Ilona Maher, Jean Baudrillard, and Authentic Body Positivity at the Olympics
Bodies are for excellence, not appearance
This week, Featured Author Helen Roy comments on how bronze medallist Ilona Maher and philosopher Jean Baudrillard provide insights on what it means to have a woman’s body. Our bodies are about more than appearance—they are for excellence.
Ilona Maher, Jean Baudrillard, and Authentic Body Positivity at the Olympics
Helen Roy
I find Ilona Maher refreshing and authentic precisely because she is not ideological. She embraces excellence and physical prowess for its own sake. Her bigness is a function of her excellence, which is primary. Her visage is not based on or created with the purpose of the subversion of the gender essentialists or the transgender ideologues, but she subverts them nonetheless, simply by being real, excellent, and unique without pretense.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism
This week: Jennifer Block on Planned Parenthood and testosterone, Eliza Mondegreen on the Olympic Boxing Scandal, Mary Eberstadt on the baby bust's personal implications, gaslighting Scottish rape victims, easing childbirth costs, Fairer Disputations recommends a book—and more!
From the Archives
ICYMI: a plea for us to consider the needs of all moms when creating family policy.
Moving Past the Mommy Wars: Pro-Family Policy for the Rest of Us
Patrick Brown and Serena Sigillito
“Today, ‘having it all’ looks very different than either side in the early 2000s mommy wars could have imagined. Likewise, a modern pro-family approach to politics must look different than the rhetoric and approach of generations past.”