Posts tagged Body Image
Expert of Your Body: Author on Claiming Agency For Yourself, Your Work and Your Life

Call someone a genius and it’s a lofty compliment. But Sarah Ruhl, prolific playwright, poet and author, is officially a genius, as a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award, as well as two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

The author of Smile: The Story of A Face, was on stage at the Chicago Humanities Festival recently, speaking with her friend and colleague, Jessica Thebus, artist and Director of the Northwestern University MFA Program.

They discussed the gendered agency and ownership of your own body as a woman, as a human, and as someone who loses control of its ability to move and to respond as intended in the workplace and in the world.

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So Can Barbie Get a Different Car Now?

Sheryl Sandberg, Beyonce, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Malala Youafzai have all been on the cover of TIME Magazine. Barbie made her own breakthrough as a cover girl this week, looking more like women many of us know—or perhaps see in the mirror. At 57, Barbie is no longer just the thin “bad role model” type with her feet perpetually poised for high heels. She’s curvy, petite or tall and has a range of skin shades and hair types.

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Serena's Bigger Victory

Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” At a time when we, as Americans, should be celebrating Serena Williams’s Wimbledon victory, we are reading and talking about her body. We are comparing her body shape and size to other women in the sport. We are printing articles about what Williams, herself, has said to criticize her own body in the past. And, as we continue to beat the topic and perfect the art of comparison, we are robbing her, as well as anyone else who follows, of the opportunity for joy. The joy of sweet victory.

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Rugby Women Remind Us That Strength is Beauty

For any avid athlete who’s tried a million and two sports, you know the pain and strife of a changing body that you have next to no control over.

I rode horses for seven years and played water polo for two, meaning that I felt I had the thighs of a lumberjack. I was constantly evading the mirrors, and if I did look, I almost never liked what I saw.

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