Ragen Chastain

A "fat tax" is an additional fee that is charged to fat patrons by services like pedicurists, spas, even massage therapists. Sometimes it even goes beyond a tax to complete exclusion.

People are using #TheySaid to tell their stories of experiencing body shaming. Sally Bergesen kicked things off by talking about her own memory of body shaming, and hundreds of Twitter responses echoed her story.

One has to wonder what they would have done if they had been trying to do it with a “mean spirit.”

The fact that fat people are so thoroughly and constantly lied to by diet culture, and so profoundly oppressed by fatphobia, that they would submit themselves to this is not a justification for it. But that isn’t stopping J.D. Roth, the show’s creator. Not satisfied with exploiting fat people once, he is launching a new show called The Big Fat Truth in which he’ll bring back six former contestants for another round of exploitation, false promises, and weight cycling.

With celebrities suggesting that people eliminate entire food groups in the name of “cleansing” and/or “eating clean," Dr. Jessen comments: “I’ve had many, many patients, so many of them teenagers, convinced that their healthy lifestyle and their clean-eating regime was really helping them when actually all it was doing was helping them hide their increasingly disordered eating and to cover up an underlying eating disorder.”

Welcome to the resolutions flame out. It’s not so much that your resolutions crashed and burned, it’s more like they just never got off the ground in the first place. But there is hope. We can right this ride.

So this new line by Forever 21 goes up to “3X” which they’ve defined as a size 18. Forever 21 may be better than some in terms of carrying larger sizes, and they may want to “celebrate fashion for all sizes,” but let’s be clear that they aren’t even close to creating fashion for all sizes.

In case there are people who need to be told this (and there shouldn’t be) fat shaming kids is never, ever ok. And it does not lead to healthier kids.

A recent article claimed there are certain behaviors that gynecologists don't like in their patients. Here are some myths debunked about your trip to the gyno and some tips on when to fire them!

For many white people, our first reaction to hearing about racism is to immediately look for a reason to say “That’s not racist!” That said, in conversations I’ve had where people are struggling with this, they have asked for specific ways to work through this. So if you find yourself in this situation, here are some steps that you can take yourself through.