Love 'em or loathe 'em, this is one tattoo that is worth its weight in ink. An Ottawa woman's elaborate chest design has been seen and admired by thousands online.
According to an article in the CBC, three-time cancer survivor Kelly Davidson regards her "fantastical" landscape, which includes a fairy, butterflies, flowers and a mountain, as a "badge of honour and strength."
“I decided to turn this negative thing into a positive, and put a beautiful piece of artwork in place of something that to a lot of people is really devastating,” she told the Toronto Star.
Not surprisingly, the photo of the 34 year old garnered 700,000 likes and over 94,000 shares after she posted it on a Facebook forum featuring the tattoos of cancer survivors called Why We Ink.
Incredibly, following a double mastectomy, Davidson opted for the art after surviving Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast and thyroid cancers.
'My tattoo symbolizes a transformation, my metamorphosis, like a butterfly I changed on the outside but remained the same on the inside," wrote Davidson.
Ink isn't for everybody, but her bravery is humbling, much as that of this celebrity currently staring down breast cancer.
Got a memorable tattoo? Has it helped you heal?
I don’t know about you but catwalk images scare the bejeezus out of me. We shudder at images of the Holocaust and Biafra, yet for some reason extreme malnutrition and starvation is deemed culturally acceptable in fashion.
A new book by a former Australian Vogue editor casts a harrowing shadow over an industry where models regularly wind up hospitalized and put on a drip due to self-induced starvation. And by all accounts appearances are deceiving.
“You know how you read interviews where models insist that they eat a lot? Not true,” Kirstie Clements, who worked in the industry for 13 years, reveals in an article in the Independent. “The only way they can get that thin is to stop eating. They eat tissue paper to stave off the hunger pangs—literally ball it up and eat it.”
The Vogue Factor is an expose of a sick industry by an insider. In it she recalls a three-day fashion shoot. She never once saw the model eat, not even when she “could hardly stand or open her eyes.”
Hats off to Clements for her bravery and candor. Women need to know what really happens on the other side of the lens so we can stop buying into this twisted fantasy once and for all.
Exciting news for chocolate lovers (show me a homo sapien who isn’t?). The white-coated people in labs have stumbled upon an ingenious way for you to savour the flavour without all the fat. According to an article in the Independent, a healthier chocolate has been devised by substituting “cocoa butter and milk fats with fruit juice.”
By adding small amounts of orange, cranberry or apple juice, the chocolate gains a slightly fruity taste and can apparently be added to all forms of chocolate. Most people already know that dark chocolate goes particularly well paired with orange or cranberry, so what’s most surprising is that this concoction has taken science so long to engineer.
If all goes well, you’ll have the researchers at the University of Warwick to thank for revolutionizing chocolate.
“We have established the chemistry that's a starting point for healthier chocolate confectionary,” said lead researcher Dr Stefan Bon. “This approach maintains the things that make chocolate ‘chocolatey,’ but with fruit juice instead of fat. Now we're hoping the food industry will take the next steps and use the technology to make tasty, lower-fat chocolate bars and other candy…”
(Yes, please, food industry. If you’re listening, please get on this. We’re counting on you!)
The article states that a 57g portion of dark chocolate currently contains around 13g of fat, and most of it the unhealthy saturated variety. But chocolate also contains plant flavonoids and antioxidants known to boost health.
Are you a purist or would you eat the new fruity chocolate?
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