On the Emmy Awards red carpet on Sunday night, Lena Dunham wore a teal floral-print Prada gown and Claire Danes showed up in Armani. One's sartorial choice was panned, the other's lauded. Challenge: write about either woman's appearance without inducing knee jerk accusations of bodysnarking/thin shaming. YOU CAN'T DO… » 9/25/13 2:20pm 9/25/13 2:20pm

Conventional wisdom (or, as the Internet Kids call it, Rule 34) suggests that for everything innocent and nonsexual that exists, there is a porn version of that thing. Everything. The Flintstones, Teletubbies, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Everything. I'd like to suggest a corollary to that rule: everything that exists… » 7/30/13 5:30pm 7/30/13 5:30pm

Artist Nickolay Lamm — he of the future fish faced humas and fresh-faced, scary-ass Barbie — got the measurements of an average 19-year-old from the CDC (Center for Disease Control & Prevention) and then made a 3D model and used photoshop to shape her into Barbie's blond as hell image. The result? Skipper on steroids… » 7/03/13 10:00am 7/03/13 10:00am

Have you ever wondered piece of which chick lit clip art best describes your body? Today's Today featured a segment with "world-renowned style expert" Jacqui Stafford, who has come up with a set of new body type descriptors—and rules for how to dress them to make them less hideous—that are very girlie and… » 2/05/13 10:30am 2/05/13 10:30am

Well, maybe it's not your worst flying fear — that probably involves a plane full of babies and fire balls — but it's pretty damn awful. And infuriating. And dehumanizing. I could go on but instead, I'll let an allegedly former TSA agent do it for me. » 12/28/12 9:30am 12/28/12 9:30am

You know how all day, every day we're inundated with images of women with similar body types (thin) and told, "THIS IS PERFECT BE THIS SIZE OR DIE OF A FAT FAT ATTACK." Or, you know, just be thin so clothes will fit right, other people will find you suitable for fucking, and you won't die alone with your rotting… » 11/11/12 8:30pm 11/11/12 8:30pm

Student and blogger Stella Boonshoft experienced an Internet-sized outpouring of love when photographer Brandon Staunton posted a bra-and-panty-clad photo of her on his popular Humans of New York Facebook page. Unfortunately, with the good, comes the ugly, and because she's a woman, there were plenty of comments… » 10/23/12 10:00am 10/23/12 10:00am

For two weeks, the Olympics present the viewing public with a diverse range female body types, many of which will remain unrepresented in future advertising campaigns. Women who compete in the games, argues Time's Sonia Van Gilder Cooke, provide a counterbalance to all those glossy, airbrushed photos of magazine cover… » 8/12/12 2:00pm 8/12/12 2:00pm

Perhaps the best female American shot putter didn't qualify for the Olympic finals, and that's a shame because not only does she hold the American indoor and outdoor records (65 feet, 3.75 inches and 66 feet, 2.5 inches, respectively), she wrote her master's thesis on the physics of shot putting, which means that she… » 8/06/12 11:55pm 8/06/12 11:55pm

This is so much fun: If you enter your height and weight into the amazing gizmo at the BBC's website, you can find out how you measure up in comparison to Olympic athletes. Here on staff at the HQ, we've got a hammer-thrower, a ping-pong champ, a boxer, a diver, and a 100M runner. » 7/31/12 4:15pm 7/31/12 4:15pm

Meanwhile, in the land of our former colonial overlords, the British government has thrown its support behind a guide aimed at helping parents teach their children to be confident and comfortable with their bodies. The guide explains that the so-called perfect body — a hyper-toned, hyper-sexualized fiction — is a… » 6/22/12 10:25am 6/22/12 10:25am

Levi's latest ad campaign is all about how its jeans fit different kinds of bodies. Unfortunately, the company doesn't seem to understand what "different" means. » 2/22/12 10:20am 2/22/12 10:20am

Heidi Klum is never at a loss for cool Halloween costume ideas, but she really outdid herself last night. She'd announced that she was going as a dead body—like one from the Bodies exhibit where they've stripped the skin off so you can really see what's going on inside—and man alive did she deliver. Seeing it in the… » 10/30/11 4:05pm 10/30/11 4:05pm

I've noticed recently that when I run into female friends, especially in groups, that one of the ways women often bond is to enter into a discussion about how we don't like how we look. » 8/12/11 6:30pm 8/12/11 6:30pm

Hell with hemlines — the new barometer of trends is now the ass. And this season, the It Butt belongs to Pippa Middleton. » 8/12/11 5:00pm 8/12/11 5:00pm

My Body Gallery is just like it sounds — a searchable database of (mostly anonymous) photographs of women, tagged with their self-described height, weight, body shape, and dress sizes. "A recent study found that 95% of non-eating disordered women overestimate the size of their hips by 16% and their waists by 25%, yet… » 8/09/11 4:05pm 8/09/11 4:05pm

With the advent of her magazine Jasad (Bodies), Joumana Haddad became a lightning-rod for criticism — and not just from the religious conservatives she challenges. Some see Haddad as a would-be provocateur playing to western media. To others, she's a hero. » 3/28/11 2:37pm 3/28/11 2:37pm

There are certain moments in life that become burned into our consciousness forever, like our first kiss. Well, what about the time a boy (or man) said something to us that murdered our body image? » 12/01/10 1:38pm 12/01/10 1:38pm