- Change! The Belly Bulletin Becomes A Blog
- We Are Golden
- Winning Fiction
- A Liberating Experience!
- Big Savings On The Belly Book
- Across The Divides Of Time
- Shopping For Celebration
- Reminder: New Email Address
The Belly Bulletin is morphing from a quarterly newsletter to this blog. This new format allows for more interaction with and among you, my belly buddies, and for posting articles as inspiration arrives.
If you have been subscribing to the quarterly newsletter, managed through Constant Contact, please resubscribe now to this blog by clicking on Receive updates by email under SUBSCRIBE at the top of the column to the right— or you can click right here to resubscribe.
I’ll no longer be sending out emails to announce the arrival of new Belly Bulletin issues since I’ll be posting articles here as they happen.
There’s been a big to-do regarding “the woman on page 194” in Glamour magazine’s September issue.
The photo shows a woman who, dressed, would be wearing a size 12 or 14. But here she’s nearly-naked, sitting on a bench and leaning forward, letting her belly roll over the top of her string bikini.
Thousands of readers have been cheering for this image of a plus-size woman — “a woman who looks like me” — in the trend-setting fashion magazine.
Some comments focus on one of the woman’s features. Which one?
- This beautiful woman has a real stomach…. This is how my belly looks…. This photo made me want to shout from the rooftops.
- Because of my own belly, I always thought I was some deformed woman, but not now. Holy hell, I am normal!
- My belly looks like this but I never thought I was really “ok” about it.…
- What draws us to this photo is the fact that she is glowing [with] inner peace and happiness — pouch belly and all!
- I can’t stop looking at this picture. Her body looks almost exactly like mine…. I love her belly SO MUCH. It is actually allowing me to feel better about myself, looking at this beautiful woman.
The photo on page 194, and the passionate response to it, have become international news, breaking into Newsweek, CNN, msnbc, and blogs — such as jezebel.com — around the world.
The woman on page 194, model Lizzi Miller, appeared along with Cindi Leive, Glamour’s editor-in-chief, on the Today Show with Matt Lauer.
Lauer pointed out that the issue is about more than dress size:
It really is all about the tummy. Let’s be honest. It is about the fact that there is a little tummy in a position we don’t normally see tummies in magazines.
Leive responded:
But you see it all the time when you look in the mirror…. Women are seeing something that looks the way so many of us really do.
Glamour follows up on its readers’ demand for fitting reflections in its November issue. And Leive promises her magazine will be “featuring a greater range of body types” in its pages.
I’m glad the fashion magazine intends to provide photos of models that enhance, rather than undermine, women’s body image. Still, there’s that pesky problem with “image” itself — the dissatisfaction inherent in basing self-esteem on the mirror’s reflection, the visual critique.
The alternative?
- Shifting from “how do I look?” to “how am I feeling?”
- Rather than living on the periphery of our lives, living through the center of our bodies.
- Drawing self-esteem from the awareness and experience of who we are in the core of our being.
National Public Radio recently featured Mika, a Lebanese-American singer/songwriter whose specialty is the bubblegum pop music harking back to the ’60s and ’70s.
Okay: his music might not be to your taste or mine. But the young man is wise. He said the words that, I hope, will become the trend-setting fashion for women, if not in our magazines, then in our lives:
We are golden.
We have a value that goes beyond
how we judge ourselves in the mirror.
Inspired to let Cindi Lieve and Glamour know how you value your body, your belly, and yourself beyond the mirror’s reflection?
Write her here or at letters@glamour.com
Wishing you well,
Lisa
The belly goddess played a subtle but starring role in Poetry At Six — one of the top three stories selected from 3,600 entries in National Public Radio’s recent Three-Minute Fiction contest.
The stories, 600 words max, had to start with this sentence: The nurse left work at five o’clock.
A nurse — limping Iambe — figures in the Greek legend of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. She’s the one who tells rowdy jokes and dances a bawdy jig for Demeter, who’s been immobilized by grief. That’s the turning point: Iambe makes Demeter laugh, enabling the Great Goddess to take heart and resume the search for the daughter whom Hades has abducted.
What are the connections between “Iambe,” the rhythm implicit in her limp, and “iamb,” a measure of poetic meter? Poetry At Six begins to explore some possibilities…
Learn and practice the power-centering moves with this updated edition of the Honoring Your Belly DVD:
- menus & navigation
- centering meditation
- full-body relaxation
- poem & narrative: “Naming Ourselves Sacred” & “Ritual of Creation”
- economy shipping
“After my first time with this DVD, I did my best writing ever. After a year of struggle, I finally found my voice — clear, purposeful, incisive, unapologetic, playful. Every woman deserves this liberating experience!”
Laura Frisbie • Beat Depression Naturally
Leicester, NC
My friends at Selina Naturally (a.k.a. Celtic Sea Salt) are offering The Woman’s Belly Book at half-price. Get copies for your friends at $7.98!
The book is also available at Amazon.com as well as at your local independent bookstore.
One friend writes to another:
Thanks for the gift of The Woman’s Belly Book. It came right when I was getting in touch with my belly through massage treatments, and I am working my way through the exercises. (Digestion has long been a challenge of mine.)
Honoring and energizing the body’s center enables us to enter into the present moment.
There’s a curious feature of being present in “the eternal now”: the divisions of time, distance, language, and culture can disappear.
I’ve been collaborating across those divides with a 17th century Muslim woman — Sufi poet Zeb-un-Nissa.
Writing new versions of her poems, based on English translations published in 1913, draws me into the truth of human experience that is timeless.
Lisa & Zeb-un-Nissa is the blog I’ve created to post my versions of Zeb-un-Nissa’s poems plus information about her life and times. I invite you to join in on the process!
These three designs are available on scoop neck and V-neck T-shirts in women’s plus sizes as well as in other styles and sizes. See the selection at these online shops at CafePress.com:
I’ve said “bye-bye” to Earthlink. If your address book lists:
bellyqueen(at)earthlink(dot)net
lisasarasohn(at)earthlink(dot)net
please change those addresses to:
lisa(at)lisasarasohn(dot)com
Still good to go are addresses at:
lisa(at)loveyourbelly(dot)com
news(at)loveyourbelly(dot)com
