Like most other industries, the world of fashion is woefully homogenous, a place where diversity is often conflated with fetishization, and can merely become a fashion trend instead of something real and lasting. When it comes to Fashion Week, the runways are dominated by white bodies. Well, things may finally have…
Gabourey Sidibe is a goddamn national treasure. Whether she’s reclaiming “Becky” on Empire, doling out the best clapbacks on Twitter, stumping for Covergirl, or modeling lingerie, she’s out here killing the game. She’s got a memoir, This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare coming out in May, and she just landed the…
Earlier this week, the January issue of British Vogue hit the stands, featuring gorgeous cover model Ashley Graham.
My social media accounts are bleeding red. A practicing Catholic, I have many friends and acquaintances who are voting Republican this year, in order to secure at least one conservative Supreme Court judge, and possibly even overturn Roe v. Wade. A Donald Trump vote, they say, would save millions of babies from…
When you’re pregnant, you experience a number of physiological changes no one ever tells you about (presumably because if they did, you’d never have sex again). No one tells you, for instance, that when you’re pregnant, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll have recurrent urinary tract infections because the growing…
Anna thought she had finally found an endocrinologist who could treat her.
SAN FRANCISCO—Bathed in the glow of a pink light, Maria Palacios rolled her wheelchair to stage right and announced to a crowd of nearly 200 people, “I’ll never forget the first time I masturbated.”
Canadian conceptual artist Annelies Hofmeyr is on a bloody mission.
Thea Eigo is the exact kind of teen who could have benefited from comprehensive, evidence-based sex education at her Phoenix high school. In the months leading up to the class, the 16-year-old was questioning her sexuality. She was curious about hooking up with both girls and boys. And she was desperate for…
My vagina came with an instruction manual.
Susan had a choice: Wait two weeks for her unborn child to grow to viability while risking dire health consequences herself or have a late-term abortion. With her kidneys failing and her blood pressure soaring, her husband implored her to save her own life. The baby—a boy—was not developed enough to survive. So she…
We tend to hear the same advice for living long and healthy lives over and over again: Eat well, exercise, don't smoke. But you know what we don't often hear? "Hey, you might consider moving to North Dakota." That's because most people don't realize that the state in which we live can, in fact, significantly impact…
There is arguably no person more important to the history of women's sexual health and education than Margaret Sanger. Without her, we would not have the term "birth control," and we would not have Planned Parenthood, the organization that has saved the lives of countless women throughout its storied and oftentimes…
In the fall of my senior year of college, there was a rash of unrelated student deaths on my Chicago campus. One girl died of leukemia. Another, a bike accident. Another, an infection that went septic. All of these girls died within a two-week span, and at the end of that span, a strong conviction had rooted itself in…
"You have herpes" may be three of the most dreaded words in the English language. Getting diagnosed can feel catastrophic, as phrases like "no cure" and "it's forever" flash through the mind. Yes, herpes is one of the most stigmatized STIs out there, with too many people assuming a diagnosis means one is promiscuous,…
“You’re so real,” a vapid housewife tells Katie Otto (Katy Mixon) moments after she admits to wearing a pizza-stained sweater backwards. That “real” was clearly a very back-handed compliment from the woman’s tone, but Katie’s voiceover unpacks the subtext for us anyway: “'You’re so real’ is Westport mommy code for you…
Next month Gilmore Girls will debut on Netflix in a highly anticipated revival, which means one thing: Lorelei and Rory are back and they'll no doubt be drinking their weight in coffee. (Who knows, maybe Lorelei will finally get that coffee-dispensing IV she always dreamed about.)
This summer was the season of marriage for my group of friends. Practically every one of us tied the knot, and I had the honor of standing up in several weddings. But when I saw the photos from one of my best friend’s nuptials, I winced as I looked at our group shots. There, in the row of bridesmaids, is me—sticking…
People gain weight for a variety of reasons: genetics, illness, too much fried food, lack of exercise, and yes, the monster that is stress. Researchers have been warning us for years that chronic stress can lead to extra pounds on the scale. But according to a new study, it's not just our own stress that can…
It’s no secret that the fashion industry has a plus-size problem: Any time a model larger than a sample size appears in a magazine or on a runway, it’s considered news. And these newsworthy moments are few and far between. While looking for an explanation for this phenomenon, it’s easy to blame sizeist designers for…
