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A Healthy Bite: Ellen Pompeo

FitSugar — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:10:26 -0700

"Take a few hours and prepare lunch for the week. On Sundays, I premake everything for salads. I boil a dozen eggs and parboil beets. I chop lettuce, cilantro, scallions and parsley and put it all in Ziploc bags. During the week, I just grab handfuls, add dressing, dump in a can of beans, some goat cheese, and I'm ready to go."

- Ellen Pompeo shows off her post-pregnancy body on the cover of Self's April 2010 issue. The Grey's Anatomy star, now 40, says she weighs 10 pounds more today than before she was pregnant and couldn't be happier.

Trendspotting:Boyfriend Jeans Under $25

FashionWithoutGuilt — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:55:56 -0700

Boyfriend Jeans are definitely a spring trend that will be around for a while. I am a true lover of skinny jeans but the relaxed yet feminine fit of these jeans are a "girl's best friend". We are not just raiding our significant others closet for blazers and white collared shirts but now we can were their jeans. WWWHHOOO!!! (With the voice of Vicky from the Housewives of Orange County). Rolling up the bottom of your jeans and pairing them with your favorite footwear is a great way to keep this trend fun and girly.

Here are some my favorite examples of this trend "done right" courtesy of Chictopia.

I have selected some affordable style of boyfriend jeans under $25.

For more details or to purchase, please click on the items below

Photo Source:Chictopia

AnnaLynne McCord Is Bikini Ready

FitSugar — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:00:23 -0800

AnnaLynne McCord looks like she's ready to hit the beach in Shape's March issue. In the magazine, the 22-year-old 90210 starlet shares with readers her eating and exercising tips. AnnaLynne's advice is really easy to follow and even leaves a little room for indulgence. Her vice? Taco Bell Mexican pizzas. Given her svelte body, the pizzas don't look like they're doing much harm - must be her three-hour hikes through Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles. Here are some of the highlights:

Don't always clean your plate. AnnaLynne has learned to finish eating when she's full, even if there's still food on her plate. It's a technique she learned from her mother, who lost 45 pounds following The Weigh Down Diet. "The author studied the habits of thin people and discovered that when they're done eating, they wrap up their leftovers instead of just finishing whatever they were served."
Make a fitness date with a friend. "With my unpredictable work hours, I rarely have time to exercise and have fun, so my idea of a good workout is to mix them both. I love being outdoors, playing beach tennis, going for runs in the sand, or doing a three-hour hike with my best girlfriend, Mieko."

To see more of AnnaLynne's tips, read more.

Start cooking. Because of her schedule, AnnaLynne doesn't get to cook as much as she wants but takes every opportunity that she can get. Cooking at home is the one way you know you're getting a healthy meal. A dish that Annalynne loves to cook is citrus marinated herb-chicken with spinach and fettuccine."I love this meal because it's simple and ready in 30 minutes."
You don't need to spend money to look good. "When I first moved to L.A., I didn't have a lot of money to join a gym or take classes, so I improvised. My sister and I went to the library and looked over their DVD collection and discovered Neena and Veena, these Egyptian twins who have a whole series of belly dancing routines. We did them all. When you're shaking your booty," she says, "you can't help but feel beautiful and sexy."

More Than Just a Pretty Face and a Curvaceous Bod

FitSugar — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:48:37 -0800

A lot of attention has been paid to Christina Hendricks since she burst onto the scene as secretary Joan Holloway in the hit television drama, Mad Men. Mention her name and the conversation inevitably leads to her silhouette. Christina is often described as a throwback to the days of Marilyn Monroe, and it's easy to see why. Her body type is more Botticelli than waif: it's as if the term "hourglass figure" was conceived just for her. In an industry of skinny, svelte, and sometimes too-thin actresses, people find Christina's look refreshing, real, and downright sexy.

On the cover of this week's New York magazine, the Botticelli comparison gets perpetuated even further. With red hair cascading past her hips, the actress appears semi-nude in a set of pale vintage lingerie. If you were to put a scallop shell behind her, you'd have The Birth of Venus in living color. Despite that legions of fans and many in the media celebrating (though sometimes criticizing) her body, Christina was not feeling the love, and for good reason.

“It kind of hurt my feelings at first,” she admits. “Anytime someone talks about your figure constantly, you get nervous, you get really self-conscious. I was working my butt off on the show, and then all anyone was talking about was my body!”

It's a more than fair reaction from Christina, as any actress ultimately wants her body of work praised, not just her body. What she might not understand is that she has become a symbol of sorts. For the record, she is by no means a big girl. Perhaps we wouldn't have to celebrate (and scrutinize) women like Christina so much if there were more variety among Hollywood starlets.

So let's put the hourglass aside and focus on what's really important - the girl can act, and Christina's portrayal of Joan is heartbreaking, empowering, and infuriating all at once. Besides, when it comes to her body, her weight, her curves, and all the rest, you're not going to get much more from Christina - she is so over discussing it: "It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

Best of 2009: What's Your Favorite Shelter Magazine This Year?

CasaSugar — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:00:57 -0800

This year we said goodbye to Metropolitan Home, Craft, and Domino, three of my favorite shelter magazines, and many that aren't closing shop are still teetering. With shelter magazines folding left and right, this is a tough category, but there's still plenty of great content out there. We did welcome Dwell's new DIY magazine, Make It Yours, and a new, very Domino-esque online shelter mag, Lonny. Tell me, which is your fave?

Did I leave out your favorite shelter mag? Then join our Best of 2009 group in the CasaSugar Community and tell me about it there. And vote on all my Best of 2009 polls now!

What White People Fear

stephley — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:02:22 -0700

By Robert Jensen, YES! Magazine
Posted on March 19, 2010, Printed on March 21, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146040/

In the struggle for racial justice, it’s time to pay more attention to the fears of white people.

In a white-dominated world, that may seem counterintuitive. In the racial arena, what do we white people have to be afraid of?

There are lots of things to fear in this world, of course; race is not the only aspect of life in which people face injustice and inequality. A majority of people of all colors (including working-class and poor whites) struggles economically in a predatory corporate capitalist system, and all women, regardless of race, cope with gender discrimination and the threat of sexual violence in a male-dominated world.

But what fears could white people have as white people?

Understanding the fears behind the racial politics of both conservative and liberal whites can help guide strategy for changing a society in which wealth and well-being are still tied to race. And make no mistake, there is still a racialized gap between white and non-white America on measures of wealth and well-being-income, home ownership, graduation rates, access to health care, infant mortality, etc. In fact, the gap between white and black America on some of these measures is greater today than in the immediate aftermath of the major legislative achievements of the civil rights movement, and on some measures the rate of improvement is so glacial that it will be decades, if not centuries, before we reach equality. The legislative achievements that ended legal apartheid in America were a great victory, but the economic apartheid that remains is a reminder of our failures.

Put bluntly: The United States abolished a formal apartheid system but remains a white-supremacist society. After more than a decade of writing and speaking about these issues, which has sparked lots of feedback from all political angles, here’s what I have concluded about white folks and our fears.

Aren’t We Special?
For conservative white people, the dominant fear is of someday living without the privilege that comes with whiteness. Polite conservatives defend the primacy of “Western civilization.” More reactionary whites are openly racist about the threat that non-white peoples pose to “our way of life.” Both versions defend the existing distribution of wealth and power, even though many of the working-class and poor whites who endorse such views have access to precious little wealth or power. Race is used by white elites today, just as it was in the nation’s formative years, to drive a wedge between people who would otherwise come together to challenge those elites. Divide-and-conquer strategies, it seems, never go out of style.

Liberals are quick to denounce both the thinly veiled and the openly reactionary conservative racism. But what of the fears of liberals? White liberals might reject the very idea that they are afraid, citing their support for diversity and multiculturalism. But my experience suggests that while white liberals reject assertions of white supremacy, many fear the loss of white centrality. They are willing to renounce the idea that white people are superior, as long as they are allowed to live comfortably in a world where white is the norm.

In short, both the conservative and liberal positions are based on the same underlying assertion: “I’m white, and I’m special.” Conservatives are more likely to say it openly, while liberals tend to offer platitudes about racial justice while avoiding the risks required to make good on anti-racist principles.

What remains obscured is the distinctly uncivilized nature that Europeans and European Americans exhibited during their barbarous conquest of much of the world. The inherently fragile sense of white self-importance that emerges from that history is at the core of white fears-at some level, we all know that the truth of the depravity of white supremacy belies claims of white superiority.

In the institutions that adopt the liberal view, diversity is just fine (as long as whites remain in control) and multiculturalism can flourish (as long as white norms remain dominant). Institutions defined by the values and practices rooted in white Europe can open up to non-white people, as long as we white people remain comfortable. In such a white-defined liberal world, “people of color”-abstracted into a single group, erasing the particularity of people-are welcome, even sought after, to prove that we have transcended white supremacy.

Getting Uncomfortable
This analysis of the dynamics of mixed-race settings is hardly original. Non-white people have long recognized that white liberals are happy to engage with folks who aren’t white as long as their white-centric worldview isn’t threatened, and that white groups are happy to have non-white members as long as the power dynamics don’t change.

I observe all this not from some arrogant high ground, but as someone stuck in the same dynamic, struggling to get out. I know that for all my writing and political work on racial justice, I still feel most comfortable in settings where my understanding of the world defines the interaction, no matter the racial composition of the group. Rather than pretend otherwise, I start with that reality and search for ways to move forward.

I have a choice: I can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being white, or I can struggle to be fully human.
A first step for me has been to question the value of the seemingly endless “race dialogues” that are popular in white liberal groups. In the pseudo-therapeutic setting of such dialogues, with more talk about personal healing than about political change, white people are guaranteed that we won’t be forced out of a white-defined world. White-dominated institutions-corporations, nonprofits, universities, government agencies-are happy to sponsor such dialogues, diversity trainings, and multicultural events, precisely because they don’t threaten the fundamental distribution of wealth and power.

I have been involved in many of those events myself, as a facilitator or a participant, and I have learned from them (typically as much from my failures as successes). The most important lesson I take away is that race dialogues are not enough. As long as we stay confined in a safe world that doesn’t challenge power, we guarantee failure-if our goal really is to change the distribution of that power.

There’s no easy recipe for this kind of challenge, but we move in the right direction when we seek out places where we don’t feel comfortable, looking for relationships in which we can help change the dynamic. For me, that means putting myself in situations where I have to face my fear of being seen-or, more accurately, being seen-through-by non-white people. What if I step into those uncomfortable spaces and non-white people see the ways in which I hang onto some sense of my own supremacy/centrality? What if they see the ways in which I haven’t shaken off my racist cultural training?

A desire to confront that fear has led me, over the past year, to organizing efforts with the Workers Defense Project. It’s a local group that advocates for workplace justice for immigrant workers, addressing problems such as wage theft within a larger social justice framework.

This project has forced me to cross lines around race and ethnicity, class, language, and age. The members and staff are predominantly Latina/Latino and working class. They speak Spanish and/or English, while I’m monolingual in English, and the leaders of the group include a number of people who are at least two decades younger than me.

The collaboration between WDP and the Third Coast Activist Resource Center (a predominantly white group to which I belong) to buy and renovate a building for a progressive community center has gone forward with explicit conversations about all these differences and how they affect decision-making. The trust necessary to move forward has been built slowly over time, and I’m aware that the WDP staff and members are watching for signs that we are serious about establishing a truly egalitarian relationship.

As tricky as this Latina/Latino-white collaboration can be, we also recognize that a successful community center with progressive politics cannot leave out African Americans, the third largest racial group in Austin. That means not just casting around for some black people to add to the mix, but engaging in serious discussions with people from that part of the community to find out what kinds of collaborations are needed and possible. Austin is a white-dominated city, but that’s no guarantee that black and Latina/Latino groups will automatically come together; such alliances have to be built as carefully as any other. For us white folks in the mix, our contribution is to use the resources we have to aid in that process-not trying to control it, but also not pretending to be detached.

While there is a lot of dialogue necessary in this work, the dialogue is focused on a common goal: to provide office space for organizers, rehearsal space for artists, meeting space for the community, and a place for people to get to know each other. That common goal doesn’t mean we will naturally, or easily, put aside differences, but it means we all have a tangible stake in our collective success.

My interest in this project flows from moral and political principles-a belief in the dignity of all and the struggle to eliminate hierarchy in all forms. But I would be naïve or dishonest if I pretended that was my only, or even my most powerful, motive. In the end, I have committed to this project out of selfishness-I would like to claim my full humanity before I check out of this world. To do that, I have to move beyond the framework of conservative versus liberal and adopt a truly radical politics.

I have a choice: I can be white-that is, I can refuse to challenge white supremacy or centrality-or I can be a human being. I can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being white, or I can struggle to be fully human. But I can’t do both. Though the work is difficult, the choice for those of us who are white should be easy.

What's Your Favorite Health Magazine?

FitSugar — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:47:34 -0800

To acknowledge the fact that 2009 is coming to an end, I've asked you to share your opinions about your favorite things of the past year, such as your favorite brand of sneakers, the best workout song, and which female celeb has the fittest body. I know you have a lot more to share, so tell me, which healthy magazine tops your list?

The Runaways with Self Magazine

sharpysunshine — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:00:24 -0700

In the ’70s, The Runaways–the first all-girl American rock band–shattered rock ‘n’ roll stereotypes and inspired their peers to follow their dreams. Now, a new era of stars inspires their generation by re-telling an old story. „I don’t think a lot of people know what options the first all-female rock ‘n’ roll band had,“ Kristen Stewart told SELF during an interview in New York earlier this week. „A lot of girls don’t realize there was a time when you couldn’t do something, like you really couldn’t do that [be in a band]–it was unexpected and looked down upon. We’ve grown up thinking we can be happy and do whatever we want, but back in the day, in terms of attitude and being who you are just personally, you used to not be able to be.“ The movie, which focus on the relationship between edgy punk-rocker Joan Jett and Bowie-obsessed Bardot lookalike Cherie Curie, is as much a raw, gritty look at the L.A. rock scene as it is a cautionary coming-of-age tale. As Jett, Kristen Stewart has found an outlet for all the buttoned-up angst of the Twilight franchise–from her jet-black hair to rough voice, she channels the musician’s nervous energy and fierce passion to make her dream a reality to a tee. Dakota Fanning plays her counterpart, the 15-year-old Curie who, after being plucked from the roller-rink crowd, goes from sex kitten to drug addict seemingly overnight. The chemistry between the two actresses is as electric as their eyeliner. So who inspires these stars? „My mom,“ Fanning told us. „She’s my best friend and with me every day from when I started up until now. My mom actually read [the script] first and told me I needed to read it. My parents know this is something I want to do forever, and they understand and support me.“ „I’ve grown up with really strong women, so definitely my mom,“ Stewart agreed. „I haven’t had that many role models, but Joan has become one.“ Having the opportunity to actually work with the real people their characters were based on was also an inspiring experience for both of the actresses. „I guess in a way it’s easier to play characters that are whole and complete, real people,“ said Fanning. „You’re not playing this figure or person that somebody make up. You’re actually doing something real. But at the same time, when you know a person, everything changes your perception of it. But as long as they feel real to you, it doesn’t matter if they are or not.“ But singing in front of those „real people“? “It was never something that was easy,“ Stewart told us. „You don’t know if you can do something until you do it, and we don’t rehearse a whole lot so it didn’t feel real until it really was the real deal. When we did ‘Cherry Bomb,’ I couldn’t bring myself to hold the guitar right. Joan was there and I thought she was mad at me or something and thinking oh my god, you did horrible. And then it ended up being great.“ As for Fanning, „You have the responsibility of singing like Cherie Curie, singing a song like ‘Cherry Bomb’ that’s so iconic to so many people. It was completely intimidating!“ Last night, The Runaways stars–including Stewart, Fanning, Jett, Curie, Michael Shannon, Riley Keough, director Floria Sigismondi–arrived in New York City to celebrate the premiere at Soho’s Sunshine Cinema. Also in attendance: today’s inspiring female celebs, including Kirstie Alley, Victoria’s Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio, Life Unexpected star Shiri Appleby, Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chloe Sevigny.

Naked Celebrity Magazine Covers

Monique Marie — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:01:27 -0700

They all like showing skin here and there.

View Slideshow ›

New Fashion Magazine for Chicks in chairs! "Chloe Magazine"!

luckyirishgirl — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:00:54 -0700

Have you ever wondered where the most Beautiful, intelligent, entertaining women with disability's in the world.

Well, wonder no longer. They are here at Chloe Magazine, a magazine with insight to your life, how you live it, how you see it. Dare to take charge, hang on because here we come.
Chole Magazine: A full scale women's magazine for disabled women, brought to you by disabled women. It will be a 96 page glossy issue. Due to come out in Sept of 08.
Our goals are to bring together women and groups that involve women with disabilities. Our covers and all content will be a mix of disabled women and their issues and able bodied issues as well. Our goal is to show that disabled women are on the lines of those same women we see on Cosmo or Glamour. It will include women in the work world, those who own and run businesses or work for corporations, it will show women who are homemakers and raise families. We want to show also some of the most awesome disabled men we know. This magazine will have travel, relationships, entertainment, health and lifestyles of all disabled women around the globe. It is our time and we are here.