Rebecca Bodenheimer

Fat shaming Trump has been widely accepted and popular among progressives and liberals for years.
Fat shaming doesn't harm Trump, but rather average fat people, who internalize public fat-shaming and get the message that their body is a subject of ridicule and should be a source of shame.
Trump is one of the most inept and harmful presidents in our country's history, but he should be critiqued on his words and actions, not on his body.

What do you think of when you hear the word “liverwurst?” Many people think of something gross, usually liver (which, although pooh-poohed by Americans, is very popular in many cuisines across the world). Then there’s the German word “wurst” (meaning “sausage”), which sounds exactly like the English word for something that’s the least likable, the most inferior. Even translated fully into English (liver sausage), it sounds horrendous.

“The Good Doctor” is set to culminate its two-part season premiere Monday, Nov. 9, on ABC. The show, set at a fictional hospital in San Jose, was the first returning medical drama to introduce the COVID-19 pandemic into its version of reality, though other network procedurals will be following suit, including ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Station 19” and NBC’s “Chicago” franchise.
“Good Doctor” showrunner David Shore considered not taking on the pandemic at all, telling Entertainment Weekly he ...

As streaming services expand their content catalogs, the inclusion of classic titles from past decades shows us that inclusivity on TV didn’t start in our current era.
The enduring popularity of “Friends,” one of Netflix’s most-streamed shows in 2019 before it left for HBO Max, suggests that it’s not just Gen Xers watching nostalgically. Streaming is introducing older shows — particularly comedies from the 1990s — to a new generation of watchers, and Gen Z is eagerly tuning in (sometimes with...

A record number of women are running for office this year, building off the success they had in 2018. To illustrate just how historic Election Day could be, we spotlight five women running for office for the first time ever.
Less than two years ago, Candace Valenzuela was a relative stranger to the world of national politics. In 2017, the Texas native ran for and won a seat on the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board. She told Texas Monthly she felt drawn to becoming more politically engage...

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, adults with elderly parents and relatives are thinking about how to celebrate in the middle of a pandemic that’s still not under control. Many factors go into the decision of whether to celebrate virtually or in-person with older adults, who are at a much higher risk of becoming severely ill if they contract COVID-19.
Dr. Amy Paul, a Richmond, Virginia-based geriatrician who previously worked at Virginia Commonwealth University, believes the safest way i...

There is little nuance in public discourse about Cuba. Even six decades after the rupture between the United States and Cuba ushered in by the socialist Cuban Revolution in 1959, polarized views—from the anti-communist Miami Cuban exile community or from leftist apologists for the Castro regimes—still dominate in the media. But this dichotomy doesn’t represent the majority of Cubans’ perspectives or even those held by Cuban Americans.
Belly of The Beast is a new Havana-based media project hea...

Afro-Cuban music is made up of a variety of traditions, and includes instruments with diverse origins. Many African ethnic groups were forcibly brought to Cuba during the transatlantic slave trade, and when they collided with Spanish culture under colonialism, cultural fusion ensued.
The four main African ethnic groups brought to Cuba were the Yoruba (from modern-day southwestern Nigeria and Benin), the Bantu (from the two Congos and Angola), the Calabar (from southeastern Nigeria and Cameroo...

Despite making up the second-largest ethnic group in the U.S., Latinos have, until recently, been sorely underrepresented across all forms of media, especially in TV and film.
This fact was glaringly clear during the 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards, where only one Latino actor was nominated — Alexis Bledel, whose family is of Argentine descent, in the guest actress category for her role on “The Handmaid’s Tale” — despite stellar performances by Harvey Guillén (“What We Do in the Shadows”), Tony Da...

Small businesses have been crushed by the economic crisis. Research shows those owned by women have declined by at least 25%.
It’s no secret that small businesses across the US have been in crisis since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. A report released by Yelp last week indicates that over 163,000 businesses have closed as of Aug. 31. Roughly 98,000 of them, or 60%, have shut down for good.
Among small business closures, women and non-white entrepreneurs have been affected at dra...

Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Cuban government has consistently criticized the United States for failing to address institutionalized racism. During his famed trip to New York in 1960 to attend the United Nations General Assembly meeting, Fidel Castro complained of unfair treatment in a Midtown Manhattan hotel and ended up at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, meeting with Malcolm X and making no bones about standing with African Americans in their fight for racial equality. Cuba has also...

Ever since Bay Area school districts announced they would begin the fall 2020 school year with distance learning due to the still-increasing rate of COVID-19 infection across the region, parents have been scrambling to figure out how to manage their children’s schooling. One solution many are considering is “pandemic pods,” small learning groups organized by parents who want or need to team up to make distance learning feasible.
Parents’ reasons for forming or joining pods are varied: some wo...

Working moms are worried about their careers as they’re forced to shoulder the burden of helping their kids navigate distance learning.
“I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom,” said Portland-based attorney Marissa Korbel. “I don’t have anything against it—I was raised by one. I think it’s lovely and great if that’s what you want to do and you can afford to do it.”
But it’s not what Korbel signed up for. Nonetheless, like many other working moms across the U.S., she is currently staring down...

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, television has begun a shift toward more complex and humanizing portrayals of sexual assault. Shows like HBO’s “I May Destroy You” and “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” are recent examples of this progress. However, many popular shows still rely on misleading tropes about sexual assault, or handle the issue in a one-off manner that ignores the way the trauma lingers for many survivors.
Because there are many more bad handlings of sexual assault on TV than there ar...

Summer 2020 felt like a leap forward in terms of the portrayal of sexual assault on TV. Two HBO shows exploring the subject — “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” and “I May Destroy You,” which airs its season finale Monday, Aug. 24 — have been hailed by critics for their nuanced exploration of consent and survivor-focused storytelling approach.
An early episode of “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” brought to light the abysmally short sentencing convicted rapists in California faced in the 1970s. According to...