my body gallery - photographs of women, searchable by height, weight, clothing size, and body type (via youlookfab) [more inside]
posted by flex on Aug 4, 2011 - 104 comments

Love Your Vagina Song (nsfw) "...starring over 25 names submitted to the loveyourvagina poll, which asked women from across the world what they call theirs. You gave us 14,000 different names, and there are still more coming in every day!" (via copyranter)
posted by madamjujujive on Jun 28, 2011 - 47 comments

Last year, Marie Claire magazine made headlines by employing a plus-sized fashion columnist, Ashley Falcon, whose blog “Big Girl In A Skinny World” was proudly advertised as “proof that fashionistas come in all shapes and sizes.” Yesterday, a different Marie Claire blogger attacked the new CBS show “Mike & Molly” for featuring overweight characters. Her post received more than a thousand angry comments and the magazine reportedly received over 28,000 emails, prompting an apology from the blogger and a defensive response from the Editor in Chief. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Oct 27, 2010 - 273 comments

Milanese businesswomen Lorella Zanardo made a short documentary critiquing the sexist depictions of women on Italian television. That documentary - Il corpo delle donne (Women's Bodies) - is available to watch online (with subtitles) here.
posted by stinkycheese on Dec 15, 2009 - 27 comments

Illustrated BMI Categories, a Flickr project where you can see what "underweight," "normal," "overweight," "obese," and "morbidly obese," BMI categories look like on real people (safe for work) (mostly women). I think that many people would be surprised by what 180lbs looks like. In addition to not looking what you might have expected fat to look like, it may also not mean what you thought it meant: [more inside]
posted by Salamandrous on Oct 3, 2007 - 182 comments

The Century Project (not suitable for work) 'is a series of nude photographs accompanied by highly personal and moving statements by women whose lives span 100 years. The words and pictures combine to form a powerful statement about body image, society's portrayal of women in the media, sexuality, pornography, and women's health issues. For some, this is pretty controversial stuff...yet the simple fact that women have invited me (a man) to exhibit and speak in Churches (3 times!) and on the campuses of Colleges and Universities, by itself speaks volumes about the way in which Century has been received, and what it's value has been ... '
'Life is at its fullest at 94.' - Mary.
posted by plep on Apr 6, 2003 - 23 comments

Seven of every ten women appearing as centrefold models in Playboy magazine during the past 20 years are clinically underweight "Given the perception of Playboy centrefolds as culturally ideal women, the notion that 70% of them are underweight highlights the social pressure on women to be thin and helps to explain the high levels of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating," "It's not just a case of models getting skinnier, but also that the numbers of overweight and obese people have gone through the roof in recent years."
posted by lagado on Dec 11, 2000 - 21 comments