When I was a teenager, Cosmo Girl! used to pluck kids hanging around on the street outside our school for photo shoots. A few girls got complete makeovers. I got called pear shaped in a magazine with Eminem on the cover. The pear is a noble fruit, but I think I more resemble a banana that’s been chewed on by a bat.
Wow! Just wow! Women’s Health editor-in-chief Amy Keller Laird announced this week that the magazine is replacing words like “shrink” and “diet” with words like “toned,” “strong” and “sexy” on their covers. They’re also entirely getting rid of the infamous women’s magazine coverlines “Bikini Body” and “Drop Two Sizes.”
It's that time of the year again (in the Northern Hemisphere at least). It's the time when everyone begins to realize that the sleet and the snow are going to end and people will actually want to wear swimsuits. In tandem, it seems like every site on the internet (or sign on the street) is telling you the right way to…
If you read tabloids or ladymags, pay attention to advertising campaigns, or happen to live on planet Earth, you know that the one thing women are supposed to strive for — more than a functioning body, a healthy body, or a strong body — is a bikini body.
One brave woman strikes a blow against the most absurd phrase of our time: "The bikini body is not supposed to be naturally occurring...it is a quasi-religious state of myth and artifice to which only the truly virtuous can aspire:"
![Are You Kidding Me With This Shit, Jenny McCarthy? [Updated]](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--KfFdpV-p--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_180,q_80,w_320/v6ex2orcgh5mbnaab0li.png)
