Today the ideal body is… odd.
The women you see in fashion magazines are stick thin with no real curves. Icky but realistic. If a girl is that thin she’s not going to have many curves.
Yet…
All the movie stars and famous people are just as thin, sickly so (to me) and still manage to have these overly large breasts. Breasts that just wouldn’t occur on women that thin.
So you’ve got these tiny yet curvy women – because they have the time and money to get those forms.
But the rest of us are trying to live up to an ideal that RARELY happens in nature.

We’re all trying to look like fourteen year old girls with breasts.

You go bra shopping and it’s nearly impossible to find a bra that isn’t padded, cushioned, gelled, puffed or filled with water.
Yet you go to try on a shirt and you’re supposed to have these thin little arms to go along with those big padded tits.
What about those of us who have enough tit from nature? And the rounded body to go with them? Arms and legs and hips and thighs that are proportionate to those breasts?

Now I know I”m a little overweight. My doctor says so. The insurance charts say so. But I’m not huge. I fluctuate between a size twelve and fourteen – generally fitting into a thriteen even on “fat” days.
I know that part of me is simply envious of those ideal figures and, despite all my protestations, would like to look like that. (Not really. But I’d like to be ideal for a change)
I know that if I took better care of my body – if I exercised and ate better – I could look really, really fantastic.
But I could never look like a fourteen year old girl with boobs.

I have hips.
Wide, curvy hips.
No matter how thin I get I will always have hips.
I’m 35 years old.
I doubt I’m ever going to have a perfectly flat belly again.
Or little thighs. They were big and muscular when I WAS fourteen.

So I understand that the ideal of today is not possible for me. And I understand that I can look fabulous and sexy and blah blah blah if I just give it a little work, put some effort into it. That I can look ideal to myself.

Pretty well balanced you’d say, right?

Pfft!

Body issues, body issues and more body issues.

Taylor tells me all the time that he likes the way I look. (Probably more so when I was fifteen pounds thinner but he’s too kind and aware of my issues to say so.) He also tells me that what men want in their own woman is a lot different than what they want in a fantasy woman – different than what they want to look at in pictures or porn or even walking down the street. They supposedly don’t want the eyecandy. They want to look at it, but not BE with it as the long term, solid relationship in their lives. I’m sure not all men feel this way but I’m not exactly concerned with all men. Thing is- I don’t think he understands that women want to be both. They want to look as good as the women men look at and still be the type of woman they want to keep. We want it all. Because it’s painful when our men look at a completely different type of woman, when we know we’ll never look like that, when it seems they no longer look at you at all and you just KNOW it’s cuz you don’t look like…. them. The fantasy women. (It’s not that. I know this. I know that familiarity brings not only contentment and security but less of the attention the “new” gets. I’m not incapable of understanding. I just can’t sync that understanding with the reality of emotional response.)

It doesn’t help that one of my best friends IS ideal. She’s all her husband wants in his woman plus physically perfect. And while I adore her I also feel like a huge, hulking, inept, clumsy cow when I’m near her. I feel lessened sometimes. Like I can’t compare, will never match up….
I know I shouldn’t. Comparisons are just… bad. I don’t have to compare. All I have to do is be the best me I can. But since I’m not at the moment ….
It’s hard.

All I can do is work on me.
And that’s what I intend to do.
I’ll never look like a fourteen year old with tits.
I’ll never even look like myself at 22 again.
But I can look the best I’m able – and desite the ideal of today and the sickly thin women I have to compare myself to when I pull out a magazine or a photo on the web or pop in a movie – I can be happy with that.
Whch is a good thing.