by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

As a matter of principle my husband and I do not buy our girls Barbie dolls.

One we don’t want to have to buy the bedroom set and the kitchen set and the hundred other sets that go with the doll and secondly because we don’t want them to think that being blond and thin is an ideal to be emulated.

Besides there are several other for useful and skill building toys out there, which are better for them.

Barbie’s vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips). If you scaled her up, her legs would be inordinately and disproportionately long. In 1965 Slumber Party Barbie came with a book entitled How to Lose Weight which advised: “Don’t eat.” The doll also came with pink bathroom scales reading 110lb, which would be around 35lbs underweight for a woman 5 feet 9 inches tall. Continue Reading…

by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

Yes sometime ago, Whitney Thompson winning the America’s Next Top Model made waves, a ‘plus size’ girl winning the title, but then we concluded that a size 10 is certainly not a plus size.

A real plus size girl who has made ripples in the beauty pageant circuit is Chloe Marshall who won the Miss Surrey title a beauty competition in the United Kingdom.

This title is part of the regional heats for going on to the Miss UK competition. It will be very interesting to see, when she participates in the Miss England competition, whether she is chosen winner, a genuine plus size girl!

Chloe Marshall is a size sixteen and at 5 feet 10 inches she weighs 176 pounds. Chloe Marshall’s critics have called her ‘fat’, ‘unhealthy’ and ‘a bad example’, which is sad, because these people presume that anyone who is a size sixteen must be Continue Reading…

by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

It has been called ugly and to be truthful, it is somewhat shocking at first glance. But what it is, is an artists’ vision and this artist did not want to be just painting pretty pictures. What CNN has called the Overweight nude is a painting by Lucian Freud and was sold for $33.6 million. This makes it making it the most expensive painting ever sold by a living artist, thereby breaking the previous world record. Continue Reading…

by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

I really liked this post that Nancy did a while back about the 39 ways to live a better life in 2008. If of all the 39 I had to pick one that I liked best, I would pick no. 6 : Play more games and read more books than you did in 2007, because by following this faithfully you take care of your physical, mental and spiritual well being!

Putting this into practice can really make a difference in your life. What with work and looking after the kids and home I was really not getting any time to read, or so I thought! So I resolved to take at least some time out for myself everyday and read.

Continue Reading…

Okay, I just don’t get it!

Today at the gym, I was noticing how many women love to tear themselves apart.

Too fat, too old, too big, too much cellulite, butts too big . . .

and the best one of all is:

“if only I could get FLAT ABS”.

Watching this girl step onto the scale to only see the DISAPPOINTMENT on her face like she was going to JUMP OFF A CLIFF because the scale said “1 pound more!” or wait . . .

maybe it was the fact her stomach just wasn’t “FLAT enough!” making me wonder if most the world has gone mad!

WHO CARES!

Women are NOT made to have flat stomachs!

It’s NOT truly feminine.

Women’s bodies are made to have babies.

Women are not naturally supposed to have:

* barbie doll fake breasts
* rock hard anything
* plastic injections of God knows what
* fake boobs, fake butts, fake ANYTHING

. . . . INCLUDING rock hard flat abs which serve NO purpose whatsoever!! except to feed into the media hype, sell more ab machines, make plastic surgeons money and fuel the economy some more!

Get over it!

A real woman has full hips to give birth to babies, nurtures and comforts others with her soft skin (and YES! some FAT on her body), feeds her young milk from her breasts . . .

and isn’t so self-absorbed that the only thing that matters the most in life is getting her stomach to look like someone flat ironed it to death!

Maybe it’s time for women to wake up and know it’s OKAY to be a real woman.

Fat butts and all.