Six weeks before my Bat Mitzvah, I went with my mom to a family friend who knew how to sew to have my dress taken out. I had fallen in love with suit dress — with its beautiful navy color, satin detailing, pearl buttons and bolero jacket — but as a 180 pound, 5’2” almost-13…
Lionsgate Publicity // Jennifer Lawrence as “The Hunger Games’” Katniss Everdeen Over at the Atlantic, Julianne Ross has a piece about the predominance of scrawny women in young-adult fiction. From “The Hunger Games” to “Divergent,” a new wave of popular books features skinny girls acting tough. “It seems literature only goes so far in its…
This past summer was the first time I can remember — maybe since childhood — where I didn’t have to wear spandex, shorts, Spanx, tights or some other thigh-chaff-resistant garment. I’ve naturally lost weight since winter, about a pant size or two. Now, each time I wear a dress or skirt, I leave my apartment…
I’ve already blogged here at the Sisterhood about my childhood proclivity for Disney Princesses. Perhaps it won’t surprise you, then, that I was also an unabashed doll player. Barbies, paper dolls, American Girl dolls, Madame Alexander. You name it; I played it. Guided by the imaginations of a few close friends sitting together on someone’s…
Once, I went to a job interview on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a fancy office building. On my way out, I noticed a Weight Watchers office on the same floor. I was so provoked by yet another message that people should be skinny — that if you are skinny, you are in…
Joyce Burnick has a problem with Michelle Obama. It’s her arms. As she recently put it in the New York Times style section: “The first lady has made it unacceptable for women to appear in public with covered arms… Not all women are blessed with the first lady’s workout discipline or genetic gifts. That is…
In the style world, there has been a lot of talk lately of a possible return to “curvy,” or “womanly,” figures on the runway. In The New York Times, for example, fashion critic Cathy Horyn wrote the following about a recent Marc Jacobs show: But to me, this collection wasn’t as much about returning to…
Gabi’s post was my first exposure to the “menstrual slap.” But now I’m kind of wishing that I’d been thwacked by my mother, too. It’s not actually the slap I’m after, rather, at 12 or 13 I would have benefited from making a direct connection between being a woman and being a Jew. Rather than…
100% of profits support our journalism
