body image

Love Your Body! (NOW)

Women and girls spend billions of dollars every year on cosmetics, fashion, magazines and diet aids. These industries can't use negative images to sell their products without our assistance. Together, we can fight back.

Eating Disorders and Pregnancy

Folks who have or have had eating disorders have a unique set of challenges when it comes to pregnancy. In this article, we’ll explore some of these challenges, offer up some considerations if you’re pregnant and have struggled or do currently struggle with disordered eating, and provide some ways to find support.

The Confidence of Fat Sexuality: An interview with sex educator Elle Chase

With her book Curvy Girl Sex: 101 Body-Positive Positions to Empower Your Sex Life (Fair Winds Press, 2017) Elle Chase gave us a guide for methods, positions and sex hacks for fat lovers with a range of different body types, centering all kinds of people who have long had their sexuality marginalized, denied or erased. In a conversation with Scarleteen, Chase talks about the book, how the media is changing its portrayal of fat people, the relevance of the word “plus size,” and her personal experiences with her own body acceptance and sexual journey.

Late Bloomer: A Guide To Orgasm After Rape

When my assault happened, I was stunted in my sexual exploration, and I had no choice but to start anew. I’ve learned it will always be an ongoing battle for me, but a possible feat. Scarleteen readers confronting a comparable situation should know there’s hope for you too. Reclaiming our right to pleasure combats apathy by demonstrating our capacity to enjoy again. While we can’t reverse rape, recovery begins when we remember we have alternatives.

Getting to Know Your “New Normal”: Tips for Sex When You Have Pelvic Pain

It can be incredibly frustrating when a part of the body we strongly associate with, and expect to give us, pleasure ends up causing us chronic pain. If you have chronic pelvic pain, what do you do if you want to get sexual with yourself or someone else? How can you be physically intimate if you’re in pain? How do you talk to your partners? If it starts hurting, should you stop? This guide from Nicole Guappone offers some great help with all this and more.

A Manifesto on Pleasure and Self-Love for We With an STI

Despite the initial shame, guilt, name-calling, jokes, and fear related to disclosure, my STI presented me with a chance to love myself more deeply. It gave me a chance to sit with myself, who I thought myself to be, who I thought I was going to become, and who I really was.

How to Reconnect With Your Body In Spite of the Impact of White Supremacy

We've all been influenced and impacted by white supremacy for longer than anyone alive can recall. Throughout history, white supremacy has idealized and normalized dominant identities and behaviors, and has shamed and oppressed those outside of them. Here's some ways this has manifested in our bodies and some ways you can start to dismantle that impact and reconnect.

Sexuality in Color: Of Queens and Bs

Hey, hey, hey, it’s Chanté, back this week to continue the convo about sexuality and intersectionality. This week, I want to revisit a little basic terminology I brought up last time.

Making My Hair Mine

My adoptive mom’s hangups convinced me I was an ugly duckling with noticeable imperfections. Turns out, it was about her, not me, and certainly not about my hair, which isn't the enemy she -- or I -- thought it was, either.