Excellent way to start my day. :)

Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

Would love to know if you have any advice to these women specifically or to the rest of us watching the fracas. I've been thinking of re-reading Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, in honor of these events... This is one Amazon review that starts strong: "A scathing satire of an image-conscious society..."

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Great post, Lisa. I laughed through it. Earmuffs are now on my shopping list.

;) XICANISTA
xicanista.blogspot.com
http://www.ericarios.com/

We have got to stop disconnecting from women. We see Brittany as not connected to us. But she is. She is a woman and whatever brush they use to paint her good, bad or indifferent, they will use to paint you too. The "they" being spin doctors, market researchers, unenlightened women--who's self worth is directly tied to their titts and ass. We have to get clear and honest about our message and our image and what we are handing to the next generation of girls becoming women.

Love,
Babz
www.lovebabz.blogspot.com

But power is pretty scary... So we have to be patient with each other and sooner or later we'll take off that mother's hood we hide behind and discover how to come together without losing ourselves.

Empathy for Brittney, not judgement: She's not "fat," she's struggling . . . But when we don't know how to give it words, we fall back on that fat stuff . . .

Coco Kraft
Blog: Coco Kraft and the Village Elders
http://cocovillage.blogspot.com/2007/09/today-it-was-total-shoe-meltdown...

Sister Kraft,
With all due respect, as long as we refuse to call this what it is; as long as we let this stuff go on so that we can live our lives un affected, because they are not saying these things about us...personally. I say as Frederick Douglas said, Power concedes nothing, it never has, it never will People want crops without rain. We absolutely do know the words to say. But we choke because each of us has to deal with our own self image, we have deal with the fact that we each try to reach that illusive standard that God knows who set. And if Brittany falls then its because she is weak and fat. We don't fall back on fat stuff we race toward it. Because as the study shows middles school girls would rather die than be fat. Where do they get that stuff? Yes that is part of the problem. Not owning our part in this. We are the problem. And that my friend is the rub. I have faith in women and someday we will grow tired of this rollercoaster and will claim what the universe has been waiting for us to do. Move women and girls to a place where being healthy replaces being thin. Being healthy becomes the goal and if need be becomes the new sexy. I don't have time to be patient I am raising daughters who I fear may think their worth lies in their asses pointed up and their lips pointed out. I have sons who may value physical beauty over intellectual substance--and may not think that the two can exist. If you don't believe this is awake up call to women, then God help us all.
Love,
Babz

I'm still reeling from the news that they pulled a feeding babe off Facebook. For what? Being hungry?

Genevieve blogs at
reeling and writhing
and
library sputnik

I'd posted this on a very similar (the same?) post here http://www.blogher.com/so-britney-america-ferrera-and-lactivist-walk-bar.

Maybe instead of taping advice onto our mirrors we should tape up pictures of real women - women with curves and wrinkles. Non-Photoshopped women. And maybe we should stop buying those magazines that Photoshop women to their skeleton.

Perhaps as well as taping these images to our mirrors, we should add them to Facebook too. We could start up a 'This is how women really look' Facebook group, or similar. I'm just saying Facebook because of the lactivist thing.

I did a search trying to find writing about womens' image and couldn't find anything apart from the odd blog post and a couple of small websites about 'real women'. Someone else might know of something, or there is some scope there to start something.

As for self-image advice? If you have self-confidence and self-esteem then image doesn't really matter.

I know it's hard to build those two things and I wish I could take my own advice.

Jen at Semantically driven and Safari suit

I took on Bill Maher last night.

Piece on Bill Maherl

Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain

Hmm, try this

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-kotecki-vest/bill-maher-can-suck-my-t...

Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain

Sisters
Listen, I am all for challenging the status quo. But there are some folks that are beyond the help needed to get them functioning in the world. What he says is not so important. Yes it is insulting and stupid; the real deal is what we know to be true. And yes he has an audience; but I say we have an audience too. and I believe there are more breastfeeding mamas in the world than not. Later for him and those that think he is witty. What your breast produces is more prescious than any mineral mined by mindless men. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

Love,
Babz
www.lovebabz.blogspot.com
my journey. my life.

that's a feat! Awesome post. I'm fired up.

The fact that women are so hard on their bodies, and that the inherent miracle of a woman's body---its ability to grow and nurture a new life---is denigrated by society brings me to tears. It brings me to tears, brings me to anger, and brings me to action. It brings me to my life purpose, which is helping women love and accept their bodies, and themselves.

I believe that learning to love and accept our bodies is one of the greatest issues facing women today: I have yet to meet a woman who is unaffected by body image "stuff." And while body bashing manifests as a physical issue, I believe that it is, at its core, a spiritual one: a drive for perfection, rooted in a fear of unworthiness. Bashing our bodies for being imperfect -- fat, flabby, wrinkled, grey, stretch marked -- isn't really about our bodies. We see ourselves as imperfect, and therefore, unacceptable. Our bodies, because they're the part of ourselves that is most visible to the world, are simply the most convenient scapegoat: the outer target of our inner critic.

My husband, playing devil's advocate, asked me an interesting question the other day: Who cares if women love their bodies? Why does it matter? Granted, this comes from a person who has never struggled with food or body issues, and as a man, his body hasn't endured the scrutiny of my own. But his question is a good one: Why does it matter?

Here's why it matters: Body hatred affects everyone around us, not just ourselves. It trickles down in insidious ways: seven year old girls who think they need to lose weight, or teens whose focus is not on figuring out what they want to do with their lives, but rather on how they can emulate the latest celebrity. Yes, those are direct consequences of our collective body bashing. Every 3rd grader on a diet? That's my fault, and yours.

But body hatred also trickles down like this: You're bitchy and irritable (often because you're on a diet, and hungry) or you're sad and depressed (your self esteem is shot since you gained fifteen pounds) so you snap at your daughter, overreacting. Or you gossip about your thin, beautiful neighbor, because you're jealous of her ease with her body. Or you refrain from going to a job interview because you're scared: you don't feel confident enough in your appearance to go.

Body bashing keeps us stuck. It keeps us anxious, and unconfident, believing we're never good enough. It keeps us stressed, where everything is a possible trigger: magazines, TV shows, parties, holidays, family get-togethers. We exhaust ourselves with comparisons: comparing our bodies to other women's'; comparing our bodies to our own (If only I could look like I did ten years/twenty pounds ago.)

Loving our bodies matters because we can't hate our bodies and love ourselves. We are holistic creatures. We are comprised of body, mind, and spirit. They are not as separate as we might think: what we think about one part of ourselves seeps into the others.

But, even more importantly, here's why body acceptance matters: I can't be the woman, mother, wife, daughter, friend, or person I wish to be if I am consumed with thoughts about my body. You can't be the woman, mother, wife, daughter, friend, or person you wish to be if you are consumed with thoughts about your body. Multiply this factor by the millions of women who dislike their bodies---and according to recent surveys by Dove, it's nearly all of us---and what do you have? Generations of women who are trapped; their dreams, passions and deepest desires on hold; women who are unable to offer their talents to a world that needs their help.

Ladies, the world needs our healing. If you think the world would be a better place if more women ran it, think about how we could run it if we devoted all the time, energy, and money we devote towards fixing our bodies into fixing the world.

I remember my personal epiphany: I had just turned 30, and realized that I had spent the last decade trying to regain the super-skinny body I had as a bulimic 19 year old. I thought that if only I ate really, really healthy food, I could have that skinny body again. Nope. The only way I could be that skinny again was if I starved myself, which I wasn't willing to do.

So I surrendered. I released my body war. I prayed and asked God to remove my desire to be skinny. And I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed. My transformation didn't occur overnight. Like everyone, I am a work in progress. But that step was the first in reclaiming my life: releasing the shackles that kept me trapped, imprisoned by the false belief that life would begin once I finally lost ten pounds.

Now I am free and clear to do the work that I was born to do: encouraging women. I am free and clear to connect with women, my children, my family and with the world. I am free and clear to dive into myself, to be the best me that I can be, without fear; to love and accept all parts of myself, without judgment.

Learning to love our bodies is serious business. Its effects are profound, and far reaching. It may be some of the most important work that you do. It is some of the most important work that I have done.

Love your body; change your life. Love your body; change the world.

Love your body: it matters.

Karly Randolph Pitman
karlyp@firstourselves.com
www.firstourselves.com