The Body Image Movement

The Body Image Movement is a movement that recognises and values real beauty from the inside out.

Our role is to harness and facilitate positive body image activism by encouraging women to be more accepting of who they are, to use positive language about their bodies and the bodies of others, and to prioritise health before beauty.

The movement celebrates and embraces the following key messages:

Love yourself …naturally

At what point did it become so offensive to age? I feel like we might’ve become brainwashed to think that fine lines and wrinkles are a bad thing! The process of ageing should be one that is celebrated, for every line, wrinkle or sign of age means that we are alive, we are here and we are living! Why do we want to fight this process, when did ageing become so ugly and offensive?

The Body Image Movement is here to say it is okay to age; it is ok to be natural. In fact it is more than okay to be natural; it feels amazing, it feels liberating and it’s how nature intended for us to live.”

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Michelle Pfeiffer loves to get naked at home

Michelle Pfeiffer looks forward to walking around naked now her children have left the family home.

'The Family' actress, who has two children, Claudia Rose, 20, and 19-year-old John Henry with husband David E. Kelley, admits her house feels empty since her son left for university but she can't wait to strut around without any clothes on.

Quizzed if it's difficult to not have her children at home, she said: ''I'm an empty-nester. I'm going to arrive at that place [of difficulty] but I'm not there yet. Now I'm just like, 'I can walk around naked!' That's kind of nice.''

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Can We Ever Really Love Our Body?

My sister was discussing my site with me the other morning and she said something like “Well, it’s not like a person ever really learns to love their body? They just kinda convince themselves they do, right?” And my answer was, “No. That’s not right. That might be the first step. But, you CAN actually learn to love your body. I mean we learned to not love it in the first place, so we can undo that.” Here’s what I mean.
Yes You Can

I truly believe that you CAN learn to love your body. Like any long term mature love, it is something that will have cycles, ups and downs, and most of the time not giving it a whole lot of thought. But if someone were to ask you about your long-term love, you would answer, “Yes. Of course I love my body.”
Defining Loving Your Body

Loving your body is not arrogance.

It is not conceit.

It is not feeling superior to others.

Loving your body is kindness. Loving your body is appreciation. Loving your body is compassion for “imperfections.” Loving your body is adopting humor in place of anger.

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The Right to Bare Breasts

It's hot.

So take off all your clothes... or at least the ones you can legally lose in public. A shirt, perhaps? As long as you're not dining at the Four Seasons, go for it! Guys in New York City do it all the time! And gals? Well...

Last summer -- which rivaled this one in its Al-Gore-foreshadowed, end-of-times heat -- I was walking on a Manhattan street when I noticed a naked back ahead of me. It appeared to be that of a petite, professional woman. Her shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair was neatly cut and styled. She wore Capri pants, flats and a small purse over her left shoulder. But unless there were seashells or pasties on the other side, she was completely topless -- a fact that the hateful looks of passers-by from the other direction seemed to confirm. Now, the day was a scorcher. Doffing the top is logical, I thought. But is it legal? I didn't know. I also didn't know why I cared.

Come to think of it, why did anyone care? The man with the disdainful eyebrows, or the giggling gaggle of teens, or the woman of the hand-on-hip-superiority, dangling cigarette and grave eyes? No one could fathom the woman's shirtlessness as a right and/or choice, so instead, we all indulged in aggravated confusion. Did she have a costume malfunction on the way to work? (Corporate casual from the waist down, after all.) Were we witnessing a meltdown? Was she insane?

Then I changed the channel from confusion to curiosity. Was she a performance artist? An activist, perhaps? Maybe it's legal, I pondered, and we're all the fools! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! Yup, with this last thought I was right.

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Nudist, Naturist Or Clothes Free?

What exactly is the difference between a nudist and a naturist? For the most part, the terms are used interchangeably, although there is some debate over nuances of meaning. The generally accepted distinction between the two terms is that "naturist" has more of a philosophical and political connotation than "nudist." Both nudists and naturists may enjoy nudity as part of an everyday lifestyle. Someone who identifies as a nudist but not as a naturist may view nudity as a leisurely pursuit or as a facet of his/her lifestyle that is not grounded in any particular philosophical belief. Someone who identifies as a naturist may have specific convictions that nude recreation promotes body acceptance and self esteem. People who identify as naturists have been the most active in advocating legal statuses for nude beaches and often work tirelessly to oppose anti-nudity legislation.

These nudist/naturist distinctions are not precise, and some people are not satisfied with either term. Must a person who enjoys sunbathing naked on the beach be labeled one way or another? Is a person who is perfectly comfortable soaking naked in natural hot springs necessarily going to be comfortable standing in line naked waiting for a serving of coleslaw at a nudist potluck? Perhaps it is the implication that nudists or naturists live naked as much as possible that some people find not to be indicative of their nude recreational pursuits. Sure, some people hang around the house in the buff all day, but we guess that most people you'll find sunbathing naked on a beach on a given afternoon are probably not naked around the dinner table later that evening.

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The Male Nude In Eighteenth Century French Art Explored

Classes were complemented by courses on anatomy, perspective, geometry, literature and history. The Academy’s training was learned and structured, and, although it was sometimes criticized for its rigour and its insistence on discipline and uniformity, it produced superb draughtsmen. Some of the artists featured became painting Masters of their generation, focusing on historical and allegorical pictures. Others utilised their training in a variety of artistic fields, including Bachelier, who went on to assume the role of Director of Design and Decoration at the Sèvres porcelain factory, influencing many of the pieces exhibited in the Wallace Collection.

Variety and beauty are omnipresent in The Male Nude. The works show figures – sometimes single, sometimes two together - in an enormous variety of poses and in various degrees of light and shade. The study of physiognomic expression was also taught at the Academy, and the facial expressions of the figures always complement the poses they adopt, whether they show, say, serenity, exertion, pleasure or anger.

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True Nudists :: Interview with "hikergirl"

True Nudists :: Interview with "hikergirl" from True Nudists on Vimeo.

To visit hikergirl's profile on truenudists visit truenudists.com?track=hkg

True Nudists :: Interviews "hikergirl" about why she's a nudist and what nudism means to her. Visit truenudists.com to find more videos, learn about nudism and meet other nudists.

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Miley Cyrus Wanted To Perform Topless During MTV VMAs

Miley Cyrus has revealed that she originally wanted her MTV Video Music Awards performance to be even racier than it was.

The singer, who caused controversy during her performance with Robin Thicke, revealed during her new hour-long special for MTV that she originally wanted to perform her single "We Can't Stop" and then with Thick on his hit "Blurred Lines" half-naked.

"Miley The Movement" debuted on Wednesday night, and in the special, which chronicled the months leading up to her VMAs performance, she told Britney Spears about her original plans.

"You're not going to be topless onstage, are you?" Spears asked.

"I tried but I don't think MTV's going to allow it," Miley replies.

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Clothing is optional in Germany

Naturism is big for Germans. Around 1 in 10 take a naked vacation at least once a year, according to Kurt Fischer, president of German Association for Free Body Culture.

Lately, however, nudism has been getting some additional exposure with the circulation of a photo purporting to show a young Angela Merkel and a couple of friends out for a waterside stroll in the buff.

The photo’s authenticity is contested, but there’s no doubt that naturism was popular in East Germany when Merkel — who’s expected to stay on as chancellor after elections later this month — was growing up there in the 1960s and ’70s.

Tolerated by the Communist authorities, stripping off became a way for East Germans to commune with nature and break with the regime’s conformity. The DDR Museum dedicated to showing daily life in East Germany in Berlin has exhibits illustrating the role nudism played there — with dioramas depicting naked sunbathing and volleyball.

Even today, naturism is more widespread in eastern resorts like Glowe, on the holiday island of Ruegen, which is part of the district Chancellor Merkel represents in parliament.

Full piece is at Salon

Topless Iggy Azalea calls for BOOB REVOLUTION as she embraces 'small boobies'

Following its release, the Aussie blonde took to Twitter asking fans to support women with boobs of all sizes.

After making #fashiont*ts trend worldwide, she wrote: "If you have small boobies, I think us girls should still feel good about them... Work what you got.”

The video has been labelled 18+ on YouTube, meaning viewers must sign in to see the video.

But, Iggy refused to upload a clean version of the vid, arguing that she shouldn't have to change it for the world wide web.

She wrote: "nah, should have to censor my vision for the Internet. That's lame.”

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Is Topless Sunbathing Good for American Tourism?

Is America ready for topless sunbathing beaches? Will it be good for tourism?

August 25th marked the sixth anniversary of Go Topless Day. It's always held right around Women's Equality Day, which this year marked the 93rd anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving American women the right to vote.

Celebrations and protests in favor of top-free rights were held around the world, including in over 30 U.S. cities.

Some women feel since American society has sexualized women's breasts for so many years, it's going to take much more than an annual celebration/protest to change attitudes allowing topless sunbathing, so why even bother.

Other women point out how liberating it is to be top-free, especially at beaches. And it's immaterial whether some people in society sexualize breasts or not. Going topless wherever men can be shirtless is a matter of legal equality. And the New York Supreme Court agreed with these women in 1992, making it legal to be topless in New York.

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Top 10 naked hotels in the world

By Lu Na (China.org.cn)

Famous German travel website Trivago.com recently published its top 10 most welcoming "naked hotels" as favored by travelers.

Germany's FKK (Freikörperkultur or "free body culture") movement is a cultural phenomenon across Europe, proposing people spend their days naked and in harmony with nature. It goes without saying that most of the hotels are located in Europe.

Most of the hotels allow their guests to remain in the nude when sitting in their restaurants, bars, gyms and hot springs. However, some hotels only allow their customers to be naked in the hot spring area.

Take a look at the following 10 unique hotels and resorts:

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Stand Up For Women's Rights: Show Us Your Boobs

If you really gave two nipples about women's equality, then you'd take off your shirt already.

In conjunction with Women's Equality Day, women and fans of women will descend on Dolores park sans shirts on Sunday at noon for Go Topless Day, because if men can walk around topless, then damn it women can, too. (Note to prolific nudists: This bare-chested bash is permitted).

But this isn't totally about getting rid of those bikini top tan lines -- it's about getting rid of inequality.

Go Topless Day always falls on the Sunday closest to Women's Equality Day, which is Aug 26. It was that day in 1920 that women (aka people with boobs) earned their right to vote on the basis of Gender Equality. In 1971, the U.S Congress declared Aug. 26 Women's Equality Day, and the president is summoned to celebrate this day each year.

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Gaga embraces being naked

Lady Gaga was comfortable shedding her clothes from a young age.

The singer often turns heads for her outrageous costumes and earlier this month featured in a video for performance artist Marina Abramović in which she walks around nude.

The star, real name Stefani Germanotta, admits she was never a modest child and her mother often went to great lengths to control her extrovert daughter around company.

"I definitely walked around naked a lot as a kid," Gaga revealed on Sirius XM's The Morning Mash Up.

"And my mom used to joke with me because I would always try to freak the babysitter out and... hide behind the couch and rip all my clothes off and run around and singing The Little Mermaid or whatever."

The Applause singer is now finding great purpose in feeling free to be in the buff.

She's fascinated by how well she can express a new character by using little more than her nude body.

"And now really what it's more about is I find it very interesting to be able to transform as much as possible with very little makeup and nude," Gaga explained.

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Shirtless Goes the City

California strikes. Manhattan is becoming Malibu. Once, in the long-gone “Mad Men” days, it was considered de rigueur for New Yorkers to wear a hat and gloves in town. Now dress codes have devolved to the point where folks wear fleecy slippers on the subway, flip-flops to the ballet, running tights for every occasion, repurposed pajamas as daywear and, recently, very little at all.

We are referring here to a curious trend among men in the city to go walking about without shirts.

Note, for instance, recent tabloid pictures showing Orlando Bloom strolling through TriBeCa with his dog on a leash and son in a stroller. The British actor was dressed in shower shoes, a baseball cap and cargo shorts slung low enough to brand-check his red briefs and to see a solar tattoo inked south of his navel. And that was about all.

Sure it was hot. Temperatures had been hovering in the 90s for seven days running. Furnace blasts radiated off sidewalks. To stand on a subway platform felt like getting too close to a Weber grill.

Naked above the waist, Mr. Bloom was doing what a sensible person might to stay cool, if that person lived on the Pacific Coast Highway and was headed to Malibu Country Mart for an iced cappuccino.

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Every Little Bit Helps Wake America Up

Girlrillaz, a film about a group of radical women in NYC, fighting the backwards censorship laws in America. Their central question: What is more obscene NUDITY or VIOLENCE?

If we have the courage to decorate our bodies with many tattoos, I think we should have the courage to go au natural like our cousins in Europe. It's just one tiny step from showing off skin art, and actual skin art, the natural body. It's a natural progression we should go ahead and take. Like riding a roller coaster, it thrills for a while and we can come out of it safe and sound, but much happier. And that's a good thing.

Justin Timberlake's New Song 'Tunnel Vision' Has Artful Nudes

Youtube comment: This is a really beautiful music video. Everyone's comparing it to Robin Thicke's music video, where he, Pharrell, and T.I. are all staring at these topless women, but actually that music video is just a playfully sexual video (hence why there are two versions). This is just the blatant beauty of the human body. He's not even touching or gaping at these women, they're just gracefully moving with the music. It's really art. W o w.

When is topless sunbathing OK?

Amazingly today is 'Bikini Day' (who knew?), which marks the 67th anniversary of the invention of the two-piece swimsuit by a Parisian fashion designer, Louis Réard. With a UK July heatwave expected and New Yorkers stripping off in Central Park, Dr Brooke Magnanti offers a cheeky guide as to when it's OK to bare all.

News has broken that police have been warned to let topless women sunbathing in Central Park do their thing. I love that this is happening, and especially, that it's happening in New York. You could not pay me to put on a swimsuit in New York, but not because of fear of having my wobbly bits on display so much as being from Florida, where natives don't even think about leaving their scarves and coats at home until the mercury tops 35 degrees. The middle of New York City sure does get warm in summer, but the way they go on about it, you'd think it was the surface of Venus. I've been there in August (New York, not Venus). It ain't.

Still, more power to the topless lasses of New York, because this is a huge step for the US. Where I grew up has approximately the same climate as the inside of a boiled kettle, only with mosquitoes. Sadly it is also at the tail end of the Bible belt so going topless was out of the question. There came a point every summer where it felt like we weren't living, so much as swimming at the bottom of a boiling ocean. Less garb up top would have been a welcome relief.

Since living in Britain the rules on when to don and when to doff bikini tops have been difficult to parse. Bathing topless has that sometimes-common, sometimes-posh air that makes the apparent rules absolutely impenetrable to someone like me. Marbella fine, Margate not fine. Cool to do on a continental holiday, unless you're Kate Middleton, in which case you've let the royals down. Lack of tan lines is classy, until you get a sunburn, then it's mug shots and the dole queue all the way.

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Victorian Breastfeeding Photo Fad: Shifting Discourses Of Motherhood

Last year Lynne Grumet set the Internet a-flutter when she appeared on the cover of TIME magazine breastfeeding her toddler. Reactions were largely negative, often reflecting unease at the open display of a sexualized body part being used to feed a child older than the age we generally find acceptable. Others objected to what they saw as the sensationalism of the photo. Grumet later posed on the cover of another magazine in a pose that focused on bonding and intimacy, commonly cited as benefits by breastfeeding advocates. The entire episode tapped into larger cultural anxieties about appropriate mothering.

And as Jill Lepore explains in The Mansion of Happiness, it’s just the latest round in the changing discourse about breastfeeding; in the mid-1800s, images of breastfeeding mothers became a fad in the U.S. The use of wet nurses had never been as common in the U.S. as in Europe, and it became even less popular by the early 1800s; breastfeeding your own child became a central measure of your worth as a mother. Cultural constructions of femininity became highly centered on motherhood and the special bond between a mother and her children in the Victorian era.

As daguerreotypes became available, women began to pose breastfeeding their infants, capturing them in this most essential of maternal roles:

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Miss USA Winners For PETA: Four Crown-Holders Pose Naked To 'Say No To Fur'

Four Miss USA crown-holders became the latest faces -- and bodies -- of PETA's anti-fur campaign.

In a video for PETA, the Miss USA winners posed naked alongside a Miss USA sash and crown to lend their support to the animal rights organization.

In addition to baring it all for the PETA ad, Susie Castillo, Shandi Finnessey, Shanna Moakler and Alyssa Campanella also pledged to go fur-free in their own lives.

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Naked bike ride in Mexico City – video

Hundreds of cyclists strip off to take part in World Naked Bike Ride Day on Saturday. Participants ride on the capital's main streets, bringing traffic to a standstill as onlookers take photos. The international event is designed to raise awareness of road safety for bikes, though some in Mexico also use the event to promote the normality of nudity

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Nudism/Naturism: One of the crowd

“Seek and ye shall find,” the sages have instructed us, along with this: “The answers often lie within.”

Those two pearls of wisdom, basically, are what led me to Ottawa on Saturday to answer a question I had about nudists/naturists, and about why I was so interested, personally speaking, in this subject as opposed to, say, in hot-air ballooning.

My question for the naturists was: Why do people want to be naked in non-sexual public or semi-public social settings?

I had been invited by the Ottawa Naturists organization to an evening swim event at an indoor pool, one of 18 they hold annually. The group is celebrating its 20th anniversary and has about 200 members, with a strong contingent from Quebec, I’m told. They also hold other social gatherings, such as a summer barbecue and a weekend camping event.

I accepted the invitation, but told them I would be attending as a private individual, not as a journalist on assignment for my paper. Sure, I would probably write about it in both my blogs, but they are labours of free love, i.e. I am not paid for writing them.

I spent a good part of Saturday afternoon chatting with my host for the event, Ted, the president of the board of the Ottawa Naturists. I asked him about the appeal of public nudity, and about the origins of his passion for naturism.

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Nudist Resort Etiquette: Top 4 Tips To make You a Classy Nudist

Everything, everywhere and every place has protocols to follow. Nudist resorts aren’t any different. It’s one thing to go free and shed your clothes in the name of pure freedom but it’s another thing to be all goofy on a nudist resort and embarrass yourself (and your family or friends, if they accompany you). Here are at least four tips to make sure you get the etiquette part right and enjoy yourself instead of embarrassing yourself:

There are boundaries there, even if it doesn’t appear to be so

Yes, it’s a nudist resort and there’s no stopping you from shedding your clothes and going naked. There are, however, clear boundaries. Even if it appears to be a free for all, check the fine print of your admission ticket or ask someone. Most nudist camps and resorts do have clear rules for you to follow. The guidelines are often strict and are developed that way for a reason. Be aware of them; You don’t want to make a fool of yourself.

No photos, absolutely

Most nudist resorts will check your baggage for cameras or disallow you from using cameras. Photography isn’t allowed. Never do the mistake of thinking that you can roam free and shoot pictures of anyone you like just because they are naked. It’s a fact that they are naked and they are under the impression that everyone there respects privacy. Don’t be the only one to breach this trust.

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Average breast cup size in the world

cup size infographic by Raj Kamal.