VIRGIN.BEAUTY.B!TCH

Dr. Avrum Weiss is a seasoned psychologist and author of four books, including the provocatively titled Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men's Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. That book is the subject of a conversation you can hear on VBB epi XXX. This time around, we explore even more provocative topics, including Dr. Weiss's insightful observations of pervasive social media discussio...

Annemarie du LeBohn, AKA The Iron Butterfly, thanks to her exploits as a successful triathlon competitor, is also a TEDx star admired for her profoundly moving and vulnerable conversations that reveal her darkest days as a rape victim. Annemarie shares her transformation journey from victim to victor and highlights an often neglected concept - Post-Traumatic Growth. Annemarie courageously tells of...

Teresa L'Heureux is an intelligent, bright, competent woman; she's an outgoing, positive, encouraging, loving individual and a beautiful human being inside out. We know so because we asked her. We asked her because we couldn’t understand how such a proud and strong woman fell victim to one man who convinced her she was less than loveable and turned her into someone he could abuse anytime and in an...

Sarah Tunstall is a survivor and advocate against human trafficking. Her journey began at the age of 15 when she was recruited into the sex trade by a friend. Already distanced from her family, Sarah found herself trapped in a tumultuous cycle for the next two and a half years, as two different traffickers controlling her life. Having been cut off from social connections, rebuilding her life becam...

Julia Williamson is the author of a thought-provoking article titled, Sometime In My 50s, I Became Invisible To Men. Here's What I Didn't Expect . In her piece, Julia makes the point that the problem of women, age, and perceived loss of attractiveness is real and pervasive. What's remarkable is this: Julia's writing wasn't her issuing a complaint; it was more a proclamation of her pure relief. Fin...

Kathi Sohn wrote her first book, You Made It Up, Now Stop Believing It, following 25 years of working with her late husband, David W. Sohn. He created the groundbreaking work, the Body Memory Process, which empowers people to discover and then release self-limiting and often self-destructive beliefs they created out of emotional events in early childhood. Kathi believes wellness, happiness, and pr...

Jennifer Arthurton was once a high-functioning Fortune 500 Corporate Executive with ten consecutive years of outstanding performance reviews. Confident and established in her role, Jennifer chose to believe that ageism against women in the workplace was a moribund practice. That all changed when, after returning from a brief time off, she discovered a younger employee had replaced her. That slap i...

Rissa Miller is a fearless advocate for the term 'witch,' and she has faced her fair share of prejudice. Recognizing the longstanding stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding witches, Rissa delves into how the label has been reckless, insensitive, and deadly to women. She questions what qualifies a woman as a witch, and whether engaging in divination work, practicing reiki, or even collecting cr...

Our guest, Kristen Donnelly (MSW, M.Div, Ph. D.), is an award-winning, four-time TEDx speaker, international empathy educator, and researcher with two decades of experience in helping people understand the beauty in our differences and the power of inclusiveness. Kristen is a champion for social change and an expert on many poignant topics, including Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Intersectiona...

Christopher and Heather welcome back ghostwriter and editor Juliane Bergmann, author of an influential article in Huffington Post titled "So I thought parents who forgot their kids in their cars were monsters. Then I did it!" It's an emotional, even tearful conversation with Juliane where she shares a personal experience of accidentally leaving her child in a car. She expresses deep shame of havin...

David Jurasek is a father, husband, Sensei, and Registered Psychotherapist working with boys and men for over 20 years. He's worked within a clinical context, in a communal setting, and within various men's groups. However, despite his expertise and experience, David found himself continuing to struggle in intimate relationships, especially with his wife. Inspired by Martin Luther King's words on...

In this episode, Christopher & Heather continue our conversation around the book "The Creation of Patriarchy" by Gerder Lerner. Her groundbreaking work peals back history to see the origins and evolution of patriarchal systems. We lament how a once harmonious relationship between women and men spiralled into a hierarchy of power for one and subordination, bordering on slavery for the other. We...

Patriarchy has never been a secret; it's in our faces from birth to death. Maybe that's why we don't talk about it. Most men hear the word Patriarchy and associate it with women's liberation or feminism and summarily dismiss it as irrelevant to their own experiences. On the other hand, women either believe that Patriarchy is a natural consequence of biological differences between women and men or...

Is it true? It is literally impossible to be a woman. Are you beautiful and smart but still think you're not good enough? Do you need to be extraordinary but still feel you're doing it all wrong? Is staying young, pretty, and thin the expectation, even when age says different? Is being the good girl your ideal, so you can't be rude, selfish, show off, fail, show fear, and never step out of line? D...

Kathy Caprino is no movie critic, but her critique of the Barbie movie and the power of the patriarchy inspired us to search her out. We found someone who was once a corporate executive, but even with career success, she struggled inwardly to feel successful. Surviving sexual harassment, gender discrimination, toxic colleagues, narcissistic bosses, and zero work-life balance, she didn’t feel value...

We have no reason to be obsessed with Barbie, but since seeing the movie, we’ve been finding deeper and deeper messages between the lines. The latest is good boys vs bad boys. Is there a lesson to be learned from women choosing bad boys like Ken — after his conversion to the patriarch — while ignoring nice guys like Allen who support women and their struggle to be free of the patriarch? It’s an in...

How might your partner, or potential future partner, react if you asked him to see the Barbie movie with you? Since the movie's debut, women have used the "Barbie ask" as a litmus test for evaluating compatible partners. A Yes can be an insight into how considerate, open-minded, or empathetic he is. But what if your partner shuts you down before learning why this event might be important to you? C...

“It is literally impossible to be a woman.” So begins the monologue that breaks the women of Barbieland out of their patriarchal trance and back into power over a world they created. That dialogue reminds Christopher and Heather of why we created VBB Podcast and continue to host conversations that connect women to sources of their strength, even in a man-made world. Spoiler alert, in this episode,...

She didn't create Barbie but was hired to help revive and diversify the image of the world's most iconic toy. Long before the blockbuster movie, VBB welcomed cultural expert Jess Weiner to take us on tour through the boardrooms of global brands like Mattel and Dove and share how the women's movement has influenced these corporate giants. For over two decades, Jess has continued to be a grassroots...

Dana Killion is an accomplished author and a skilled storyteller known for her captivating mystery novels, but in her powerful debut memoir, Where the Shadows Dance, is where she lays bare the slow drip of the trauma she fought through to save the man she loved but in the process, how she became collateral damage in his self-destruction. Subtitled, He Got Sober; I Got Broken, Dana delves into the...

Gina Cloud is a deeply devoted teacher, author, speaker, and advocate of all things women. Gina is a rebel and a revolutionary determined to free women from the societal, biological, and personal prisons they have endured for millennia. Using her extensive body of work developed over 25 years, Gina is passionately committed to spearheading an evolution and revolution of the ideologies that “define...

Nichole Crawford is a U.S. Army veteran with combat service in Iraq post-9/11. Like many veterans, Nichole believed that coming home not wearing a body bag or suffering a debilitating injury made her one of the lucky ones. War was something she could brush aside simply by surviving it. But years after her honourable discharge, Nichole suffered MST (Military Sexual Trauma) and PTSD (Post-Traumatic...

Kate Brookes (a.k.a. Transister Mom) is an award-winning TV reporter/anchor turned producer/filmmaker who, as field produced for The Discovery Channel, has interviewed celebrities like Beyonce to Barbara Walters. She's written for Today.com, and emcees galas, live events, and webcasts for non-profits and Fortune 500 companies. As a mom to one 13-year-old son and one 13-year-old transgender daughte...

Laurin Mayeno is an equity and justice consultant and author of a banned children's book. Laurin grew up in a mixed-race environment with no books to help her understand her mixed-race identity. As a mother, she was doubly devastated when her nonbinary queer child had no resources to help them affirm who they were. Watching her child struggle with loneliness and isolation and being mistreated by o...

Juliane Bermann has credentials as a technical writer, book coach, ghostwriter, and editor. And it's through her written words we learned about her in a Huffington Post article titled: My Mom Would've Been Thrilled To Know I Was Queer. Instead, I Stayed Closeted For 25 Years. Juliane wrote the piece because she rarely sees stories like hers that address the complex reasons why people self-closet,...