How to get the perfect body in ONE step
I’m writing this because I just can’t anymore. But, actually you know what, I CAN even, and I need to say it…
Your body as you are experiencing it right now, even in your off white underwear and tank top possibly covered in a delicate layer of Doritos dust, is a feat of evolutionary wonderment. Your heart (I require you to place your hand on your chest right now) that heart, that dull thud you’re experiencing right this second, well that dull thud, according to Google, that precious organ began thumping its little chant for you a day after your the condom broke and your parents thought it was fine. A day. One day! That heart has been rooting for you since before your eyeballs existed. That beautiful little blood chucking muscle was been “thub-thubbing” for you since before your mama even knew you were there. It predates your brain. Love it. Mind it. Feel it. Trust it.
As for the rest of you, you have bones to support you, a brain making you “you,” muscles to kick ass left, right, and centre, eyes to see, and a voice — a voice that needs to be heard more. Heard louder and stronger than ever. Why?
Because there is a multibillion dollar industry ($445 billion to be exact) out there making bank from telling you that your body is not enough and by association that you are not enough. And we are buying it.
Frankly, fuck that.
World making you feel old? Here’s why I’m not letting it
Did you happen to see this 60th birthday boudoir shoot we posted recently? It’s deliciously sexy and makes age seem irrelevant, so much so that it sent a couple of our staff members into look-inward-mode about aging. It was a tiny reminder that age is just a number and you don’t have to succumb to those being-old tropes if you don’t want to. For me, it was a reminder that we don’t have to pre-age ourselves (AND especially not have it thrust upon us by our peers).
I hate my nickname and just can’t shake it
My name is Catherine. I was named after my maternal grandmother who went by “Kitty.” When my mother was looking to nickname me as a baby (since I guess that’s what you do with more formal names?), she settled on “Cathy” since she felt that something like “Cate” was too weird. And Cathy stuck. Forever. Despite my first attempt to change it back at the age of eight and the many (many) attempts after. I just can’t shake this name that I don’t like and with which I don’t identify…
Sustainability isn’t always sustainable: Environmental thoughts from an eco poser
I wake up one day feeling like Captain Planet, and the next I’m considering buying paper plates for dinner. I know I’m not alone. It’s the same mechanism by which any serious yet non-immediate threat gets pulverized in the gears of our everyday lives.
There will always be a sizable part of our psyche that we just can’t convince to give a shit about something until it’s pounding on our door. And I think there’s an especially large, entirely intersectional number of us doing this with the environment.
Defying gender binaries with Alok Vaid-Menon — a gender non-conforming writer, performer, & fashion icon
Alok feels that the concepts of masculinity and femininity shouldn’t have relevance in this day and age. “We need to be much more colorful, expansive, and precise about what we mean rather than defaulting into ideological catchalls that do more harm than good,” he tells me.
Being that Alok is a person of color, I wonder if they feel that ethnicity/race ties into the equation in a meaningful way. Their reply is so profound that I’m still sort of reeling from it…
I’m a loud and proud hedonist. Here’s why you should be too…
Hedonists are labeled as greedy pleasure-seekers with no moral compass. But that’s such an archaic stereotype! In fact, the Church’s Seven Deadly Sins (lust, pride, sloth, greed, envy, wrath, gluttony) are basic human feelings that, as a hedonist, I feel we shouldn’t be shamed for.
What people totally get wrong about you when you’re a private person
I envy anyone who is able to open up to acquaintances and sometimes even strangers about their personal lives. When shit goes down in their lives, you’ll hear about it, and there seems to be something really freeing about that. I wouldn’t know as I’m one of those super private people who needs a subpoena to get anything out of me.
The problem is, if you don’t talk about your life, people will assume some pretty off-base things about you. Here’s what I’ve found that people will totally get wrong about you when you’re a private person…
Stomping out transmysogynoir: An interview with badass black trans femme Brielle Nicole
To understand the transgender/queer experience more (and learn how I can help to be more of an ally!), I reached out to badass black, trans femme Brielle Nicole for an interview.
She’s a millennial living in New York City, and she was kind enough to talk with me about how she stays strong in a world that politicizes her very existence…