For some women, reinventing themselves is about survival; for others, it’s about new beginnings. For Cherokee Black, a former model who left the industry to take care of an ill sister and is now returning decades later, reinvention is “a regular occurrence” in her life. For her, “reinvention” means “to transform with grace.”

Oscar-worthy films for the fall; women journalists in war zones; Instagramming your world; Women’s Equality Day; and an experiment in avoiding mirrors for a month.

Ah, the sheer pleasure of taking off a bad bra! Fitters at these shops stand ready (without tape measure) ensure that you’ll never have to buy a bad one again.

Nowadays, sizes are all over the place. In one store, I’m a Size 6. Down the block, I’m an 8. In the course of a single shopping trip, I can go from Small to Medium to Large. In each new store, when a saleswoman asks, “What size are you?” I respond, “I have no idea. You tell me.”

Filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders talks about his HBO documentary, “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now,” which explores cultural perceptions of age and beauty over the past few decades through the lens of past supermodels.

This week’s blogs celebrated a 14-year-old’s successful petition against impossible beauty standards; provided a defense of Singledom; took a judicious look at “having it all”; and extolled the joys of creativity and compassion.

A weight-loss plateau: It’s a very scary, very real scenario. But before you decide to totally surrender to the fact that the scale may never move again, ponder the advice nutritionist Keri Gans gives her patients.

Back in the bad old days, as Perry Barber’s post on Title IX notes, girls and women were assumed to be too frail for (or uninterested in) strenuous sports. Long-distance running? “Very questionable . . . an arduous sport would give you big legs, a mustache, hair on your chest, and your uterus would fall out,” Kathrine Switzer, who dared to enter the all-male Boston Marathon in 1969, declares scornfully.

By Shelley Singer

“No one in Europe wears a one-piece,” she said. “Not fat old ladies, not pregnant women, not women with mastectomies or abdominal scars. Get yourself a bikini or you’ll feel like an idiot at the pool.” If ever I was going to wear one again, this was the time.

By Mary Ann Smorra

Argentine tango is the scat of a jazz song—the notes floating over and under the composer’s initial offering. Improvisation!

By Patricia Yarberry Allen, M.D.

What’s going on? How can find out if I am at risk? If I am, can I get someone to pay for the removal of my implants?

By Cecilia Ford, Ph.D.

For some, dating through a device is often preferable to face time. But for the rest of us, connecting this way can still be still a awkward, unsettling, and confusing.

By Agnes Krup

Last August, some 40 hours before reporting to Mount Sinai Hospital for my surgery, I went to Lowe’s and bought a power drill.

By Tish Jett

What we sometimes forget is that beauty, style, sensuality, generosity, wit, and charm have no expiration dates. We must learn to believe this and act accordingly.

By Patricia Yarberry Allen, M. D. and Hilda Hutcherson, M. D.

In their last conversation, Dr. Pat and Dr. Hilda opened the toy box. Here, the sex-toy discussion moves on to solo pleasures and gets down to basics: how much vibration, where, and how.