Theresa Ruth Howard
Dancer/Writer/Teacher
Theresa Ruth Howard began her professional dance career with the Philadelphia Civic Ballet Company at the age of twelve. Later she joined the Dance Theatre of Harlem where she had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Africa. She has worked with choreographer Donald Byrd as a soloist in his staging of New York City Opera's Carmina Burana, his critically acclaimed Harlem Nutcracker, as well as the controversial domestic violence work The Beast. She was invited to be a guest artist with Complexions: A Concept in their 10th anniversary season. In 2004 she became a founding member of Armitage Gone! Dance.
As a writer Ms. Howard has contributed to Russell Simmons’ One World magazine (art), and The Source (social politics), as well as Pointe and Dance Magazine. While teaching in Italy for the International Dance Association she was asked to become a contributor for the premiere Italian dance magazine Expressions. Her engaging, no nonsense writing style caught the eye of both the readers of Dance Magazine and its Editor in Chief who not only made her a contributing editor and has collaborated with Ms. Howard in See and Say Web-reviews. Her articles about body image prompted her to develop a workshop for young adult (dancers and non-dancers) My Body My Image that addresses their perceptions both positive and negative about their bodies and endeavoring to bring them closer to a place of Acceptance and Appreciation. She recently launched a blog by the same name to reach a broader audience (mybodymyimage.com)
As a teacher Ms. Howard has been an Artist in Residence at Hollins University in and New Haven University in addition to teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, Marymount, Shenandoah, and Radford Universities, and the historical American Dance Festival. As a result of her work at ADF Ms. Howard was invited to Sochi, Russia to adjudicate the arts competition Expectations of Europe and teach master classes, and in Burundi, Africa where she coached and taught the Burundi Dance Company. Currently she on faculty at The Ailey School but also extensively throughout Italy and Canada.
Ms. Howard's belief in the development, and nurturing of children lead her to work with at risk youth. At the Jacob Riis Settlement House in Queensbridge New York, she founded S.I.S.T.A (Socially Intelligent Sisters Taking Action) a mentoring program for teen-age girls where she worked to empower them to become the creators of their destinies. In addition she developed a dance program, which lead to an exchange with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Through her teaching and travels Ms. Howard began to observe a universal disenchantment and disconnection in teenagers that disturbed her, thus she set out to address it. Combining her philosophies of life and teaching, with the skills she garnered through outreach programs with diverse communities, she developed the personal development workshop Principles of Engagement: Connecting Youth to the Infinite Possibilities Within which gives teens a set of workable tools to increase their levels of success at tasks, and goals not only in dance, and all aspect of their lives.
Theresa Ruth Howard is certainly diverse and multifaceted as an artist, and is moved to both write and create work; however she sees every student she encounters as a work in progress, and the potential to change the world one person at a time.
The only was to make this world a better place it to be better people in it!
French lingerie company Jours Après Lunes has made a line of Lounge Wear for little girls. What the HELL is wrong with people?
When was the last time you saw a little girl “lounging”? and in underwear? ok ok so it’s underwear, but the suggestive nature and the obvious sexualization of the child models in the campaign is troublesome. It’s bad enough that they have the little girls dressed and posed like Nabokov’s Lolita, but the last underwear “booty” shoot of a little girl is just going to far. It’s like a catalog for pedophiles seriously, No Just NO!
Mommyrexia, the idea of staying thin while carrying your baby is now all the rage, well not only are women (especially women in the public eye) worried about being thin while pregnant, there is such pressure to “bounce back” after giving birth it that some women will go to extremes to be restored. While carrying her first child actress Jessica Alba raised eyebrows when she expressed her concern about losing her money making, sex symbol figure. Now carrying her second child she has once again expressed concerns about losing the post baby weightand is once again drawing heat for it. Where it sounds a bit shallow (given that you are carrying life which should be the most important thing) Her words are very extreme, but she has already admitted to having body issues, and struggling with eating disorders, and she makes her living with her figure-in Hollywood.
I think that Alba is very brave to publicly express the sentiments of many expectant mothers. They may not say it for fear of being judged as shallow and selfish, they have these feelings and harbor guilt for them when it’s probably a very common and natural feeling. It does not mean that they do not love their children or understand and make some sort of piece with their changed bodies, but don’t they have a right to feel whatever they feel about their bodies. I have dancer friends who have giving birth and were forever physically changed, and now struggle with feeling at home and in harmony with their new altered self, they love their children but their new bodies are something they have to come to terms with. Her is what Alba had to say:
Hosted by Huffington Post
A very slender and pre-baby bump Alba graces the cover of this month’s Lucky, who she told, “I have a hard time with portion control, so I have 1,200 calorie meals delivered. But I also work out, so basically I’m starving. It sucks. I drink a lot of water.”
“In the gym, I have like five things to distract me: TV, iPod, magazines. Working partners are good, too, so you can chat and not just drown in your own misery.”
Alba, who had her first child Honor with husband Cash Warren in 2008, has been open about body issues in the past, in 2010 she told GQ that since giving birth to her daughter, her breasts were saggy, she has cellulite and her hips were bigger, telling them she felt “every actress” is now better looking than her.
While Alba dropped the weight she gained after her first pregnancy quickly, it’s surprising and worrisome to hear her speaking about starving herself.
The actress has also spoken about her battle with anorexia. She told Entertainment Weekly that to prepare for her role as the ass-kicking Max Guevara on the Fox sci-fi series “Dark Angel,” she adopted an intense exercise program and at one point whittled herself down to 100 lbs. And in 2005 she told Glamour, “A lot of girls have eating disorders, and I did too. I got obsessed with it. When I went from a girl’s body to a woman’s body with natural fat in places, I freaked out. It makes you feel weird, like you’re not ready for that body.”
Here is a clip of Michelle from our Mothers and Daughters roundtable talking about how her pregnancy changed her body and her body image.
6 pounds, seriously? And you WONDER why women have issues?
Hosted by FitPerez
Ugh.
Cynthia De La Vega, the model who was crowned Miss Mexico at the Nuestra Belleza Mundo pageant has been stripped of her title for gaining weight – a whopping six pounds.
Organizers of the pageant claimed that she had a “lack of dedication and discipline,” but the 19-year-old insists it was strictly because of her weight gain. She describes how she felt when she found out she was no longer Miss Mexico:
“I was very sad and very deceived. I cried and cried and cried.”
Her coach allegedly gave her a specific diet plan via email, which consisted of “the same food during the same month.”
I am glad that she is protective of her daughter, and no I don’t think that Little Thylane should know about the “Buzz” which I might add is less negative but more concerned, and questioning. I guess she is talking about the Tumblr page that someone set up dedicated to the mini model. This “bad person” might well have been a fan, and assembled the girls work as an homage, which ended up as the spark for this controversy, and now the mother is feeling that she and her daughter are being unduly attacked. I get it but the reality is she let the child take all those photos, and perhaps one shoot at a time things seemed benign but when brought together it looks a certain way. And if this was a “bad person” with not so earnest intentions, well that is exactly what the uproar is about. This is an example of how you just can’t have things both ways. I hope that Thylane is all right and not feeling like she did anything “wrong” she is after all a child.
I posted this pic of legend Jane Fonda yesterday, she was “The Body” of her day and possible still is for the septuagenarians. Fonda opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about her struggle with body image and eating disorders for most of her life. Read what she has to say:
Body image, the 1950s, and Henry Fonda: “I was raised in the ’50s,” she explains. “I was taught by my father that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly. He was a good man, and I was mad for him, but he sent messages to me that fathers should not send: Unless you look perfect, you’re not going to be loved.”
She was a fanatic for exercise, and she battled bulimia for decades: “I wasn’t very happy from, I would say, puberty to 50? It took me a long time. It was in my 40s, and if you suffer from bulimia, the older you get, the worse it gets. It takes longer to recover from a bout. I had a career, I was winning awards, I was supporting nonprofits, I had a family.” One day she just stopped. “I had to make a choice: I live or I die.” She refocused, trying to “fill that empty space with something.” Then came the workouts. “Gloria Steinem said empowerment begins in the muscles.”
Vanities: “I’m vain. My arms are thin, but I’m vain about loose flesh. And so I’m careful that what I wear will show off my best parts, which are my waist and my butt.” That said, “I have people in my life who will say, ‘Honey, you’re trying too hard.’ I like being saucy, but I’m 73 and a half. I’m still trying to find my way between matronly and coltishness. Colt, not cult: C-O-L-T.”
OK!!! Jane Fonda was a Sex symbol in the ’70’s and if you ask me she is still in the game. In the ’80’s she was the workout queen complete with striped french cut leotards legwarmers and shiny tights! Where she has admitted to having some work done (a face lift, maybe two) this is about her body and that is all natural. What I think is so amazing about her is that she is proof that lifestyle is the key to longevity as well as looks!!! She is strong, fit, and vital. Work it out!
This is hard to fathom given that the Stock Market just crashed again, we are taking about raising the debt ceiling and it seems like the whole world is asking “Brother can you spare a dime?” Well it looks like some folks aren’t hurting. If Rhianna is spending this much imagine what Beyonce, or Lady Gaga are coughing up weekly? Maybe they should get together and bring down the country’s deficit!! (I’m only half kidding), Oh what price beauty….
You can’t fail to have noticed that Rihanna loves shaking things up in the hairstyle department – and now reports have emerged that her ever-changing barnet is costing her a bank-busting £14,000 a week.
According to the Daily Mail, the singer has been employing the services of hairstylist-to-the-stars, Ursula Stephen – at a cost of up to £2,000 a day.
A source told the paper: “Rihanna likes to pioneer new styles but it’s costing her a fortune.
“She makes several public appearances a week, and the cost soon stacks up.
“Ursula is a close confidante and they are together all the time.”
I thought this might be interesting to look at after the 10 year old Tylane Loubry Blondeau Vogue Paris controversy, I think that it might illustrate how with time things change as do our perceptions…
I found it on People Magazine’s archives
‘People like to hear that Brooke’s childhood is taken away from her,’ says Mom. ‘It isn’t’
“Brooke is a gift from God.”
—Teri Shields
Midway through her wrenchingly beautiful film, Pretty Baby, Brooke Shields is auctioned off in a New Orleans bordello. She plays a child prostitute with a disconcertingly angelic air: Her Toulouse-Lautrec pout is sensual, ethereal, mesmerizing. Yet her body—later seen naked—is a child’s, thin and gawky. “I can feel the steam,” she whispers to her successful bidder, mimicking coquettishness, “coming through my dress.”
On May 31 Brooke will be 13 years old. Tall for her age at 5’4″ (her father is 67″), Brooke is blessed with the most stunning new child’s face in movies since Elizabeth Taylor. The skin is flawless; eyes deep blue; lashes black; hair silken. The direct gaze is full of ambivalent sexuality. Now her scandalizing role in the R-rated film has plunged the former child model into an international furor. Pretty Baby has been banned outright in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Saskatchewan. No less a moral arbiter than Rona Barrett solemnly advised her TV audience that the movie is “child pornography.” Others have attacked its French director Louis (Lacombe, Lucien) Malle as a combination of Humbert Humbert and Roman Polanski.
He gets off lightly compared to Brooke’s divorced manager mother, Teri Shields, 44. “The press has referred to me as a stage mother, a frustrated actress living through Brooke and even a one-woman film-wrecking crew,” Teri admits. On the set Brooke is sweet; Teri is salty but clearly a favorite with the crew. She can also be meddlesome and was briefly banned from the set of Pretty Baby. “They can say what they want about me,” Teri explains. “But Brooke can’t fight back. That’s why I’m here. I’m not a stage mother. I’m Brooke’s mother. The most important thing is that I love Brooke, and it’s fun to make her happy.”
Brooke seems to have kept her perspective over the Pretty Baby uproar. “It’s only a role,” she explains. “I’m not going to grow up and be a prostitute. If I were in a Walt Disney movie people would never ask me if the part would affect my life. That’s so dumb.” For all their shock value, Brooke’s “nude” scenes were shot with her wearing a body stocking, with one exception. When Violet (the role Brooke plays) chastely poses naked for the photographer Bellocq (Keith Carradine), Malle closed the set to everyone but himself and cinematographer Sven Nykvist. “I knew it would be tasteful,” says Teri. “Anybody who calls it child pornography has not seen the damn thing. Rona Barrett is a fool. I don’t mind Brooke being called a sex symbol. But nymphet and Lolita rub me the wrong way.” Malle, who picked her over 300 auditioners, admiringly calls Brooke “a natural. She carried the entire picture on her shoulders.”
Creating a healthier body image through Acceptance, Appreciation and Respect
