Choose the path less traveled, Gwyneth. Get your cheeseburger on. And I promise we'll still love you.

A recent New Yorker article talked about Gwyneth Paltrow and the new cookbook she is releasing.

I've enjoyed Gwyneth's recent run on Glee as Holly Holiday, the substitute teacher turned temptress who wins the heart of McKinley High's glee club director, Mr. Shoe. But during Gwyneth's last appearance on the show, I noticed that she looked frightfully pale and thin during one of her musical numbers.

Gwyneth has always been willowy and thin, but she looked really drawn and thin on Glee. Almost sickly. And then I read the article in the New Yorker.

The first half of the article includes a direct quote from Gwynnie in which she runs down what she has eaten that day: "A cappucino, some poached eggs with spinach, an apple, almonds, some cheese and bread, and a turkey sandwich with avocado and tomato."

Pretty light fare—and it might explain why she looks so skinny these days on Glee. But later in the article, they quote friends of Gwyneth's who say she eats like a truck driver.

A truck driver? Really?

Have you ever seen a truck driver eat a turkey sandwich with avocado and tomato?

I don't want to offend truck drivers. And I really don't want to offend Gwyneth since she will likely be my best friend some day. But tell me the truth—which version of Gwyneth do you think is accurate? Skinny girl who eats like a truck driver or skinny girl who lives on rabbit food?

To her credit, I suspect she was being honest about what she'd eaten that day (and I love a girl who can be honest about her food intake), but it doesn't sound like enough for a busy thirty-something working mother of two.

Gwyneth is at that age when women in Hollywood have a choice: stay rail thin and start to look unhealthy, or eat like a normal person and say good-bye to the good movie roles.

Gwyneth has clearly chosen the latter, and like I said above, I'm glad to see her still working. But tell us the real truth, Gwyneth, aren't you just dying for a greasy hamburger, cheese fries, and a shake?

It beats the hell out of turkey.

The Cellulite Closet

196 pounds

About ten years ago, I saw an outstanding film called The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jude Law. Maybe you caught it too.

I loved the film on many levels . . . it was incredibly smart, psychologically deep, and wonderfully tense. It's a rare opportunity that intelligent writing is matched with edge-of-your-seat suspense, but this film—probably thanks to the brilliance of the original writer, Patricia Highsmith—does just that.

But as much as I hate to admit it, I also enjoyed the film for superficial reasons:

First of all, I loved ogling Matt Damon in his retro bathing suit. It was definitely the hottest he's ever looked.

But there was something else.

(And I really am L O A T H E to admit that I was happy to see this, but I promise my happiness was for all the right reasons.)

I was completely thrilled when Paltrow showed up in her bathing suit and revealed . . .

wait for it . . .

. . . a bit of cellulite on the back of her thighs (which admittedly is hard to see in this picture, but the other ones I found were a bit too unflattering to post).

Yes, little Gwinny—at the tender of age of 27 and wearing what was probably a size two bikini—showed that even gorgeous celebrities are imperfect.

It was a huge relief.

But when I told my friend Derek, he didn't buy it. "Gwyneth Paltrow does not have cellulite!" he insisted. "She is way too skinny!"

I argued that I had seen it with my own eyes, but Derek was having none of it. He simply refused to believe that skinny girls have cellulite. Well, I'm here to tell you—size and fitness have nothing to do with it. When it comes right down to it, girls of all sizes—skinny girls or "fat" girls—have some of this unattractive skin in the thigh or butt region.

That exchange with Derek has stayed with me for years. I just could not understand why he didn't believe that skinny girls get cellulite too. So when I saw this photo of a model on Project Runway last year. . .

. . . I thought immediately of Derek.

This woman is a M O D E L for Christ's sake.

A MODEL!

And yet she has cellulite. If models have it, then that tells me we all do.

And if I needed any more evidence to bolster my case, I saw this picture of Serena Williams the other day . . .

Yes, this is a picture of another super-fit woman sporting some cellulite. Sure, Serena is bigger than little Gwinny and the Project Runway model, but no one could argue that she is not insanely buff. Still, as you can see here, buff does not equal cellulite-free.

So if you're listening Derek, I hope you now understand . . . none of us are perfect. Even skinny girls get the cellulite blues.

Mirror, Mirror

195 pounds

I've had a bad day.

A really bad day.

Like many women, I suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and what that means is that a lot of time I can't get rid of what I need to get rid of, if you get my drift. When this happens, I get really bloated and feel a million times bigger than I normally do. Even when I'm not backed up, I struggle to feel good about my body, so on days when I am extremely bloated, positive thinking is about as unlikely for me as winning a karaoke contest in a room full of American Idol finalists. In other words, it's impossible.

And that's obviously why I've had a bad day. Every time I looked in the mirror today, my morale dropped a little bit further. To make matters worse, I had to go back to school tonight to help some of the students set up for the department book sale tomorrow, and because I was going to play tennis immediately afterwards, I showed up at my place of work in a pair of ratty old sweatpants and a bleached-out t-shirt. I had expected the halls to be deserted, but I think I ran into more of my colleagues tonight than I do most afternoons. And the cherry on the sundae occurred when I was standing in a coworker's office and caught a glimpse of myself reflected in her window.

Needless to say, the image I saw in the window appalled me. I didn't look anything like the person who'd been staring back at me all day every time I glanced in the bathroom mirror. I looked much, much, much worse. My stomach was a perfect half-circle, emanating from the area beneath my chest that I used to think of as my rib cage and disappearing somewhere above my knees. It was an version of myself I had never seen before—not at home, not in the bathroom at work, not anywhere—and without thinking, I let out a little cry of defeat.

I've had this kind of thing happen to me before, usually when I visit my parents' house where it seems that every wall is plastered with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. And it's always the same experience—when I catch a glimpse of myself in an unfamiliar surface, I am shocked (and often horrified) by the unique perspective it offers me. Afterwards, I am left to wonder how it is that I've allowed myself to go through my days with such an incorrect picutree of myself in my head. Have I been in denial about the person staring back at me day in and day out? Or am I just catching myself at a bad time? Inevitably, I find myself returning to the scene of the crime—the mirror or reflective surface that so surprised me. And nine times out of ten, I find that it has not played tricks on me. My body really does look exactly as it did the first time—much different than I thought it did. Which again takes me back to my first question—how is it that I've allowed myself to have such an incorrect perception of the way I look? And how long has it been going on?

I worry that one of the side effects of having a positive attitude about my body most of the time is that the image I have of myself is not always entirely accurate. Sometimes I feel like I have what I like to call "Shallow Hal disease." If you've ever seen the movie, you know that Hal (played by Jack Black) is only attracted to insanely gorgeous women until he is hypnotized in a way that makes him see a person's inner beauty rather than her physical attributes. The end result is that Hal meets and falls in love with an obese woman who he sees as thin and beautiful because she is such a good person. (This character is played with grace and subtlety by Gwyneth Paltrow.) So I wonder if having a good attitude about my body makes me act like the hypnotized version of Hal: do I look at myself and see the whole me, the me that I know is on the inside, rather than just the surface me? And what on earth can I do to stop that???

I know what you're thinking right now because I'm thinking it too—is that really such a bad thing? Maybe not, but it means that when I catch my reflection in unexpected place, the result can be jarring, almost debilitating.

I know I'm the one who wrote about the fact that we need to realize that people focus on our attributes not our flaws, but some days—days like today—it just seems impossible to do. I guess I'm writing this post to let you all know, then, that like anyone else, I'm as human and fallible as the rest of us. And I only hope that in doing so I haven't completely let you down.