching it until several seasons into the show. I don’t have a gaggle of girlfriends with whom I gathered to gawk and gab about the show (a straight male friend of mind convinced me to give the show a try.) In fact, for many years I felt guilty for enjoying the show—doesn’t this just promote a doubly impossible beauty standard for women of never too thin, never too rich?

However, not only do these wealthy, thin women entertain me, they make me feel powerful and proud. I left the theater thinking, “I’m forty and fabulous, just as I am.” So I have to wonder, can a curvy girl really feel empowered by SATC?

I’ll give my take on the question in my next post.

I just got back from a very early matinée of “Sex and the City” and I loved it!  You have to check all plausibility at the door (but you had to that with the series, to), but the movie is a great love letter to the fans.  I’ll comment on the details later (I do have a couple of boos around body image), but I would like to comment on how fabulous Jennifer Hudson looks.  She rocks the Sex and the City look, and she is not playing the standard “fat friend” in her role.

I’ll take one of every outfit she’s wearing!

From the clothes, to the apartments, to the men, this movie is all about the “female gaze,” or at least one interpretation of that gaze.  I’ll have more on that later, and I’m excited to hear what you think of the movie.

I was watching The View today (ouch!) and the topic of Princess Beatrice and her size “normal” body came up (doesn’t Beatrice look great here!). Everyone on the panel lamented the pitiful state of media images and declared that, as women, we need to quit buying into the whole thing. Then Whoopi quoted a study in which 56% of women reported that they would rather have cancer than be fat. Joy Behar kept commenting on how “sick” that attitude is and how warped our cultural notions are around fat and body image. Yet, in the same breath, she mentioned that she was going to an acupuncturist that same afternoon to try to control her appetite, because if she didn’t quite eating she could get “bigger and bigger.” To her credit, she admitted:

Just because I criticize doesn’t mean I’m not a victim and a perpetrator.

This perfectly illustrates the results of the study in my previous post: even though women are better educated than ever on the myth of the thin ideal, we buy into the message even more so than a decade ago.

You can see the segment in it’s entirety at http://abc.go.com/daytime/theview/index, Hot Topics 5/7 - Healthy Women. (Be patient: the quote above occurs at the end of Part 3.)

If you watch this segment, or if you’ve already seen it, I would love your take on Whoopi’s statement at the end of the topic on body image and dieting. Whoopi is/was the spokesperson for a weight loss program, and her current diet is a regular feature on The View. What did she mean when she said that she didn’t care about her weight until someone talked to her about getting paid? Is she saying that the only reason she diets is for money? I didn’t get it.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw yet another article on the negative impact of media depiction of ultra-thin actresses and models on body image; however,  the findings of  researcher Shelly Grabe and psychology professor Janet Hyde describe a sweeping analysis of 77 previous studies involving more than 15,000 subjects that reveals:

“We’ve demonstrated that it doesn’t matter what the exposure is, whether it’s general TV watching in the evening, or magazines, or ads showing on a computer,” says Grabe. “If the image is appearance-focused and sends a clear message about a woman’s body as an object, then it’s going to affect women.”

The effect also appears to be growing. The researchers’ analysis reveals that, on average, studies conducted in the 2000s show a larger influence of the media on women’s body image than do those from the 1990s, says Grabe.

“This suggests that despite all our efforts to teach women and girls to be savvy about the media and have healthy body practices, the media’s effect on how much they internalize the thin ideal is getting stronger,” she says.

In the past several years, I’ve been excited to see media consumers becoming more educated as  to how to deconstruct media messages and media images.  Dove has deconstructed images of beauty–Tyra Banks has pulled the curtain back on modeling.  Sadly, even though we know that the images that we see are not only unrealistic, but that often they are unreal, we are still impacted.

Or, let me change the “we” to “I”–I know that these images are plastic and manipulated, but I still feel the gut punch of the current standard of beauty.  Sometimes I find the mental and emotional fight to be exhausting.  But, I refuse to give up.  I want to love my body, to embrace my beauty, to be grateful to my body for allowing me to enjoy the fullness of life.

[Quote Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008, May 12). Sweeping Analysis Of Research Reinforces Strong Media Influence On Women's Body Image. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 25, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/05/080512163828.htm]