This week's three posts all explore a similar topic — being comfortable in one's own body — yet diverge on that theme in markedly different ways.

Bikini Body

This, friends, is a cultural phenomenon that confounds me. In Los Angeles specifically, and the whole of America more generally, we are confronted again and again with the universal understanding that women need to be ashamed of wanting to eat food.

Whiny Baby's blog title may be tongue-in-cheek, but her observation of the feminine relationship to food is astute and real. Women should be the ones to consume food, she argues, instead of letting our own anxieties and fears about food consume us. Reading her post made us ponder the ways women are encouraged to let insecurity guide their eating habits, and the ways these very insecurities are grown and cultivated by our society.

Traveling to Guatemala

This is my first time traveling as Jamie. My new passport says Jamie, my driver's license says Jamie, my credit cards say Jamie, my tickets say Jamie. Donna even says Jamie 95% of the time. Last year when we went to India, I went as Amy.

On A Boy And Her Dog, Jamie writes about preparing to visit a new and unfamiliar place while inhabiting a gender identity that is also raw and uncertain. As the title of Jamie's blog might show, this writer prefers not to commit to particular pronouns. But when Jamie travels, people assign their own pronouns to feel more comfortable. Here, Jamie reflects on how visiting new places influences your internal identity.

Metamorphosis (Or: Apparently My Body is Missing?)

Our bodies are constantly undergoing minute changes, but the processes of pregnancy and childbirth wreak such hurried transformations – it's like watching one of those time lapse nature videos of seeds sprouting and flowering, while the sun skims repeatedly across the sky, marking days like seconds. Only instead of a seed, it's my own body expanding and unfurling before my eyes.

Expensive advertising campaigns are designed to make women believe that their postpartum bodies are something to be ashamed of. Mama Unabridged, however, regards her new body without judgement, but instead with awe at how it has transformed to best fit this new stage in her life. Left to its own biology, her body did what it needed to do to survive. The post is about Mama making peace with herself, even as her sense of self adjusts to a new body.

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