Why Women's Health Magazine is Replacing Fitness Models with Readers in a Popular Feature
Women's Health Magazine is making a move to showcase more diverse body types in its pages. Starting this month, the magazine will permanently replace fitness models with physically fit readers of all types and sizes in its popular "15-Minute Workout" column. Site Director Robin Hilmantel joins us with more on the change.
Hilmantel says the magazine noticed most mainstream workout videos and print layouts are populated by the stereotypical "fit" woman: slender, toned but not too cut, and without a pinch of fat.
Women's Health tapped experts to explain, in technical terms, what makes someone physiologically fit. Included on the list of metabolic metrics are resting heart rate, VO2 max, and body composition. Weight was not on the list.
Hilmantel points to the rise of fitness icons, such as ballerina Misty Copeland and yogi Jessamyn Stanley as examples of healthy diversity.
Children who lived closer to natural gas wells in heavily drilled western Pennsylvania were more likely to develop a relatively rare form of cancer, and nearby residents of all ages had an increased chance of severe asthma reactions, researchers said in reports released Tuesday evening.
Surgeons transplanted a pig’s kidney into a brain-dead man and for over a month it's worked normally — a critical step toward an operation the New York team hopes to eventually try in living patients.
