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    Lilit Marcus, Shine Contributor

    Lilit Marcus, Shine Contributor

  • Plus-Size Model Wins Praise for Posting Unretouched Bikini Photo

    Australian model Robyn Lawley is no stranger to body talk. The 25-year-old chose health over mainstream success when she switched from straight-size to plus-size modeling, and since doing so she has covered magazines like Vogue Italia, Elle France, and Cosmopolitan Australia and become the face of Mango's new plus size line, Violeta.

  • Woman Caught When She Posts Stolen Dress Selfie on Instagram

    A 27-year-old Illinois woman who stole several items from a clothing store was busted after she posted pictures of herself in a shoplifted dress on Facebook.

  • 'The Hairy Legs Club' Encourages Women to Stop Caring About Body Hair

    A new blog called The Hairy Legs Club is empowering women who choose not to shave their body hair by asking them to submit photos of their unshaved legs and share stories about when they stopped shaving and why

  • Nordstrom Latest Brand to Redefine Beauty by Featuring Model With Disability

    Two new campaigns, one from Nordstrom and another from JCPenney, are incorporating disabled models in order to help redefine the meaning of the word "beautiful."

  • Lawyer Quits Her Job With Most Creative Departure Memo Ever

    A New York City lawyer has quit her job in possibly the most creative way ever. The unnamed attorney, who decided to leave her high-pressure corporate gig in order to pursue her real dream of being a cartoonist/illustrator, drew a visual to explain why she was resigning. She posted the series, "My Life in Law (a short story)" on her new website, DepartureMemo.com.

  • Model Chrissy Teigen Says Forever 21 Has a Body-Image Problem

    Model Chrissy Teigen, who appeared on the cover of this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, is lashing out at fast fashion retailer Forever 21, saying that they once fired her from a shoot because they deemed her "too fat."

  • Photographer Documents Beloved Dog's Final Day on Earth

    Dukey, a three-legged black labrador retriever from Houston, Texas, "traveled over the rainbow bridge" yesterday. As his beloved owner, Jordan Roberts, prepared to say goodbye to her beloved pet, she asked her friend, photographer Robyn Arouty, to take on a special project - documenting "Dukey"'s final day on earth before being put to sleep. Arouty, an animal lover, agreed, and their beautiful final product has gone viral online thanks to features on Buzzfeed and The Daily Mail.

  • Fitness Blogger Takes BMI Standards to Task

    Amber Rogers is a health and fitness blogger who has documented her journey through health and weight loss since 2008, when she realized that she was following unhealthy patterns. However, Rogers recently realized that despite her weight loss, she still fell into the "overweight" category of the BMI (body mass index), a government chart that sets healthy weight standards. She's now calling for a change to the BMI formula, arguing that it doesn't fit the realities of the average woman's body.

  • Photographer Captures Tornado in Couple's Wedding Pictures

    Saskatchewan, Canada-based photographer Colleen Niska got the surprise of her career when a tornado made a surprise appearance in the background of a couple's wedding photos. The couple, whom she has not identified, were married in Saskatchewan recently, and Niska shared the pictures on her Facebook page with the comment "I've dreamed about a day like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Could NOT wait to post these! Pretty sure this will only happen once in my lifetime!" The beautiful blue sky in the background is offset by a swirling cloud in the background, but the bride and groom walk blissfully along the road hand-in-hand, unaware of what's behind them.

  • How One Summer Camp Is Giving Kids With Special Needs a Better Future

    Camp Ramah, a group of North American summer camps throughout founded in 1947, is pioneering an innovative program to teach real-world job skills to its campers with special needs. Three of the group's eight overnight camps have the program, where young people with disabilities and/or special needs can learn everything from office etiquette to how to live with roommates. The program, which is currently only available to young people of Jewish descent, is now a model for camps all over the country who want to provide similar services.

  • The Story Behind the Viral Dad-Hugging-Doctor Photo

    A photo of a grateful dad hugging a doctor has gone viral thanks in part to the bittersweet story behind it. In the photo, Andrew Hanson of Boise, Idaho, hugs Dr. Bryan Hodges, who just delivered Hanson's son Karson. But behind the happy hug is a sadder story - last year, Dr. Hodges delivered Hanson's first child, a baby boy named Klayton, who experienced an oxygen shortage at birth and died six days later.

  • Special Needs Mom Finds Success as a (Legal!) Moonshiner

    Although Troylyn Ball and her family moved from Austin, Texas to Asheville, North Carolina, to find a climate that would be better for her sons' allergies, the new city provided a whole new life. Ball, 54, was able to afford in-home care for two of her three sons, who suffer from a rare genetic disease that has symptoms similar to nonverbal autism, and for the first time in her life had the ability to work outside the home. And when her new neighbors came over to say hello, many toting a jar of moonshine, Ball figured out what work she wanted to do - distilling spirits.

  • Woman's '100 Dates' Project Helps Her Find Happiness Instead of 'The One'

    When Elise Moreno, 25, graduated from college and moved back to her hometown of San Francisco, she came to two realizations - she'd gone from long term relationship to long term relationship without "dating" time in between, and she was unfamiliar with what it was like to live in San Francisco as an adult. So she decided to tackle both of those deficiencies at once by launching 100 Dates of Summer, a project where she goes on dates with guys and explores new parts of town at the same time.

  • Mattel Promises to Manufacture More Bald Dolls for Kids With Cancer

    Barbie has been an astronaut, a chef, and even President of the United States. But her friend Ella is a survivor. Ella is a bald doll Mattel made to inspire little boys and girls suffering from diseases like cancer and alopecia, which cause them to lose their hair. The dolls are distributed to kids via a network of children's hospitals, which is how California mom Melissa Bumstead got one for her four-year-old daughter Grace, who is battling leukemia. But when Bumstead learned there were only a small number of the dolls and not every kid would be able to get one, she petitioned Mattel to create more, and the company said yes.

  • Inspirational Burn Survivor Appears on the Cover of Australian Women's Magazine

    Normally, women's magazines have actresses, singers, and models on the cover. But the Australian magazine The Australian Women's Weekly (AWW) is winning high praise for breaking the mold and featuring Turia Pitt, a former model-turned-mining engineer who was burned over 65 percent of her body when a bush fire broke out while she was competing in an ultramarathon.

  • Get Kerry Washington's 'Scandal' Style on a 'Limited' Budget

    Olivia Pope, the Washington, DC "fixer" played by Kerry Washington on "Scandal," is one of the best-dressed characters on television. And now fans of the show will be able to score lower-priced versions of Olivia's best looks thanks to new "Scandal"-inspired collection launching at The Limited in late September.

  • Prince George Named Britain's Best-Dressed Royal

    He may not even be a year old yet, but Prince George has just won his first award - the best dressed British royal! The fourth in line to the throne won 23 percent of the vote in a poll sponsored by the baby website My1stYears.com, narrowly beating out his own mom, style icon Kate Middleton, who came in second.

  • Orthodox Jewish Woman Fights for the Right to a Divorce

    When Rivky Stein was just 18 years old, she married Yoel Weiss, an older man from a wealthy family who had strongly courted her. However, as soon as the wedding was over, Stein saw a scary side of her new husband. He became physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive, sometimes locking her in a room for weeks at a time and denying her enough to eat. Although her Orthodox Jewish community frowned on divorce, Stein didn't want her two young kids to grow up in an abusive home and managed to escape with them. But her nightmare is far from over. Because of Orthodox Jewish marriage laws, which require a man's permission to have a "get" (religious divorce), Stein is now known as an "agunah," or "a chained woman."

  • Paralyzed Woman to Become Mom After Friend Volunteers to Be Surrogate

    When Rachelle Friedman was permanently paralyzed after being tossed into a swimming pool at her bachelorette party, she refused to let her physical changes get in the way of her dreams. However, there was one problem - although she was physically able to carry a child to term, doing so meant she would have to go off of lifesaving medicine that could potentially injure her fetus. So Rachelle, now 28, and her husband Chris Chapman made the decision to pursue surrogacy, and help came from a surprising a place - a college friend who offered to be their gestational carrier.

  • Family's Grief Turns to Joy After Medical Breakthrough

    When Seth and Hindy Poupko Galena welcomed their daughter Ayelet, the new parents were over the moon. But soon, Ayelet began having digestion problems that their pediatrician couldn't fix, and eventually Ayelet was diagnosed dyskeratosis congenita, a rare genetic disorder that makes it hard for the body to produce healthy cells. Despite a bone marrow transplant, Ayelet couldn't win her fight against the disease and died a few weeks after her second birthday. But Ayelet's brief life had a greater purpose - a study that she participated in throught the National Institute of Health (NIH) resulted in a groundbreaking advancement and enabled her parents to have another child.