Latest news with #Vallée
Newsweek
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Therapist Asks Who Women 'Want To Be Skinny For'—Her Theory Is Eye-Opening
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. In a moment of candid reflection that she did not expect to go viral, therapist Lucie Vallée, who herself had once struggled with body image issues, turned her phone camera on, hit record, and asked other women online: "Who are you trying to be skinny for?" She told Newsweek that her prompt, which she shared to Instagram on April 25, was less of a challenge and more of an invitation—to reexamine long-held beliefs about beauty, value, and the social currency of being thin. Vallée, a 31-year-old French gestalt therapist based in Berlin, Germany specializes in helping clients navigate body image issues and eating disorders. Her spontaneous video—viewed more than 90,000 times at the time of writing—is what has brought her voice into a much larger conversation. Speaking plainly into the lens, she dismantled the idea that thinness is may be universally admired, or even deeply noticed by most people. "The only people who care about how skinny you are," she said in the video, "are 1. [Judgmental] women that are also in the skinny competition and 2. Very specific [types] of men, the kind of men that you don't really want to be with because if they're attracted specifically to skinny women that says something really strong—it says they like women that make themselves smaller." Her remarks landed with a cultural thud—prompting an outpouring of both gratitude and frustration on a platform where content under hashtags like #bodygoals and #whatIeatinaday continues to trend. "This particular post was spontaneous—simply sharing thoughts I had in that moment," the therapist told Newsweek. "That day while scrolling, I kept seeing videos with an intense skinny focus, promoting the idea that being skinny is incredibly important, with hooks like 'pretty privilege is real,' 'how to get your summer body,' or 'skinny is a decision.'" From left: Lucie Vallée speaks to her followers in an Instagram video; and poses for a photo at home. From left: Lucie Vallée speaks to her followers in an Instagram video; and poses for a photo at home. @fightthiswithlucie From her professional vantage point, Vallée sees the lasting effects of beauty culture's pressures every single day. "The pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards creates a persistent background threat to women's sense of safety and worth," she said. "This generates symptoms such as constant hypervigilance, disconnection from one's body, feelings of unworthiness, isolation, anxiety, and shame." The End of Body Positivity Still, that cultural pressure has not suddenly abated. In fact, many believe it is intensifying due to a number of factors. The body positivity movement of the mid-2010s, which championed self-acceptance at any size, is now competing with the return of so-called "heroin chic"—a hyper-thin aesthetic often seen on runways and in celebrity circles. Social media platforms have fueled the shift, glamorizing the ballet or Pilates body, and flooding feeds with weight-loss journeys, sometimes centered on rapid transformations or medically assisted methods like Ozempic. Vallée's post struck a chord because it acknowledged that despite these louder messages, the reality may be far more complicated. "I used to be very deep in the skinny obsession my whole life," she said in the video. "I used to think that everyone was as obsessed as I was with being it turns out that most people don't care about this stuff." The reaction to her personal take was far from unanimous. "Some people clearly embraced the message," Vallée said. "I received DMs expressing how much they appreciated this perspective, how healing it was for them, and how they needed to hear more of that." Others pushed back, accusing her of minimizing the importance of one's weight, which she said reveals a "fundamental confusion." "Some had a completely different reaction, insisting that being skinny is actually very important and that I was wrong to suggest otherwise," she added. One commenter had responded: "I care if I am skinny because feeling heavy, lethargic, lazy [and] having body of inflammation isn't skinny feels lighter, when your gut is feel happier, inspired [and] everything else feels it's not just about being about your gut health, it's about living a healthy life, it's about being fit [and] if your body doesn't feel good, then you can't enjoy anything in life." Vallée sees this as a key misunderstanding, where the cultural prominence of the skinny aesthetic had been conflated with the benefits of being a healthy weight relative to your individual size, age and backstory. "There's a clear confusion between being skinny and being healthy," she said, reflecting on this particular comment. "For many #Skinnytok influencers, 'skinny' seems to mean being significantly underweight, having a body that looks like the heroin chic ideal." She emphasized that bodies can be healthy and strong at all different sizes, and that the pursuit of extreme thinness often requires severe dietary restrictions that can harm both an individual's mental and physical health. "While some are naturally built with a body like that, for most of us, achieving that silhouette would demand severe restrictions that often take a toll on our health," she said, Hannah Holmes, a licensed psychologist based in North Carolina, agreed that the people around us are often not as bothered by our or even their own size as people navigating body image issues imagine. However, Holmes, who frequently supports patients with body image concerns, told Newsweek that people can certainly make negative judgments about others' looks, including their weight. "I completely agree that women are harmed by this pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards," the psychologist said. "For that reason, one of my goals with clients who are trying to develop healthier body image is to help them navigate that reality in a healthy way, including challenging their own weight biases, disentangling their self-worth from others' opinions and tolerating the uncertainty of not knowing what others might think of them." Despite Vallée's argument that most people are not fixated on thinness, she concedes that society as a whole continues to favor and better accommodate slim individuals as they fall within the current beauty standards of what is conventionally attractive. This is precisely the paradox Vallée wants to expose through her work, because the weight of these expectations is often institutional, systemic, and pervasive. The millennial therapist aims to utilize her online presence to equip her audience with tools to resist these messages. "I began sharing my knowledge about two years ago with a clear mission," she said. "[To] give detailed insights on how beauty culture functions as a chronic stressor and a trauma-creating system." Though she has no intention of stepping away from the conversation, Vallée said the post's reaction revealed how deeply entrenched these beliefs remain. "I did not expect my post to be so divisive," she said. Still, she is determined to keep speaking to those who need a reminder that they are already enough, no matter their size. She added: "There is no need to be that thin to have a body that is healthy, that feels good, and that supports us in fully enjoying life." Is there a health issue that's worrying you? Let us know via health@ We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.
Daily Mail
28-04-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
UFO expert claims aliens are MURDERING innocent people
One of the world's most revered UFO experts claims the beings behind UFO phenomena are not just observing us but are in fact killing innocent people. Jacques Vallée, a man whose six-decade career has put him at the epicenter of every serious UFO debate, is sounding the alarm. 'I can tell you that in my files… some of which I contributed to the database of, there are at least half a dozen well-documented cases where the injuries that resulted in death were deliberate,' Vallée said. According to Vallée, chilling warnings that humanity has long brushed off as the stuff of science fiction are real - and governments have known for years. In a stunning and unsettling disclosure, Vallée revealed that the files he personally helped assemble while working with a secret Pentagon-linked UFO study include evidence of human deaths caused deliberately by encounters with UFOs. The files were pulled together in the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP). Vallée, the man who first proposed that UFOs might originate from other realities rather than distant planets, insists his warning is not speculative hysteria. Indeed, Vallée is no fringe figure. He is the scientist who advised the US government, contributed to seminal investigations like Project Blue Book, and inspired the French researcher character in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. During the AAWSAP investigation, based inside a Las Vegas aerospace facility, teams painstakingly gathered horrifying evidence from around the globe. Among the most disturbing: hundreds of severe human injuries in Brazil linked directly to UFO encounters. While Vallée remains guarded about specifics, he confirmed that the injuries were not accidents, but acts of aggression. Other investigators from the program, like Dr. Colm Kelleher, have stated it bluntly: 'UFOs are bad for human health.' The chilling truth appears to have buried behind layers of classified reports, corporate secrecy, and government indifference. Vallée believes the real truth has been kept secret because if the public knew that not only are we not alone, but that extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional forces have killed humans with impunity, the very fabric of society could unravel. The UFO experts believes the shocking revelations could shatter world religions, see trust in governments collapse and set off global panic. Vallée's newest book, Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles, lifts the veil even further. It chronicles his private exchanges with shadowy insiders, including the billionaire Robert Bigelow and a cabal of CIA-affiliated scientists dubbed the Lonestars, who claim the US has recovered crashed vehicles of unknown origin. These secretive defense contractors, operating in remote desert bases, have spent decades desperately trying to reverse-engineer alien technologies. Their adversaries abroad, it seems, have been doing the same. The implications would mean National security is no longer just a terrestrial concern but an interdimensional arms race. Despite the uncomfortable truth lurking in the files, Vallée believes full disclosures must be made, but not in a clumsy or haphazard way. He fears that a sloppy admission such as a clumsy 'Yes, aliens exist' announcement could plunge civilization into chaos. 'If we want to disclose… something as simple as saying, "Yes, we acknowledge the phenomenon and it seems to be from space," we would have to… answer a hundred other questions, that this is not the end of the story,' Vallée said to KLAS. 'There are religious questions… there is a religious side to all this.' Fear, suspicion, and religious upheaval could destroy societies faster than any foreign invasion. 'I think… that we should disclose with a structure,' Vallée suggested, adding, 'The structure hasn't been invented yet.' As congressional hearings, mainstream media, and academics inch closer to forcing the issue into the open, Vallée's plea grows more urgent. In more recent years, Vallée, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and computer scientist, published a study of physical evidence from a UFO crash in a peer-reviewed science journal, Progress in Aerospace Sciences. As he told Wired, Vallée hopes that research will become 'a template for what serious UFO research could be in the future, if one plays by the rules.'
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Vallée: UFO disclosure could trigger complex religious, security questions
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A highly respected UFO investigator warns that disclosing the truth, linked to documented human injuries and national security concerns, requires a carefully crafted strategy to avoid chaos. Jacques Vallée has been a central figure in UFO research and debate for over six decades, often finding himself at odds with UFO orthodoxy. Vallée was among the first to argue that the unknown craft, seen for centuries in our skies and oceans, may not be from other planets, but instead from other realities. Vallée has heard the demands for an end to official secrecy many times and, at the same time, has participated in secretive efforts himself, including a UFO study launched by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 2008, which was hidden inside a Las Vegas aerospace company. One focus of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) was genuinely disturbing: the real-life health consequences for humans who come into contact with UFOs. Hundreds of serious injuries have been documented. AAWSAP investigators traveled to Brazil to obtain government files related to hundreds of Brazilians treated for injuries after being targeted by UFOs. While Vallée won't discuss specific AAWSAP files, except for cases he provided to the database, he said those cases of UFO-related injuries were not accidental. 'I can tell you that in my files… some of which I contributed to the database of, there are at least half a dozen well-documented cases where the injuries that resulted in death were deliberate,' Vallée said. Incidents in which UFOs deliberately cause physical harm to humans are rare, according to personnel who have seen the full AAWSAP files, but they do occur. Dr. Colm Kelleher, one of the AAWSAP managers, has said, bluntly, that UFOs are bad for human health. Could that be a reason to keep secrets? In his most recent book, 'Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles,' Vallée shares private exchanges with colleagues from the AAWSAP program, including Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas billionaire. Additionally, there are conversations between and a close-knit group of scientists known as the Lonestars. The scientists, some of them former CIA contractors, accept that the U.S. government has recovered crashed vehicles of unknown origin, and that defense contractors have worked for decades to reverse engineer the technology at secretive facilities in the desert and elsewhere. They say adversary nations have done likewise, and that the race to duplicate the technology means national security is at stake. Vallée favors transparency but worries that an official declaration could prove chaotic. 'If we want to disclose… something as simple as saying, 'Yes, we acknowledge the phenomenon and it seems to be from space,' we would have to… answer a hundred other questions, that this is not the end of the story,' Vallée noted. 'There are religious questions… there is a religious side to all this.' While Vallée is encouraged by the renewed interest in UFOs within Congress, mainstream media, and academia, he thinks someone needs to craft a well-planned strategy for how to unleash what would likely be the biggest news story in history. 'I think… that we should disclose with a structure,' Vallée said, adding that, 'The structure hasn't been invented yet.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
