So here it is... Not a rant, but a wake up call. I am a chubby mom. I am apple shaped and it could be worse. For some reason I cannot name- ok, I could but I don't have time this morning as I get ready- I have learned to hate the way I look. It has taken me almost 36 years to hate myself, starve myself and obsess every minute and then in the last few years since children learn to reverse the loathing. 
When I looked like this at 18, I hated myself the most. The thinner I got, the angrier I was that I was not thinner- and let's face it, starving yourself does not send you to nirvana. However, this happy memory was tainted with how unfinished I was as a person and how desperate I was with longing. I haven't hit nirvana yet but here is me now, days from my 36th birthday. Twice the time, twice the experience. Marriage and kids, degrees and less travel than I would like but still- this face says I have lived.
As a mother to three girls, I want them to NOT self-loathe. They need to put themselves together and be ready for their chosen professions but try don't have to be Gisele-beautiful for me to be happy with them.
Oh, of course not, you think.
Uh huh. So why do you expect yourself to attain that status? Why are we women striving so damn hard to be supermodels? You are not 17 anymore? Stop trying to look that way! Let it go a little and enjoy becoming a person with wrinkles and a grey hair in your eyebrow you cannot explain. I am not saying be unhealthy but I am saying please be more realistic. Driving yourself batty over the pounds you must lose does not communicate to your daughter, sisters, friends that you care about WHO you are, but rather HOW YOU LOOK. Sorry, Ford Models probably wont be knocking. It's ok. Let it go.
In defense of Gisele- that girl is gorgeous and admitted in a photo it takes a team. It is her JOB to look that amazing. We buy her magazines and secretly wish to look like her yet I hear lots of hate press about her. "Who does she think she is?" This is where feminism comes to die, my friends. Not in a song a guy sings about good girls toying with sexuality but in our cruelty to one another.
We women are a force! We go to work with raging cramps and get it done, for less pay than others. We have babies and then proceed to raise human beings with others or alone.
If we stopped buying in to the physical stereotypes and catty teardowns, what else could we accomplish? Woman president? More peace, less war? It is endless possibilities.
Every day you get up, look in the mirror and make a choice. Don't discard all personal hygiene- not my point- but are you only getting ready for someone else? Are you driving yourself crazy and no one expects you to look like you think they expect you to look? What is happening while you are cruel to others and yourself? Are you missing out on the authenticity of life?
It is a brief time we get. I choose to stop hating myself and be a kick ass teacher. It will make me a better wife/mother/ human.
That is what I believe. What do you think?
