James' World 2

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A few years ago, it seemed like the trajectory of body diversity and inclusivity could only continue going upward. Across several major industries—particularly fashion, beauty, entertainment, and music—we witnessed an incredible surge of representation for bodies of all sizes, skin tones, gender expressions, ages, and abilities. Plus-size models walked top designers’ runways! Disabled models starred in luxury campaigns! Trans models showed up on billboards—and not just in the month of June! Finally, it seemed the industries that long felt like the exclusionary gatekeepers of the “ideal body” now seemed to welcome all bodies, reflecting their diverse consumer bases.

Then, came the backlash—or, perhaps more accurately, a quiet retreat back into the beauty standards of the ‘90s and ‘00s. As low-rise jeans and Y2K fashion made their comebacks, so returned the ultra-thin ideal. As journalist Gianluca Russo noted in September 2022 for The Zoe Report, plus-size representation in New York Fashion Week has seen a razor-sharp decline. And, despite the Fenty effect leading to an industry-wide expectation of base makeup to have 40- and 50-shade ranges, Black models continue to experience discrimination on sets, with many still bringing their own foundations and concealers just in case the makeup artist’s case doesn’t carry the right colors for their skin tones. In 2023, another major shift arrived: The releases of Ozempic and similar treatments marked revolutionary developments and supported the long-held stance of many medical professionals and advocates that obesity is a matter of biology, not willpower—sparked frenzied responses, from debate and confusion to corporate pivoting.

None of these are easy or simple conversations. They all contribute to a larger dialogue that many activists, academics, writers, and regular folks have carried on, despite it seeing fewer headlines nowadays. We’ve brought together several stories by writers exploring the complexities of these issues, and shed light on their less-discussed elements. Now, the only question: How will you participate in the body-inclusivity conversation?

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What body is perfect

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The changes garnered attention — Discord was going mainstream, tech analysts said — but they papered over the reality that the app remained vulnerable to bad actors, and a privacy-first approach left the company in the dark about much of what took place in its chatrooms.

Into that void stepped Jack Teixeira, the young Air National Guard member from Massachusetts who allegedly exploited Discord’s lack of oversight and content moderation to share top-secret intelligence documents for more than a year.

As the covid pandemic locked them down at home, Teixeira and a group of followers spent their days in a tightknit chat server that he eventually controlled. What began as a place to hang out while playing first-person-shooter games, laugh at gory videos and trade vile memes became something else entirely — the scene of one of the most damaging leaks of classified national security secrets in years.

Discord executives say no one ever reported to them that Teixeira was sharing classified material on the platform. It is not possible, added John Redgrave, Discord’s vice president of trust and safety, for the company to identify what is or isn’t classified. When Discord became aware of Teixeira’s alleged leaking, staff moved “as fast as humanly possible” to assess the scope of what had happened and identify the leaker.

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(Illustration by Lucy Naland/The Washington Post; Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Discord screenshots; Unsplash; iStock)

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A few years ago, it seemed like the trajectory of body diversity and inclusivity could only continue going upward. Across several major industries—particularly fashion, beauty, entertainment, and music—we witnessed an incredible surge of representation for bodies of all sizes, skin tones, gender expressions, ages, and abilities. Plus-size models walked top designers’ runways! Disabled models starred in luxury campaigns! Trans models showed up on billboards—and not just in the month of June! Finally, it seemed the industries that long felt like the exclusionary gatekeepers of the “ideal body” now seemed to welcome all bodies, reflecting their diverse consumer bases.

Then, came the backlash—or, perhaps more accurately, a quiet retreat back into the beauty standards of the ‘90s and ‘00s. As low-rise jeans and Y2K fashion made their comebacks, so returned the ultra-thin ideal. As journalist Gianluca Russo noted in September 2022 for The Zoe Report, plus-size representation in New York Fashion Week has seen a razor-sharp decline. And, despite the Fenty effect leading to an industry-wide expectation of base makeup to have 40- and 50-shade ranges, Black models continue to experience discrimination on sets, with many still bringing their own foundations and concealers just in case the makeup artist’s case doesn’t carry the right colors for their skin tones. In 2023, another major shift arrived: The releases of Ozempic and similar treatments marked revolutionary developments and supported the long-held stance of many medical professionals and advocates that obesity is a matter of biology, not willpower—sparked frenzied responses, from debate and confusion to corporate pivoting.

None of these are easy or simple conversations. They all contribute to a larger dialogue that many activists, academics, writers, and regular folks have carried on, despite it seeing fewer headlines nowadays. We’ve brought together several stories by writers exploring the complexities of these issues, and shed light on their less-discussed elements. Now, the only question: How will you participate in the body-inclusivity conversation?

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What body is perfect

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Click the link below for the article:

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On 26 February 2015, Cates Holderness, a BuzzFeed community manager, posted a picture of a dress, captioned: ‘There’s a lot of debate on Tumblr about this right now, and we need to settle it.’ The post was accompanied by a poll that racked up millions of votes in a matter of days. About two-thirds of people saw the dress as white and gold. The rest, as blue and black. The comments section was filled with bewildered calls to ‘go check your eyes’ and all-caps accusations of trolling.

Vision scientists were quick to point out that the difference in appearance had to do with the ambiguity of ambient light in the photograph. If the visual system resolved the photograph as being taken indoors with its warmer light, the dress would appear blue and black; if outdoors, white and gold. That spring, the annual Vision Sciences Society conference had a live demo of the actual dress (blue and black, for the record) lit in different ways to demonstrate the way the difference of ambient light shifted its appearance. But none of this explains why the visual systems of different people would automatically infer different ambient light (one predictive factor seems to be a person’s typical wake-up time: night owls have more exposure to warmer, indoor light).

Whatever the full explanation turns out to be, it is remarkable that this type of genuine difference in visual appearance could elude us so completely. Until #TheDress went viral, no one, not even vision scientists, had any idea that these specific discrepancies in color appearance existed. This is all the more remarkable considering how easy it is to establish this difference. In the case of #TheDress, it’s as easy as asking ‘What colors do you see?’ If we could be oblivious to such an easy-to-measure difference in subjective experience, how many other such differences might there be that can be discovered if only we know where to look and which questions to ask?

Take the case of Blake Ross, the co-creator of the Firefox web browser. For the first three decades of his life, Ross assumed his subjective experience was typical. After all, why wouldn’t he? Then he read a popular science story about people who do not have visual imagery. While most people can, without much effort, form vivid images in their ‘mind’s eye’, others cannot – a condition that has been documented since the 1800s but only recently named: aphantasia. Ross learned from the article that he himself had aphantasia. His reaction was memorable: ‘Imagine your phone buzzes with breaking news: WASHINGTON SCIENTISTS DISCOVER TAIL-LESS MAN. Well, then, what are you?’

Ross went on to ask his friends about what it’s like for them when they imagine various things, quickly realizing that, just as he took his lack of imagery as a fact of the human condition, they similarly took their presence of visual imagery as a given. ‘I have never visualized anything in my entire life,’ Ross wrote in Vox in 2016. ‘I can’t “see” my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom, or the run I went on 10 minutes ago… I’m 30 years old, and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamn mind.’

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Photo by Christopher Anderson/Magnum

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Click the link below for the article:

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Click the link below the picture

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A few years ago, it seemed like the trajectory of body diversity and inclusivity could only continue going upward. Across several major industries—particularly fashion, beauty, entertainment, and music—we witnessed an incredible surge of representation for bodies of all sizes, skin tones, gender expressions, ages, and abilities. Plus-size models walked top designers’ runways! Disabled models starred in luxury campaigns! Trans models showed up on billboards—and not just in the month of June! Finally, it seemed the industries that long felt like the exclusionary gatekeepers of the “ideal body” now seemed to welcome all bodies, reflecting their diverse consumer bases.

Then, came the backlash—or, perhaps more accurately, a quiet retreat back into the beauty standards of the ‘90s and ‘00s. As low-rise jeans and Y2K fashion made their comebacks, so returned the ultra-thin ideal. As journalist Gianluca Russo noted in September 2022 for The Zoe Report, plus-size representation in New York Fashion Week has seen a razor-sharp decline. And, despite the Fenty effect leading to an industry-wide expectation of base makeup to have 40- and 50-shade ranges, Black models continue to experience discrimination on sets, with many still bringing their own foundations and concealers just in case the makeup artist’s case doesn’t carry the right colors for their skin tones. In 2023, another major shift arrived: The releases of Ozempic and similar treatments marked revolutionary developments and supported the long-held stance of many medical professionals and advocates that obesity is a matter of biology, not willpower—sparked frenzied responses, from debate and confusion to corporate pivoting.

None of these are easy or simple conversations. They all contribute to a larger dialogue that many activists, academics, writers, and regular folks have carried on, despite it seeing fewer headlines nowadays. We’ve brought together several stories by writers exploring the complexities of these issues, and shed light on their less-discussed elements. Now, the only question: How will you participate in the body-inclusivity conversation?

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What body is perfect

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Click the link below for the article:

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I have absolutely no idea what makes Vincenzo a good cat. It’s a fact I keep to myself when I meet his owner, Donna Dzurishin, at the Garden State Cat Expo in New Jersey in mid-July. At one of the biggest cat shows in the country, my ignorance puts me in the minority. Plus, Donna’s got that warm kind of energy that almost compels you to hug her — it’s not clear if you need it, she needs it, or maybe you both do. You definitely can’t hug Vincenzo or any of the cats competing. The first rule of the cat show is that you don’t touch the cats (unless you ask first, and, as I come to learn, are prepared to be turned down).

Vincenzo is a solid black Persian — a black cat dusted in gray, with a long fluffy tail and round copper eyes that are hard to make out amid all the fur. People sometimes tell Donna, who has long black hair, that they look alike. Her daughter makes fun of her for it. Vincenzo is an “absolutely beautiful boy,” per Donna, and her first show cat — they’ve only been competing since February. There’s been a learning curve in navigating the show circuit, not to mention Vincenzo’s high-maintenance grooming routine, which rivals that of a Kardashian. “I’m obsessive-compulsive, so I put everything into it,” Donna says.

The idea that someone — let alone hundreds of people — would put their cat into a contest is foreign to me. I cannot fathom caring about ranking cats or undertaking the apparent effort being put in here. Why one cat might be “better” than the next is a mystery.

Donna describes what it is that makes Vincenzo special — his stocky body, his short legs, his nice round head. “Did you see him?” she asks. I don’t want to admit that the visual isn’t helping much in terms of my personal comprehension. Our conversation is cut short because the pair have been called to the ring. Donna pulls a nonplussed Vincenzo from his tent, fluffs him up as best she can, and hurries off. I wish her luck but then decide to follow — in the ring she’s headed to, Vincenzo is in the running for best cat, and I may as well see what happens.

As we walk over, Donna’s friend pulls me aside. She tells me Donna’s husband passed away recently, and cat shows have given her new life. The stakes suddenly feel high.

I am not a cat person. Whenever friends ask why I don’t have one — after all, I am a single woman in her 30s — my response is always the same: There’s too big a risk your cat hates you. Cat owners’ stories are basically, “Oh my God, you won’t believe what Fluffy just did! So cute!” And then they tell you about something objectively destructive and, occasionally, gross. Even if your cat likes you, it’s sometimes distant and perhaps kind of an asshole — most cats are. It’s not a bad thing, really. (See: Grumpy Cat, a cultural icon.) They’re semi-wild animals we have as pets, which is a whole separate, complicated issue on its own. The main expectation you can have of a cat is that you can’t have a lot of expectations.

Cats are the ones that got themselves into this situation in the first place, historically speaking. They’ve been living with humans for 4,000 years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians, who deeply admired them, and probably even earlier. (In the Middle Ages, they were associated with witches and devilry, so ancient times were probably a much better era to be a cat.)

Unlike other pets, cats are self-domesticated, because humans — and their crops and grains and food — attract rodents. Cats figured out that where there are people, there are rats and mice, so they started hanging around. They came to America as furry little colonists, on ships.

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Mary Kirkpatrick for Vox

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Click the link below for the article:

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A few years ago, it seemed like the trajectory of body diversity and inclusivity could only continue going upward. Across several major industries—particularly fashion, beauty, entertainment, and music—we witnessed an incredible surge of representation for bodies of all sizes, skin tones, gender expressions, ages, and abilities. Plus-size models walked top designers’ runways! Disabled models starred in luxury campaigns! Trans models showed up on billboards—and not just in the month of June! Finally, it seemed the industries that long felt like the exclusionary gatekeepers of the “ideal body” now seemed to welcome all bodies, reflecting their diverse consumer bases.

Then, came the backlash—or, perhaps more accurately, a quiet retreat back into the beauty standards of the ‘90s and ‘00s. As low-rise jeans and Y2K fashion made their comebacks, so returned the ultra-thin ideal. As journalist Gianluca Russo noted in September 2022 for The Zoe Report, plus-size representation in New York Fashion Week has seen a razor-sharp decline. And, despite the Fenty effect leading to an industry-wide expectation of base makeup to have 40- and 50-shade ranges, Black models continue to experience discrimination on sets, with many still bringing their own foundations and concealers just in case the makeup artist’s case doesn’t carry the right colors for their skin tones. In 2023, another major shift arrived: The releases of Ozempic and similar treatments marked revolutionary developments and supported the long-held stance of many medical professionals and advocates that obesity is a matter of biology, not willpower—sparked frenzied responses, from debate and confusion to corporate pivoting.

None of these are easy or simple conversations. They all contribute to a larger dialogue that many activists, academics, writers, and regular folks have carried on, despite it seeing fewer headlines nowadays. We’ve brought together several stories by writers exploring the complexities of these issues, and shed light on their less-discussed elements. Now, the only question: How will you participate in the body-inclusivity conversation?

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What body is perfect

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Click the link below for the article:

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Unwanted food comments don’t just come from family and friends; they often come from coworkers as well. Whether you’re working remotely or in-person, food comments can pop up during meetings or in casual conversations. “We don’t know why someone is eating the foods they eat. It could be related to their culture, a medical condition, or because they are in recovery [from an eating disorder],” says Zariel Grullón, RDN, CDN, registered dietitian at Your Latina Nutritionist.

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Although people don’t usually have bad intentions when they make unwanted food comments, they can cause real harm, especially for those recovering from chronic dieting or disordered eating. If you’re the one being triggered by food comments at work, it can be overwhelming to set boundaries with coworkers. It may feel awkward or uncomfortable, but there are ways to address these unwelcome comments. We spoke with a dietitian and therapist specializing in eating disorders and disordered eating to share their top tips for coping with triggering food comments from coworkers.

Remember unwanted food comments aren’t facts

When we hear diet-centric comments about food, it can trigger disordered thoughts or behaviors. The media is one of the biggest perpetrators of these comments. Social media is especially tough since it’s full of so-called nutritionists who have received little to no training in nutrition science.

Remember that your coworkers are also victims of diet culture. They hear the same misinformation in the media, and they may internalize it. So, when you hear triggering food comments, Allyson Inez Ford, LPCC, an eating disorder therapist, recommends reminding yourself that just because someone believes something doesn’t make it accurate. “They are speaking from diet and wellness culture misinformation, which we are all surrounded by, unfortunately,” Food says, “and while it is triggering, it is not based on facts; therefore, it’s not something you should take in as your personal truth.”

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Photo: Getty Images/ Hinterhaus Productions

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https://www.wellandgood.com

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A few years ago, it seemed like the trajectory of body diversity and inclusivity could only continue going upward. Across several major industries—particularly fashion, beauty, entertainment, and music—we witnessed an incredible surge of representation for bodies of all sizes, skin tones, gender expressions, ages, and abilities. Plus-size models walked top designers’ runways! Disabled models starred in luxury campaigns! Trans models showed up on billboards—and not just in the month of June! Finally, it seemed the industries that long felt like the exclusionary gatekeepers of the “ideal body” now seemed to welcome all bodies, reflecting their diverse consumer bases.

Then, came the backlash—or, perhaps more accurately, a quiet retreat back into the beauty standards of the ‘90s and ‘00s. As low-rise jeans and Y2K fashion made their comebacks, so returned the ultra-thin ideal. As journalist Gianluca Russo noted in September 2022 for The Zoe Report, plus-size representation in New York Fashion Week has seen a razor-sharp decline. And, despite the Fenty effect leading to an industry-wide expectation of base makeup to have 40- and 50-shade ranges, Black models continue to experience discrimination on sets, with many still bringing their own foundations and concealers just in case the makeup artist’s case doesn’t carry the right colors for their skin tones. In 2023, another major shift arrived: The releases of Ozempic and similar treatments marked revolutionary developments and supported the long-held stance of many medical professionals and advocates that obesity is a matter of biology, not willpower—sparked frenzied responses, from debate and confusion to corporate pivoting.

None of these are easy or simple conversations. They all contribute to a larger dialogue that many activists, academics, writers, and regular folks have carried on, despite it seeing fewer headlines nowadays. We’ve brought together several stories by writers exploring the complexities of these issues, and shed light on their less-discussed elements. Now, the only question: How will you participate in the body-inclusivity conversation?

.

What body is perfect

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.

Click the link below for the article:

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__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

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Ramy Youssef has spent the last several months of 2023 on a global stand-up tour, which is ending its U. S. leg just as he hits the big screen in one of the buzziest films of the year, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. It’s a movie, and a performance, that will change the way people talk about him. In between stand-up dates, Esquire photographed the 32-year-old in New York, wearing this winter’s smartest overcoats. Then we asked his close friend and collaborator, The Bear creator Christopher Storer, to have a series of conversations with him and send us the recordings. Storer is a producer and director on Youssef’s award- winning Hulu show, Ramy, and Youssef is the only person other than Storer and his co-showrunner, Joanna Calo, who has directed an episode (episode 4, “Honeydew,” which takes place in Copenhagen) of The Bear, also on Hulu. Their first attempt at sending us a tape failed. Thankfully, these two very creative men persevered. What you’ll find here are two conversations that happened in Chicago in October—one in the back of an Uber, the other backstage at Youssef’s show—combined, edited, and condensed for clarity. —the Editors

Ramy Youssef: Hold it like you’re interviewing me. That’s it. The mic’s up here in the top.

Christopher Storer: What do I press?

RY: Nothing. It’s rolling right now.

CS: Hi, buddy. This is take two. Yesterday was a tech fail, or a Chris fail.

RY: You can’t get Chris to do a tech thing. He’s a great director, but he doesn’t touch any of the buttons.

CS: Sorry, Esquire. So, we’re in Chicago, in an Uber, on our way back from Ramy’s show.

RY: What did you think of it?

CS: I thought it was great, dude. Tell me about your routine before a show.

RY: I start in the hotel. I light my incense. Pray, breathe, call my parents. Always got to call the parents before the show.

RY: You got to because you’re going to make fun of them at the show. You have to tell them, “Hey, I might say a few things tonight. Are you okay with it?” And then they’ll say, “Will you show it to us?” And then I say no. And then they say, “Okay, have fun.”

CS: I feel like I should apologize to chefs who have told me stories that end up somewhere in The Bear: “I’m sorry your trauma’s coming back up.”

RY: You got to apologize to chefs. I got to apologize to my family.

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Click the link below for the article:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a45855816/ramy-youssef-poor-things-christopher-store-conversation/?utm_source=pocket_discover

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