By Kate Fridkis

It is not totally rare that I am moved to tears, but this time it was for a good reason. I was standing in a sleek little gallery on the Lower East Side, music beating in the background, as I looked at an enormous photograph of a little black girl holding the image of a white model’s face over her own. The colors were vivid, almost intense, but simple. The girls skinny legs and arms jutted. She was sitting, clutching the other face against her own. It had been torn from a magazine. It was a makeup ad. The girl was a Ugandan orphan. I wanted to peek under her mask and see her real face, but she wouldn’t let me.

The photographer was Gloria Baker Feinstein. She was in the city for her exhibit. She’s spent a lot of time in Uganda, and she established a non-profit for some of the amazing orphaned children she met and grew close to there (their art was also on display at the gallery). She also took a bunch of pictures of women eating cake, after reading this blog. And they are amazing. And they are amazing.*

But anyway—I met Gloria in person for the first time, and she was wearing a leather jacket and being unassuming and quietly awesome and badass, and her photos made me cry.

And then that one, the one of the girl holding the pale face up to cover her own, dark one, made me suddenly think of this Op-Ed I read in the New York Times the other day. One that keeps bothering me. One that I don’t know how to talk about because it is by a black woman, talking about black women, and I am a pale, Jewish woman who is probably not fit to comment.

But I can’t help it. I’m commenting.

By Tara Fannon

The cheap shots just keep coming and a popular target these days is Hillary Clinton. All the talk of a possible 2016 presidential campaign is sending her opponents into a frenzy. As if being called too unattractive to be in the public wasn't enough now she's accused of being incapable of holding a conversation let alone office because of a tumble she took some years ago. Republican father-figure Karl Rove and America's angriest rich guy Rush Limbaugh have been spinning tales about the state of Clinton's health amidst demanding that she address rumors of a sustained brain injury. To add insult to 'alleged' injury, Clinton's recent People magazine cover has become fodder for media speculation about her aging body and apparent need for a walker. Oh, and there's more. Thanks to Drudge Report there was some pretty unforgiving online images of Clinton's head photoshopped onto the body of a visibly old, half naked woman à la 16^th century oil painting style. The lady-berating doesn't end there.

I wore braces to be more like them

to be better

I went to normal schools

because I was normal

I was asked to deny this movement

because this movement wasn't effective enough

By: Lena Twichell

I never thought I’d be the girl that needed a guy to tell her she’s beautiful. To make her feel socially capable. To clarify that she’s a good person. That she’s worth knowing. I also never thought that I had an eating disorder. I truly believed that my agonizing, insurmountable battle against food came as a side effect of womanhood. The never-ending diet, the extreme guilt of a binge. It all made my feel like I was hanging off the edge with my knuckles turning white.

Freshman year was a roller coaster of the highest highs and the lowest lows I had ever experienced. Each moment allowed me to discover more and more of who I was, and I loved the girl that was emerging. The struggle made me stronger. But an element of self-doubt also made itself a home in my inner dialogue, proving to be a new and unanticipated stumbling block as I wandered through my new environment.

Then there was you.

By: Lena Twichell

DEAR FRESHMAN SELF-

Get help now. Please don’t wait for the traumatic experience that’s coming to make you realize you how far gone you are. Don’t wait for the screaming and the crying and the sense of purposeless to realize that you have stopped feeling. Feeling anything but the fixation. The obsession.

Right now, as you take your first steps on this campus, you have the traits ingrained in you, the habits and cravings, control and coping mechanisms. You will reach for them consciously and unconsciously. The thinking has already infiltrated your daily thoughts. But for the time being, you also have somewhat of a separateness from it. You and it have not become one and the same. Don’t wait. Don’t wait for the day two years from now-- you couldn’t stop thinking about how uncomfortable you felt in your goddamn bikini, and how hard you were going to run when you got back to the gym-- when then that sound pierced the air.

By Emily Ladau

When the clock struck midnight and the calendar turned to 2014, I made myself a promise. The next twelve months of my life would be different. At the start of each New Year prior, I had resolved to lose weight, to get healthier, to look better. Then, I’d find myself in a mess of self-despair every time I felt like I failed. Having grown tired of this mindset and tired of beating myself up, it occurred to me that I needed to change my approach, and so my resolution for 2014 would be to focus on self-acceptance. 

By Abigail C. Saguy

Gender scholars have long criticized the fashion media for glorifying emaciation and contributing to body-image and eating problems. However, they have been relatively quiet about how medical science and news reporting may contribute to the very same problems. This is surprising given a long tradition of feminist critiques of medical authority in other areas. What’s Wrong with Fat? fills this gap by examining how medical research, public health campaigns, and news reports contribute to a “cult of thinness.”

Indeed, the United States, we are told, is facing an obesity epidemic – a “battle of the bulge” of not just national, but global proportions – that requires drastic and immediate action. Experts in the media, medical science, and government alike are scrambling to find answers. What or who is responsible for this crisis, and what can we do to stop it?

Dear mom,

As a young child, I could barely go a day without brushing your weathered fingers against my cheeks or wrapping your perfumed scarves across my dainty shoulders. You made the overwhelming scent of Elizabeth Arden Red Door seem elegant and refined. You go, mom.

It's hard to imagine that I've spent the last 12 years —half of my life— without you. There are still some nights when I mistake the swift turn of a doorknob for your arrival. I can still picture you, with your tired eyes and impossibly heavy handbag, walking through the front door like nothing ever changed.