wtf, whole foods

So I'm a few days behind on this, but I just found out that Whole Foods is starting this awesome new incentive program for their employees where lower BMI = bigger discount. You can read about it here. What. The. Fuck. I am beyond grossed out, and and angry, for the thousandth time, at Whole Foods and everywhere else that encourages "healthiness" being judged by weight.

However this one awful thing does remind me of one awesome thing that CofC NOW is doing this year. We are venturing in to body image issue land and creating the Look Book, a book of stories and artwork from CofC and Charleston community members dealing with their bodies--in whatever way speaks to them. We're basing the idea on another school, which printed a book featuring people's stories of their triumphs and struggles with their bodies next to photographs of them, many nude, being totally comfortable in their own skin.

We figured this would be an awesome way to give an aesthetically pleasing fuck you to all the people/institutions who constantly tell us we need to look a certain way to be beautiful. Not to mention some reassurance for everyone out there who told us, as we tried to get them to just say one thing that they loved about their body for NOW's celebration of Love Your Body Day, that they hated their bodies. And for all those people who never say anything at all.

Art, activism...and of course there's gonna be a party. We're going to start looking for submissions soon after the Vagina Monologues are over, so keep your eyes peeled!