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As promised, here are the quotes I collected for the body image project I have been working on.  Feel free to add more in the comments if you know of any good ones that I missed.  Also, some of these are repeats of previous quick quotes, so don’t be surprised if you experience a little deja vu here and there.

“More than ever now, I believe it’s so important to look as real and true to life as possible, because nobody’s perfect. I seem to be on a mission, but I don’t want the next generation, your daughters and mine, growing up thinking that you have to be thin to look beautiful in certain clothes. It’s terrifying right now. It’s out of control. It’s beyond out of control.”

- Kate Winslet (shoutouts to Emily at Jukebox Heroines)

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“For me, it might sound cliché, but beauty for me really does start on the inside. It’s like a state of mind, a state of love if you will. Then, whatever you can do on the outside is all like a bonus.”

- Queen Latifah

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“’Real Women Have Curves’ was a breakthrough for me, because it was tailored for who I was at a specific period in time. It said that there are different body types that are beautiful. I think that opened so many doors for me and gave all women a boost of confidence.”

- America Ferrera

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“I was never mocked, and I was always able to defend myself by joking around. But sometimes it has been painful and it has hurt my feelings. I cannot ignore the whole world, but I want to accept the way that I am and I don’t want to change. Life is too short for that!”

- Beth Ditto

More after the jump

It’s like Lady Gaga is doing something new and fabulous every time I turn my computer on.  I love it.

“Everyone has that… phone call of, “Oh my gosh, you won’t believe what I did last night. I was so stupid I didn’t use a condom,” and there’s all this laughter on the phone… I’ve gotten those phone calls, and it’s our job as friends to one another to say, “I don’t know why you’re laughing because it’s very serious. I really don’t feel there’s enough women who are educated about AIDS, how quickly it’s spreading, how dangerous it really is, how many people really have it, and we want to do good jobs as women who represent a sexual community and a strong independent group.”

For reals.  Too.  Cool.  I love how she’s using her fame to get important social messages across, and how she’s blowing everyone away in the process.  It’s like people thought pop stars couldn’t use their brains on their own.  Let’s shake it up!

More on their campaign at MAC Cosmetics, and additional coverage from Jezebel.

“There’s a direct connection between a woman’s ability to plan her family, space her pregnancies, and give birth safely, and her ability to get an education, work outside the home, support her family, and participate fully in the life of her community.

When a girl becomes a mother before she becomes literate, when a woman gives birth alone and is left with a permanent disability, when a mother toils daily to feed her large family but cannot convince her husband to agree to contraception, these struggles represent suffering that can and should be avoided. They represent potential that goes unfulfilled. And they also represent an opportunity to extend critical help to women worldwide and the children who depend on them.

Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do.”

- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
Remarks on the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development

Full transcript here via Jezebel.

In case Kellog’s message about doctors and nurses wasn’t clear, check out these toys:

Remember, boys use blue medical equipment and are called “doctors,” while girls use pink medical equipment and are called “nurses.”  Other combinations of equipment and/or titles are not allowed.

Check out the full post at Sociological Images.

Here’s wishing you all a safe and happy new year! If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check out the Smart Girl Guide to New Year’s Eve over at Shelby Knox’s blog (remember her from The Education of Shelby Knox).

Some highlights to remember are:

Make your resolutions. Decide before you head out for the night how far you’re willing to go with your partner. Is the kiss at midnight enough or are you ready to head back to someone’s house for more? It’s easier to stick to decisions you’ve made before alcohol and the spirit of the night carries you away.

Map out your party before you head out and decide early where you’ll be waking up in 2010. If you plan to hop from bash to bash, make sure you leave each location with the same crew you arrived with. Never leave a friend (or even a friend and her date) alone at a party. Keep in touch by text to see when people are ready to move on – and be careful about posting your movements on Facebook and to your Twitter feed.

If you’re going to drink, don’t be stupid – make sure you have a designated driver or chip in for a group cab. The same rules you use at a frat party apply tenfold on New Year’s Eve: don’t accept a drink from anyone you don’t know and never leave it unattended.

Be safe out there!

“With each decade I’ve enjoyed a fuller feeling of womanliness. I’m healthy, busy and happy. I’ve nothing to complain about. And I like my body now. I have more curves. They come from age, but I don’t care. I’m just glad they’re there.”

- Sigourney Weaver

The following stats from the Center for Disease Control’s latest report are pretty sick (emphasis mine):

• 1.2 million cases of chlamydia were reported in 2008, up from 1.1 million in 2007.  Nearly 337,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported.
• Adolescent girls 15 to 19 years had the most chlamydia and gonorrhea cases of any age group at 409,531.
• Blacks (12% of the U.S. pop.) accounted for about 71% of reported gonorrhea cases and almost half of all chlamydia and syphilis cases in 2008.  Black women 15 to 19 had the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea.
• 13,500 syphilis cases were reported in 2008, an almost 18% increase from 2007.  63% of syphilis cases were among men who have sex with men. Syphilis rates among women increased 36% from 2007 to 2008.
• 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year, almost half among 15- to 24-year-olds.

And this includes nothing about rates of other diseases or unplanned pregnancy rates.  What is going on with sexual and reproductive health in the US?  We’re so busy getting riled up about the Stupid Stupak amendment (as well we should) that we continue to ignore the issues of comprehensive sex ed and funding for reproductive health service provides, such as Planned Parenthood, which in my humble opinion are preventative solutions to these increasing numbers.

1. She values health for health’s sake, not for beauty’s sake.

“Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.”

2. She believes in the importance of identity.

“One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.”

3. She understands the difficulty inherent in being a working mother…

“The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor…and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare…even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids…even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn’t be this difficult to raise healthy families.”

4. …and what that “personal is political” phrase is all about.

“Policies that support families aren’t political issues.  They’re personal.  They’re the causes I carry with me every single day.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Education of Shelby Knox is a fantastic glimpse into the battles high school students are forced to fight in order to receive comprehensive sexual education in an “abstinence only” education system.  Even more, the documentary lets us into Shelby’s world as she figureheads the battle from the dinner table to city hall, trying to understand how her spirituality fits along the way.

Shelby isn’t happy with her school’s abstinence only policy of sex education.  Her city of Lubbock, Texas has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the country, but no one is willing to face the problem.  Through the Lubbock Youth Commission, Shelby and her colleagues fight for comprehensive education, until political pressure threatens to shut the commission down.  Shelby bounces back from defeat after defeat after defeat, eventually resigning from the commission, which has given up its goal of improving sex ed in school and refused to join forces with a GLBT movement fighting for similar freedom in the school.  Although her conservative parents don’t understand Shelby’s passion for these liberal causes, they do their best to support her throughout the film.

What touched me the most in watching The Education of Shelby Knox were Shelby’s conversations with pastor Ed Ainsworth.  “Sex Ed” preaches that college students have sex “like dogs,” that STDs can be spread through handshakes, and that condoms are ineffective in protecting against venereal diseases – in short, that sex is dirty and good Christians don’t have it, nerts to everyone else.  Shelby participates in a (creepy) True Love Waits ceremony with her parents, conducted by Ed, and has this decision thrown back in her face time and time again.  Shelby is clear that regardless of her commitment to wait, she believes her peers have the right to make informed decisions about their own sexuality.

I can identify with Shelby’s struggle to balance her beliefs about accepting, loving, and caring for others rather than judging and condemning them as her faith so often tells her to do.  Throughout high school I regularly butted heads with my youth pastor about issues of “tolerance” and the incongruence of liberal and Christian beliefs.  Shelby refuses to be shamed by powerful men in her community, such as her pastor and school superintendent, and holds her head high as she continues to fight for causes her community would rather not even hear about.  I’m of the mind that Jesus wouldn’t want us to choose between caring for each other and following him, but I have to trust that living a life that’s meaning comes from helping others will have to be good enough to get me where I need to go, even if churches and church leaders can’t understand it.

To find out what Shelby is up to know, follow her personal blog!

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