Blog Posts by ForbesWoman

Does size really matter? When it comes to your bust, it seems to.

Credit: Rolling StoneToday I'm thinking about breasts-all the misery, anxiety, pride and power that come with them. I remember undressing by the pool at age 12 or so, secretly throwing glances at the other girls' chests and nervously comparing my own. Did I have enough? Too much?

Many years later, I'm more often at work than by the pool, but the same questions of measuring up endure. Clearly I'm not alone. A New York Times story recently claimed that throngs of A-cup women, proud of their small chests, are discarding padding for a more natural look. Meanwhile, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports that women are 91% of cosmetic surgery patients, and breast augmentation has been the most popular procedure since 2006. In the last ten years, the number of breast augmentations increased by 36%. Not exactly the picture of contentment.

The issue becomes particularly confusing in the workplace. For those who have, questions arise about

For the second year running, ForbesWoman has gathered the data and crunched the numbers to determine the U.S. cities that offer the most to working moms.

To calculate our list we began with the 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S. while working under the notion that "best" means different things to different women. Safety, of course, is important, and great schools and health care also all play a part--but when it comes to quality of life for high-achieving women, there are other components to consider.

Click Here for The Full Ranking of Best Cities For Working Mothers

Job opportunities, high earnings potential and a budget-friendly cost of living come into play in choosing a great city, not to mention employment rates (ideally high) as well as women's average weekly earnings. But it's also important for moms to look into other factors too, like health care. What good is your six-figure salary if you can't reach a doctor when your child is running a fever?

Oprah Winfrey: Forbes' Most Powerful Celebrity, one of the world's richest people and a leading role model, to boot?

Cheered by their successes, like Meg Whitman's recent GOP primary win in California, and inspired by their generosity, like Melinda Gates, who has pledged more than $650 million to public schools through The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we began making our list.

In Pictures: 30 Utterly Inspiring Role Models

But role models mean different things to different people--some of us look for guidance in business, some in our personal lives, some of us strive to make the world a better place each day, some admire trailblazers--and so we reached out to the ForbesWoman communities on Facebook and Twitter to determine the most moving, motivating--in short, inspiring--women in the world today. And after "mom," who is championed over any other contender, Oprah Winfrey leads the pack for the most inspirational role model.

Our readers call Winfrey a "modern successful woman of

In the U.S. we like to trumpet that women now make up half the workforce and are attaining nearly half of law, medical and business degrees. Television producers are picking up on the trend as new shows increasingly focus on professional women with some fairly dazzling careers.

"Women are leading shows now, and the focus is on their interesting careers," says Lizbeth Scordo, Yahoo TV editor. "There's been an influx of high-powered female characters in the last decade."

Whether the genre is comedy, drama or reality, cameras are following women into the workplace, and they're no longer confined to the role of receptionist. (Though it was hard not to love Pam Beasley, long the receptionist from The Office.) Now TV career women are attorneys, surgeons, detectives and business execs.

Twelve TV Career Women We Can't Help But Love


"They have progressed in terms of job," explains Ann M. Savage, Ph.D., professor of media studies at Butler University in Indianapolis. "We see more women as

With today's budget-conscious brides no longer keen to splurge on uber-expensive wedding gowns, retailers and designers are responding with gorgeous dresses at a fraction of the cost.

By Leah Bourne

When Rebecca Selvenis, who works in Human Resources in Google's New York office, set out looking for a dress for her upcoming wedding, she had three goals in mind--to find something beautiful, romantic and, most importantly, inexpensive. It's a sentiment echoed by brides-to-be across the country. Sure, they want a knockout dress for their wedding, but these days many don't consider it an expense worth maxing out a credit card or becoming indebted to a family member. This comes as a big cultural shift from just a few years ago, when women often spent more than they could afford on their dream dresses.

Call it the H&M effect. Today's brides are expecting high-design wedding dresses for a fraction of the cost of a designer dress.

According the Knot's 2009 Real Weddings Survey, the average

Americans are obsessed with dieting, and will do just about anything to get the weight off.

By Jenna Goudreau

During a summer of skimpy bathing suits and bare sundresses, many women are thinking about one number. It's not the number of diapers they need to cart to the Hamptons or the balance of their bank accounts. This season most women will be obsessing about their weight. And it seems they will try anything to drop the pounds.

This year's diet trends have spanned from the commercial to the comical. Star of MTV's reality show The Jersey Shore, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi has turned to the so-called Cookie Diet to lose weight this summer. The program allows followers to eat only six cookies and a healthy dinner every day for as long as it takes to meet their goals.

In the last few months, some celebs have been connected to a new Baby Food Diet, in which they eat several servings of goopy pureed greens daily. Fast food companies have tried to roll out new diet fads too. Taco Bell,

Summer reads are meant to be light; books you can pick up poolside, breeze through and put down when a nap--or a margarita break--calls. To that end, Amazon recommends Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels, the series that spawned HBO's True Blood, or Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as "what everyone is reading."

But a new trend has emerged for summer 2010: prettied up financial guides, memoirs and fictional tales of women who, armed with outrageous credit card limits, spent beyond their means, found themselves at rock bottom and lived to tell the tale. Call it financial chick-lit or budget advice for the stiletto set. However the trend is spun, these slight-by-appearance beach reads are packed with weighty economic lessons.

Jason Ashlock, co-principal of Moveable Type Literary Group in New York, says publishers began buying up these financial titles over a year ago in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. "So-called chick-lit titles have always been a way for

We've all been there. Minutes before a cocktail party standing in front of the closet "without a thing to wear!" And this age of fast fashion hasn't helped. Sure, that $50 party dress ripped from the runway seems like a bargain find, but if you only wear it once, is it really a steal? Plus, how long are those fast and fleeting fashions, well, fashionable? "You will find yourself getting 10 times more use out of staple, investment pieces than cheaply made bargain finds," says founder of the FEED Projects and Lauren Pierce designer Lauren Bush. In fact, it's perfectly possible to build a wardrobe that's forever in fashion--you just need to be aware of a few secrets of fashion insiders.

Start With A Couple Essentials and Build From There
Amy Smilovic, designer of the celebrity favorite fashion line Tibi, selects six favorite pieces--her closet essentials--and builds her wardrobe around them. "Everything I purchase should work with those items. It's the failsafe way to make sure that