I'm Back to Add Necessary Nuance to the Hilary Duff 'Stronger Not Smaller" Discourse

So Hilary Duff did a campaign centered around being “stronger not smaller”, and I found myself cheering when I saw it. I stand by what I said initially: This is a powerful statement at this particular moment in time. We’re receiving so many messages about how women should look, that we should constantly strive to make our bodies as small and dainty as possible in the name of beauty and “femininity”. 

But I’ll own it: I don’t think my first take on this particular campaign included all the necessary nuance. And thanks to other women on the internet who are digging into this, my perspective on the campaign has shifted a bit. And honestly? As a woman who has only ever existed in a straight-sized body without any real effort, I think I approached this from my own privileged lens...and I want to do better.

I’ll start by saying this: I love Hilary Duff and don’t tolerate any slander. But let’s be real here: She is wildly privileged — thin, wealthy, young, white, and IMO, one of the most conventionally beautiful women out there. It’s not brave or revolutionary for someone like Duff to be centered in a fitness campaign, and the images from the campaign do clearly feel more aspirational than raw, real, relatable, courageous, etc. 

People are pointing out that the campaign should have showed the actress in the actual strength-training mode: Struggling to lift heavy weights, gritting her teeth, working up a sweat, as opposed to posing beautifully in a sleek matching set. This is totally valid criticism, IMO.

Dietician Sam Previte offers up a spot-on take on the nuance of it all: “Let talk about why this isn’t as big of a win as people are saying it is,” she says before tackling some of the positives of the campaign. “Sure, she has more muscle or definition than some of the actors and actresses who look emaciated…[but] if you find yourself comparing yourself to Hilary Duff’s body and still saying ‘I wish I looked like that’, then did it really accomplish the goal of having you focus on strength vs. shrinking yourself?”, she adds. 

Here’s the important context: Many of us remember growing up in a time when Duff was considered “big”. When people openly made comments like “she has such a pretty face, it’s a shame she’s not more slender” (yes, really). And as we slide back into so many of the old attitudes about weight and body and diet, I fear we’re heading back to a palace where a thin, straight-sized, conventionally hot woman like Duff is considered less than ideal (as the body type in vogue is increasingly becoming one that looks downright waifish). In light of that, a celebration of strength and fitness rather than just thin-ness feels necessary. 

But you know what else is necessary? An honest conversation about how even ads like this still leave so many people out.

Hayden Panettiere’s Postpartum Depression Story Proves We Penalize Women for Health Issues

In an interview on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, Hayden Panettiere opened up about her experience with postpartum depression…and what her journey with the condition cost her. 

The actress revealed that after she gave birth to her daughter, she knew she needed help. Panettiere enrolled in an inpatient facility where she was being treated for alcoholism — nobody ever mentioned the possibility that she may be experiencing postpartum depression. “I felt unfixable,” she said. 

Eventually, Panetierre did what so many women do: She found the answers herself. Because of the stigma around postpartum depression, and because of how misunderstood the issue is, she had to research and figure out on her own what she was experiencing…and when she spoke about her experience, she lost a longtime endorsement deal. 

“This was the last thing I thought they would ever fire me over,” she said. “Never for a second did I think that anyone [would have a] bad reaction to it. It was my truth. So when I got the call that Neutrogena wanted to fire me over that, and my representative at the time said ‘that’s illegal’...[I knew] I was not going to be invited back the next year. And I’d worked with these people for ten years, and I remember not hearing a word from anybody.”

This is clearly a penalization of a woman for experiencing a health issue. And it’s disgusting.

This was 11 years ago, and the conversation around PPD has come a long, long way since then. But next time you ask why women aren’t speaking up about what they’re truly going through, consider this: If a wealthy, famous, white woman suffered such consequences for experiencing a common maternal health issue, imagine what other women are truly afraid of.

The Condition Formerly Known as PCOS Has a New Name

Years and years ago, I started to wonder if I may have PCOS. I have family members with the condition, and at 25, I was beginning to notice acne for the first time. I was losing hair, experiencing frequent headaches…I just felt like something was off.

But when I visited an endocrinologist, he dismissed my concern pretty quickly..and told me he wouldn’t check for ovarian cysts. This surprised me: Based on the name of the condition, I thought this would be an easy way to test for and potentially diagnose PCOS.

But because I didn’t have irregular periods or high levels of androgen (a group of sex hormones), he didn’t recommend checking to see if I had any cysts. Turns out, two out of three of those factors were required for a PCOS diagnosis.

Clearly, PCOS, like so many conditions, doesn’t have a single test that can be administered to secure a super clear-cut diagnostic criteria. And part of getting a diagnosis, of course, is having the information necessary to advocate for yourself. Yet with a name like PCOS, it’s easy to think that this particular condition is just about ovarian cysts. This speaks volumes about the state of women's health: We are denied clear information, simple testing, and, as a result, swift diagnoses.

So when I saw that the name of PCOS is being changed to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, it felt right. The name change was revealed in The Lancet, which includes the following statement on the name change:

“Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), previously named polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), affects one in eight women However, the term PCOS is inaccurate, implying pathological ovarian cysts, obscuring diverse endocrine and metabolic features, and contributing to delayed diagnosis, fragmented care, and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing.”

This condition notoriously takes a long time to diagnose, with so many women struggling to make sense of their bodies. From physical symptoms like weight gain and acne, to challenges in getting pregnant, PMOD can take a real toll on a woman's life, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Experts hope this change will help them secure diagnoses and in turn effective treatment faster and more seamlessly. 

Because this is more than a new name: It’s a rebrand, and one that feels long overdue. 

'90's Era Diet Culture Advice is Back, and I'm Not Here For It

I grew up in the ‘90s, which means I’ve heard my fair share of unhinged diet tips. Some examples? 

“Smoke a cigarette every time you feel hungry.” 

“Tape photos of ultra-thin models on your fridge so you stop yourself from grabbing a snack.”

“Pour your drink over your plate of food after you’ve eaten half your portion so you can’t eat anymore.”

To quote Taylor Swift, I remember it all too well, and if you were around then too, you probably do as well. We made it out to the other side, to a place where we could look back and realize how extreme these tips and what they truly represented…yet somehow, we’ve found ourselves back.

I was scrolling TikTok recently and I came across a post of a woman spraying dish soap all over her food because she “has no self control”.  Honestly? In our current climate, I was fully expecting people who came along after the (temporary) death of diet culture to call this a “genius hack” or whatever. After all, that’s how these tips were framed back in the day.

Luckily, people seemed to see the issue here — because are we really so desperate to undereat that we’re willing to intentionally waste food we actually enjoy? In this economy?!?!

Several commenters pointed out the food waste of it all, and one commenter also clocked how icky this feels from a diet culture perspective. “I hope you find healing,” she wrote. The original poster's reply? “I hope you find humor.”

And listen, maybe I lack a sense of humor, but I just feel like this sort of thing is not funny. Perhaps that’s because I remember how it went back in the ‘90s. Maybe it’s because I'm raising a daughter in this world…and I desperately want to shield her from the messaging I grew up with.

On some level, I get it: We’ve all overeaten from time to time, only to feel sluggish and uncomfortable after. It’s okay to do things that help your avoid that. There’s nothing wrong with watching your portion size, IMO. 

And I don’t know exactly where the line between healthy awareness of what your body truly needs to eat and disordered behavior truly is. I don’t know if the diet tips a la “spray your food to make it inedible” qualify on one side of that line or another.

But I think at the very least, we can all agree that the slope is slippery...right?

The Double Standard of Refusing Sex Scenes

Do you remember the fanfare that ensued when Penn Badgley revealed that he’ll no longer film sex scenes? The actor shared that he had a conversation with the showrunner of You, the show in which he starred, about eliminating “intimate” scenes out of respect for his marriage. 

The news made headlines. There was a bit of debate, but for the most part, people praised the actor. And I think they should: This is a great example of setting personal boundaries around your comfort and your partners. Actors own their own bodies and deserve to make choices about what they’re comfortable with.

But I remember wondering how this would have played out had an actress make this request…and as I suspected, it’s not quite the same, at least if one actress’s experience is any indication.

Shenae Grimes-Beech, an actress best known for her work on shows like 90210, recently shared that she’s also made similar on-set requests….with very, very different results.

“I have been having that exact same conversation with directors since I was a teenager,” Grimes-Beech said on an episode of Lost the Plot with Shenae Grimes-Beech. “Except when I had it…it didn’t make headlines.”

Instead of heaps of praise, Grimes-Beech received pushback, the instruction to “be a team player”, and a reputation for being “difficult to work with”. 

The actress spoke about a specific time she was “ambushed” on set and asked to compromise her boundaries, all while a full team watched her on set.

Is this surprising? No, not at all. Women are so frequently denied agency over their own bodies. It is so easy to be dubbed “unprofessional” or “difficult” or "obstinate" as a woman, whereas when a man exhibits the same behavior, he is considered “powerful”. It’s not just that men’s boundaries around their bodies are far more likely to be respected — they’re also far more likely to applauded and celebrated…while women are given none of those privileges in many of the same situations. 

Is the Body Positivity Movement Officially Dead?

When I heard Ashley Graham’s recent comments about the effect Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have had on the body positivity movement, I wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, my first instinct was to agree with her.

“It’s really disheartening,” Graham said during a Marie Claire interview. “There was a pendulum that swung that was so body acceptance, positivity, everybody be who they want to be. And now it's going back this whole opposite way that feels like a smack in the face to the women who have felt like they've had a voice.”

She’s not wrong. We worked really hard to put more inclusive ideas and language in place. We banished phrases like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” and stopped moralizing food and rewired our ideas about exercise as punishment for “being bad”.

Unfortunately, the moment of body positivity was so short-lived, I wonder if it was even fully cemented at all. Look how easy it was to reverse so much of that progress. It’s like the moment a “solution” presented itself, the culture at large just said “yeah, you know what? I’m tired of pretending to embrace all body types, I just want to go back to glorifying the really thin ones.”

What is so hard to dissect about all this is the fact that GLP-1 drugs are not the enemy. For so many people, they are life changing medications, drugs that help them manage a range of conditions and allow them to feel more like themselves. What’s worth criticizing, though, is the fact that people are turning to these drugs exclusively for the purpose of becoming very, very thin. GLP-1 drugs are medications, not "the easy way out", yet they're being treated as such.

Women in the public eye are shrinking, which leads other women (and, more importantly, young girls) to only see one standard of beauty once again. And then there’s the rise of diet culture and fatphobic language, which is making a real comeback alongside the GLP-1 boom.

Graham is right: We are seeing less and less representation of a range of body types. And yes. That’s concerning. Because every body or every size and shape deserves to be included in the conversation…and to see themselves reflected and celebrated.

Millennial Moms are Resentful, Apparently. Let’s Talk About Why.

I recently saw a post that stopped me mid-scroll — and not in a good way. An article from Newsweek bore the headline: “Millennial Moms are the Most Resentful: Poll”. The article went on to share results from a recent survey from Talker Research’s “It’s a Family Thing” poll.

The survey looked at 2,000 moms in the United States to learn about generational attitudes…and what they found is that a big old chunk of millennial moms (we’re talking nearly half — though if we’re being honest, I bet the real rate is way higher) feel mentally burnt out. Over 19 percent feel resentful.

My take? The language around this is very much wrapped up in why so many millennial moms are burnt out, exhausted and resentful. Because instead of looking at the context we are mothering against, the language here implies that our generation of women is just…bitter? Angry? This is so much of what makes motherhood feel impossible right now: The backdrop is a hellscape, yet if we dare complain, we're told we are "miserable" and "signed up for this".

To be fair, the article goes on to clarify why millennial women are feeling this way. And as a journalist myself, I know the headline is often not even written by the journalist. But this is what we do to women: We blame them for their feelings instead of digging into where those feelings originate.

In this particular case, let’s break it down: Millennial women were lied to. We were raised in a culture that discouraged women from being truly honest about the real stuff. The hard stuff.

We were told that as long as we worked hard, we could have it all. Then, many of us became moms. And we realized…hey, no. We actually can’t have it all, at least not in a system that doesn’t give us federally mandated paid leave, let alone the types of support we need to make all the pieces fit together. We were forced to make impossible choice after impossible choice.

We were told to step it up outside of the home, yet many of us are parenting alongside partners who were never told they have to step it up inside the home. And when those male partners do step it up? Well, they’re praised to the high heavens, while we are criticized no matter what.

On top of all that, the villages we were promised, the ones we saw our own parents lean on? They don’t exist anymore. And then, of course, there’s the economy, which makes raising kids — or even having kids — so much harder.

So yeah, millennial moms have a lot to resent. Maybe that should be the message instead.

Actually, Maybe Right Now is the Perfect Times for the 'Devil Wears Prada' Sequel

I’ll admit it: As a recovering magazine industry girlie, The Devil Wears Prada has always inspired a touch of anxiety in me. I can still remember what it felt like to be surrounded by people who very much upheld toxic hustle culture. The magazine industry, at least as I remember it, exemplified the type of work culture we’ve finally grown critical of, and when I heard that we’d get a sequel of the movie, I wondered how it would address this cultural shift. In an era of finally recognizing the people who make workplaces feel kind of hellish, how would the film’s iconic bad boss Miranda Priestley play out? 

The Devil Wears Prada is a fairly realistic look at what really went down in the offices on some of your favorite glossies back in the aughts. But why make a sequel now, when hustle culture has been confronted, when the magazine industry is dying, and a full 20 years after the original film?

Once I started seeing commentary about the sequel roll in, though, it made perfect sense. We’ve overcorrected hustle culture so much, we’ve veered into the moment of romanticizing tradwife content. 

The Devil Wears Prada is essentially about working for a boss who demands so much of you, you have to sacrifice your personal life — or in Andy Sachs’s case, your romantic life. The sequel isn’t a cautionary tale about what happens to women to do that. Instead, it’s a celebration of the fact that for a lot of women, happily ever after isn't about the husband and the kids and the white picket fence. I don’t love extremes, but sometimes, in order to tell a story, you have to really go there. And in a time in which women are receiving regressive messages, maybe this storyline is important. 

Andy Sachs, as people are pointing out, is happily single and childfree in her 40s. Instead of warning women to not ever prioritize their career for fear of “ending up miserable and alone”, the sequel says “there are actually wonderful possibilities for women that have nothing to do with taking the traditional path”.

I am someone who did reject hustle culture. I got married, I had kids, I left the bustling world behind for a more flexible career, one that allows me to be a very present, hands on mom. 

That was the right path for me. But you know what? We have enough representation of this path. Let’s take a moment to shine a light on this sequel for spotlighting another equally valid one.

The Mental Load of Mother’s Day and Lifelong Social Conditioning

In the early days of May, I often receive this question: “So what are your Mother’s Day plans?”.

Here’s the thing, though: As a mom of young kids, I firmly believe that Mother’s Day plans are none of my business, at least not until the actual day rolls around. The reality is, though, women are still carrying the mental load of Mother’s Day — just like  we’re carrying the mental load of…most holidays. Even the ones that are supposed to be about us.

In my opinion, moms deserve to relax into the plans (rather than orchestrate them) on Mother’s Day. We ought to be the ones considered, not the ones considering everyone else’s needs on this one particular day. That means we don’t need to be the ones making the brunch reservations, or ordering the flowers, or choosing the gift. 

Yet clearly, moms being the architects of their own special day is the default, which is pretty clear based on the way so many people ask moms like me what I am planning, not what my partner is planning for me.

This is so much bigger than a maternal issue or a Mother’s Day issue or even a holiday issue. It’s a gender issue. 

The fact of the matter is, we socialize girls and boys differently. We expect different things out of girls. We raise them to consider everyone else, to anticipate needs, to give and never expect anything in return. 

And what does that create? A generation of women who have  to steer the ship, to think about everyone else, only to be told that if they want something for themselves, they have to make it happen on their own…or at the very least, communicate these expectations very, very clearly.

I’m tired of that. This Mother’s Day, let’s let women rest. And more importantly, let’s change the culture that expects so damn much out of them...even on the days that are meant to be about their enjoyment.

Ultra-processed Foods Are Linked to Dementia Risk in New Study. Here's What I'm Taking From It

Listen, we know we shouldn’t be eating tons of ultra-processed foods. But for many of us, I think, the exact danger feels a little hard to pinpoint…as does the real definition of what an “ultra-processed” food actually is. On top of that, well…we face a lot of conflicting narratives about what we should and shouldn’t be eating. 

But here’s yet another reason to fear super processed foods: A recent study links even a small increase in ultra-processed food intake to an increase in dementia risk.

The study, which was published in the Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring journal, involved the analysis of over 2,000 adults. According to the study, each 10 percent increase in ultra-processed food intake is associated with lower attention scores and higher dementia risk. 

So why is this important? Well, taking this study’s findings into account matters in middle age, long before we reach the age when these issues typically show up. We’ve all heard that ultra-processed foods can increase our risk of developing several health conditions (diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, etc), but the idea that diet can really affect brain health is newer, as noted by the researchers. And the fact of the matter is, for younger women, those long-term risks feel less pressing than thinking about how our diet affects us in the shorter term. 

Does this mean eating a bag of chips every now and then is going to predispose you to dementia? No, not necessarily. But this study does something important: It encourages us to start thinking about how we want to age right now, and to start looking at nutrition, not just as a way for us to get our bodies to look a certain way, but to protect our long-term health.

I, like most women, have spent so much of my life being told that what I eat matters because it affects how I look. How it impacts my body’s size. But this research is eye-opening: As I approach middle age, I need to start thinking more about how I want to age and view nutrition and food as one factor — though certainly not the only factor — in how my life unfolds from here. 

There’s a lot to unpack in this study, and as always, it doesn’t prove an exact cause and effect, nor does it change the fact that sometimes, we have to go for the convenient, processed meal or snack. 

Here’s what it does, though, for me at least: It encourages me to think about food as something that can have a profound impact on how my body and my brain age over time. In a time when food and weight are being so closely linked, it's an important reminder: Food doesn't have moral value, but it does potentially have the power to affect how we age.