Wait, is offbeat Botox a thing?
I’m nearing 40, and while I think aging is pretty cool, and like how I look these days (I’m in better shape than I was in my 20s!)… I don’t like the furrows between my eyebrows. It’s less that they make me look old… and more that they make me look mad! I got a Groupon for Botox and decided I wanted to try it. Afterwards, I told my husband and he got really upset…
Caroline Rothstein on feminism and bikini waxes
…Yet here I am, month in and month out, dropping my pants for a stranger, letting her slide hot, green, organic wax along my vulva, around my labia, and across my lower abdomen with a thick, pale wooden popsicle stick just so I can feel “clean.” How can I subject a part of my body with such a complicated narrative to this hedonistic ritual and still call myself a feminist?
Wild and crazy: A curly hair journey to acceptance
My hair is, and always has been, curly. Unruly, wild curls. Frizzy, big curls. Messy. My hair didn’t grow down, my hair grew out. Nothing cascaded down my back except sweat in the summer. My hair wouldn’t hold a barrette and it had an aversion to combs. It wasn’t as beautiful as an afro or tight enough to control. It was just crazy. Somewhere around college and after, I stopped fighting my hair. I got tired of hating it. Correction: I didn’t have enough time to hate it. And my entire opinion on my hair changed.
5 strategies for responding to or preventing body shaming
Let’s talk about how to deal when our loved ones participate in body shaming, either of themselves or of others. What do you do when you are determined to be positive about yourself and love your body, but the others around you bad-talk their own bodies or those of others?
I’m proud of my stretch marks: body confidence after having two kids
Thanks to my son, I’ve now got a better understanding of who I am and why I should be proud of it. You won’t hear me tell my boys that I’m fat, or unhappy with my body because I’ve truly learned the value of self image. I still watch what I eat and exercise, but it’s not to change my physical self. It’s to stay fit and healthy so I can keep up with these boys.
I was fat-shamed at an Afro-Centric Pregnancy Fair
The other day, I got fat-shamed. When you get fat-shamed often, like every time you turn on a television, it takes a lot to make an impact. My husband, Chris, and I went to our city’s second annual Afro-Centric Pregnancy Fair in Portland, Oregon. I had high hopes of being in a supportive environment of people who care about the unique challenges facing black women as they enter pregnancy, childbirth, and childbearing. I fantasized about talking with midwives, doulas, and new mothers about their amazing experiences and horror stories of hospitals, birth centers, and their living rooms. Instead, I got a major dressing down by a black doctor manning an information table for a clinic.
I’m still performing burlesque at almost eight-months pregnant
We had a wildly successful show this past weekend, the club was packed and the crowd was very enthusiastic and responsive, which was fantastic. I’d spent the last month wavering between being very excited about my two solos, and being very scared about how exposed I was going to be up there. Normally when I perform, I leave a waist cincher on because body issues.
Why I love every inch of my stretch marks
I have obsessed about my weight since I was eleven. I’m not going to get into all of the years of disordered eating and self-loathing in this post, but when I look back on photos of myself, I can’t believe I thought there was anything wrong with me. I was a fox — long, lean, lithe, and curvy in just the right places. I could shimmy into tons of really cute clothes, and heads would turn. These days, you could describe me as “pillowy” rather than “willowy.”