Beauty, Epilogue

This article fits somewhere in my musings about beauty, body image, food, and what religious traditions that espouse fasting teach young devotees. It doesn't really provide any answers, just a picture of people living with these issues. And maybe that's enough for now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christian Bleeding Hearts?

Given my great fondness for books and propensity for writing up lengthy reviews or responses, taking some time to blog a response to Half the Sky really was inevitable. Nicholas Kristof holds the distinction of being one of three living human beings I'm in love with (the other two being Barbara Kingsolver and Michelle Obama- I get along much better with dead people for some reason), so I'd anticipated this book all summer. It didn't disappoint. Kristof and WuDunn make their points about brutality without being excessively graphic, making this a book I can recommend to others (unlike, say Sunday at the Pool in Kigali ). It's hard to imagine the amount of work that went into this book. Lots of first person interviews and a massive amount of time spent in the library. End notes are respectable, and do a decent job of pointing readers to primary sources. Personally, I had one issue with the end notes- the authors state that studies that evaluate the efficacy of abstinen...
Read more

Pearls

I wore pearls for my grandmother's funeral. Not the strand she'd given me, it wasn't the right length for my shirt. But I wore pearls nonetheless, and pearl studs in my ears. I will always associate pearls with my grandmother...perhaps partly because of her June birthday, but always because of her classic, polished beauty. Before my grandfather died almost a year ago, he requested that Galatians 5:22-23 be read at his funeral: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." My uncle, likely at my grandmother's request, asked me to choose the scripture reading for hers. My selection was Proverbs 31:25-31: "Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her ch...
Read more

Why Contraception?

Since the question's been raised, and because contraception takes up significantly more of my time and energy than most peoples', we'll talk. Because it should be said- I am fully aware that my ability to study, travel, write and advocate is contingent upon fact that I, as an educated western woman have complete and total control of my fertility and how my sexuality is expressed. I'm willing to acknowledge my bias and admit that if I lived in another place or time I might be a different person and feel differently, but I'm incredibly grateful to be a woman in the United States in the twenty-first century. With that disclaimer- Why do I believe contraception is so incredibly important? 1) 68,000 women per year die from complications of unsafe abortions. 2) 536,000 women per year -approximately 1 per minute-die of pregnancy complications and childbirth (90% of these are in Africa and Asia). 3) Globally, 50% of pregnancies are unplanned and 25% are unwanted. (All st...
Read more