I was listening to an episode of Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugars podcast in which she talked about her experience with Vogue magazine just before the release of Wild, her autobiography about transformation and overcoming adversity. Vogue was doing a piece about powerful women, and they wanted to feature her.  On the day of the photoshoot, Cheryl felt good about how she looked. She didn’t lose the weight she had hoped to lose, but she felt confident and pretty.   When the issue of the magazine came out, however, Cheryl and her husband were shocked at her photo. They weren’t even sure it was actually Cheryl because she looked so different. Among other things, they made her slimmer.  In doing so, the message Vogue gave Cheryl was that despite her accomplishments, she wasn’t enough because she wasn’t thin, and they had to change that to feature her as a “powerful woman” in their magazine.  Vogue and other publications and mass media set the skinny standard for us.  They show us, through photos of rail-thin women, how we are supposed to look. And sadly, most of us buy into this standard without really thinking about it.  I invite you to join me in rejecting the message from the media that if you are a woman, who you are and what you do doesn’t matter if you don’t conform to our pretty and skinny cultural standards. I invite you to join me in saying, “Screw this! I’m not going to conform to some impossible standard of what someone else thinks of as beautiful or attractive.”  Listen to learn why this weight coach wants you to ditch the skinny standard and empower yourself and other women in the process.  Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode.