Even skinny women get the blues . . .

197 pounds
I've had the good fortune of going shopping with many wonderful women lately—sometimes I've been going out just for fun, and other times I've been with a friend who was on a mission. These women have come in numerous body shapes, and it's been a joy to see them all look beautiful at any size.

But what I can't get over is that all of them—no matter how thin or how curvy—have very real insecurities.

One of these women, for example, is very thin and incredibly well toned—she wears a size two and has Halle Berry's muscular arms, Jennifer Aniston's shapely legs, and Emily Blunt's tight little butt. But she didn't see any of that when we were in the dressing room recently.

Instead all she saw was her chest, which is a bit on the small side. She was, in fact, so worried about not having enough up top, that she refused to wear anything that didn't have wide enough straps to accommodate her padded bra, which she claimed she needed to look normal.

When I finally convinced her to try on a very fashion forward strapless dress from the clearance rack, I was astonished by how amazing it looked on her—it was both hip and adorable at the same time—and she was really rocking the look: the dress was short enough to highlight her toned legs, and her long dark hair hit her shoulders in just the right place to draw your eye to both her sculpted arms and her gorgeous hair.

But she couldn't see that.

"You look incredible," I told her.

"Are you kidding?" she said in a suspicious tone. "I don't have anything up here." She put her hands on her chest and cupped what she saw as her inadequacy. Then she nodded at me. "If only I had what you have."

I gasped. Her comment shocked me that much.

She was wearing a dress that fell halfway between her ass and her knees, and there wasn't an ounce of cellulite in sight, but she wanted what I had?

Then I laughed because, from my point of view, the situation was completely ludicrous—I wanted what she had, and she wanted what I had.

"You're crazy," I finally said.

But my friend could not be swayed. "You don't get it. I can't wear a dress like this. I have to have something with sleeves."

The irony of the situation did not escape me.

Though I have a few select sleeveless dresses, I avoid them almost as much as I avoid fried food. I'm just not that comfortable revealing my arms, which I see as a bit too fleshy for display. On the other hand, my friend has supermodel arms, but she won't show them off because she thinks her breasts are too small.

Together we made quite a pair.

Despite my protestations, I didn't talk my friend into buying that fabulous dress, but I did win in one regard: since then I have not thought twice about wearing my own sleeveless outfits, bare arms and all.

A side note: Need another reason to go sleeveless, strapless, and/or braless? Do it because you can. Far too many women in the world aren't allowed to show their arms, shoulders, and cleavage, and that's a reason to revel in them.

Self-consciousness or life—you choose.

195 pounds

First of all, let me apologize for not putting this post up yesterday. I'm on fall break right now, and I guess that the holiday knocked me out of my routine because I completely forgot about the blog. (And I LOVE this blog!) I guess I was also caught up in the TV event of the year last night—Pam and Jim's wedding on The Office—and maybe I was too hysterical and euphoric over their both ridiculous and moving nuptials to remember my own responsibilities.

Watching their wedding took me back to my own—the episode centered around the fact that weddings, especially big church weddings, are not about the bride and groom as much as they're about their family and friends.

The Office handled this fact with extreme hilarity by showing Pam having to take one of her guests to the hospital the night before she took her vows because he "tore his scrotum" while trying to bust a dance move, her best friend and mother—yes, I said her MOTHER!—hooking up with coworkers she can barely stand, and the entire congregation dancing down the aisle (a la that You Tube video that circulated a few months ago) before Pam and Jim ever took the stage. Yes, Pam and Jim's wedding—like so many of our weddings—was not so much an event to honor their love as it was an excuse for their friends and their family to act like hooligans.

My own wedding was never completely hijacked by the hooligans who were there to celebrate our marriage, but it was hijacked—be it for only the five minutes it took to play one simple song.

Like Pam and Jim, we had given our D.J. a list of forbidden songs—The Macarena, The Chicken Dance, you get the idea. We didn't want to hear any songs that came with a built-in performance. And we had told the D.J. that if he played these songs, he would not get paid. But, of course, there was one song we failed to mention . . .

"Y.M.C.A." by The Village People.

It was a crucial error.

For halfway through the reception, we heard the first familiar chords of that song, and then, to our amazement, saw five people we thought we could trust enter the ballroom wearing accessories designed to make them look like The Village People. Neal had donned a sailor cap, Phil wore a hard hat, Kevin a fireman's hat*, Carol a police cap, and my mother—yes, I said my MOTHER!—showed up in full headdress.

I could have died.

But rather than die, I did what Pam and Jim did: I laughed as five people I loved performed the entire song as if they really were The Village People. And I reminded myself that weddings aren't just about the bride and groom or even the vows. They are a celebration of all the people in the couple's life: the friends, the family members, the hooligans.

And when I look back on that day—eleven years ago this past summer—what I remember now is not how shocked I was by their subversion of the rules we tried to create surrounding our wedding but how impressed I was by their confidence and joi de vivre.

Because you see, none of them—not Carol, not Phil, not Neal, not Kevin, not even my mom at the age of 56—revealed even an iota of self-consciousness, embarrassment, or shame that night. If you had made me get up in front of a group of 200 people and dance the "Y.M.C.A." eleven years ago, I would have been a wreck—I would have been nervous and insecure and ashamed and worried about everything from my naked arms to my usually unseen cleavage—but none of them displayed any of these qualities.

Tom Hanks has said that "self-consciousness is the death of art," and I have come to believe that the same can be said about life. The more self-conscious we are, the less alive we are. None of the people boogieing down the aisle at Pam and Jim's wedding and none of the people dancing the Y.M.C.A. at ours were worried about how they looked. And why should they be? They were having too much fun to do it.

I hope that all these years later I am a different person than I was back then: a person who could get up in front of a crowd and get my groove on without feeling shy or insecure about doing so, a person who would not worry about something as silly as arm fat. And I hope that you, too, can do the same.

*I do not have a photo of this moment with Kevin in it on my computer, but I will try to find one and post it later today, especially since he's so famous.

Girl before a Mirror

195 pounds

While I was getting ready this morning, I had a bit of an epiphany. Wearing only my favorite jeans and a black camisole, I looked in the mirror and saw someone fabulous staring back at me.

Normally, I can’t stand the sight of myself in anything sleeveless, but something was different this morning. Instead of thinking my arms looked out-of-shape and flabby, I thought they looked shapely and sexy. Truth be told, I felt hot.

I mulled over this change in perspective while I finished getting ready for the day, and here’s what I came up with: I really believe I felt different about my body this morning because of the images I’ve been seeing in the media lately: the photos of the absolutely gorgeous “plus-size” models in Glamour, the image of Joan working her curves like they pay the bills on Mad Men, the Dove advertisements featuring regular sized woman (an amazing company I haven’t even talked about yet), the portrait of Lizzi Miller laughing joyously even as her little stomach hangs out, or the scenes featuring perky Brooke Elliott on Drop Dead Diva. It feels like all of sudden we live in a world where some of the women we revere, some of the women we see every day, actually look like me. In fact, these precious few media outlets are showing the love for curvy women everywhere.

Imagine that.

And when I realized that this was the reason for my change in perspective, it hit me that we’ve been right all along about how much it hurts our collective psyche to only see women in the media who are as tapered as the skinny jeans it seems like every one of my students now wears. So I want to give a big shout-out . . . to Dove, to Glamour, to Mad Men, to Drop Dead Diva. You’ve helped me continue to improve the way I see myself, and for that I can never thank you enough.

As for everyone else, consider this a warning. It's time to get on board. If you don't join the movement to appreciate curvy women, I promise you'll be left behind.

*Girl before a Mirror is a 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso.

The model cousin

194 pounds

I caught up with two of my favorite cousins last week in Nashville, and though I was thrilled to see them for the first time in years, I was horrified by the way my self-confidence plummeted in their presence. I've talked before about the way family members can affect how we see ourselves, but I don't think I realized before last week, that this can happen even when we are around family members with whom we have supportive and loving relationships. I guess that's what took me by surprise: I've always been close with these cousins, I've always enjoyed their company, and never once have I thought that they were judgmental about the way I look. So why did my self-perception change so dramatically when I saw them?

The first thing that might have played into this change is the way my cousin Jim looked. Most of the people on my mother's side of the family are solidly built, and as a former high school football player, Jim has always been broad shouldered and brawny. But when he walked through the door of my favorite Nashville restaurant last week, he was so thin that I barely recognized him. Jim had slimmed down after high school, but he still always had that hulking footballer look. This was not the case last week. The man who met us for dinner was a far cry from the Jim I had grown up with. In fact, he's now what I would call model thin—not too thin, but thin enough that it's easy to imagine him posing for an underwear ad. I was, of course, surprised by the change in his physique, but more than anything, I was surprised by how handsome he looked. Never a bad looking guy, Jim is now a bona fide hottie.

And I couldn't help but wonder if underneath his former football player body, this model had been waiting to come out all along.

You can probably guess what I thought next—is there a model inside of me waiting to come out? Could I look that good if I lost a significant amount of weight? Have I been approaching this whole weight loss thing the exactly wrong way???

After dinner, my other cousin Jeff got out his camera for a few pictures, but when I looked at the first one, I was horrified by what I saw. I had turned to the side for the photo, and when I looked at my image on the tiny camera screen, all I saw was arm. A huge, flabby, fleshy piece of whale arm. I was disgusted with myself.

I had not seen Jeff or Jim in years, and here we were, finally reunited—Jim looking like he'd just stepped out of the pages of GQ and Jeff as boyish and cute as always—and I imagined I must have reminded them of the fatty ham our grandmother put out every year at the family's Christmas dinner.

Admittedly, this is exactly the kind of talk—exactly the kind of thinking—that I want to steer people away from on this blog. But that doesn't mean I'm entirely immune to it.

Yes, I was feeling horribly unattractive in the moment, but I was also simultaneously angry with myself for breaking the very rules I set forth on this blog. So if I understood even then how wrong it was to see myself that way, why did I still do it?

The answer is probably too complex for someone who's not schooled in the psychology of the mind to fully understand, but I can take a guess: when we're around family, we revert to the roles of our childhood, whether they be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. When I saw Jeff and Jim, I became the person they grew up with—the insecure, awkward, somewhat nerdy child of my youth. I often become this way around my immediate family, but it surprised me that I would do this with my cousins as well. It wasn't that they didn't believe in me. It's that they reminded me of the person I used to be. And maybe it's not the worst thing in the world to remember whom we used to be. Otherwise, how would we be able to recognize how much we've changed and grown?

Maybe there is a model lurking somewhere deep inside of me. A model I might be able to find if I were willing to starve myself for the rest of my life, which is what I'd have to do to lose and keep off the fifty pounds I'd need to shed to find that model. But what's different between the me I am now and the me I was when I was a kid roller-skating with Jeff and Jim in our grandmother's basement is that I no longer want to be that model. I no longer believe that I'll finally be happy when I look like I've just stepped out of the pages of Vogue.

No, I no longer believe that happiness is something I'm waiting for. Now I believe it's something I already have.

What's wrong with this picture?

194 pounds
I've had a break-through this week—dipping below 195 pounds for the first time since I started this blog four months ago and even hitting a low of 193 yesterday (though I'm back to 194 today, a fluctuation which is obviously to be expected). I wish I could take some credit for this improvement, but in truth I've only exercised the bare minimum this week. Still, I've been trying to be more conscious of what I eat and how much I exercise for four months now, so maybe this accomplishment is more about the long-term investment I've made in my health than anything I've done just this week.

Of course, I'm thrilled about this dip, and I'm feeling more motivated than ever. Over the next week, I'm hoping to spend even more time exercising and cooking lots of healthy food than I already am.

At the same time, I've been feeling a bit more insecure about my body than normal. I suppose I simply just feel less confident about it than I would like. When I was going swimming the other night, I worried about the way my arms looked in my new bathing suit—did they look flabby or ridiculously out of shape? Would the other swimmers look at them and wonder what the hell I was doing there? Shouldn't a person who swims lap on a regular basis have incredibly buff upper arms?

But on the way home, I asked myself why on earth I would ever worry about what the other swimmers said about my arms, and why I was holding myself to such ridiculous standards. Are my arms really any worse than anyone else's? I don't think so. Are they even bad looking? I doubt it. But, nevertheless, I had felt temporarily defeated by the fact that they did not meet the standard of arm beauty in our society.

And that's when it hit me . . . the problem wasn't me. The problem was the standard. Even I have to constantly remind myself that the standards we hold women to in our society are simply unrealistic. I mean, how many women do you know with Halle Berry's arms? Or Heidi Klum's legs? Or Kate Bosworth's stomach? Or Scarlett Johansson's cleavage?

Let's face it. For the most part, real women don't look like that. Maybe, just maybe, you know a woman who has assets to rival these celebrities in one of these areas, but all four of them? I doubt it.

So why then do we idolize and feature women who are this obnoxiously perfect? After all we have learned about how idealizing impossibly perfect women hurts our self-esteem, why do we still continue to do it?

I really wish I knew.

On the other side of the spectrum are the "plus-sized" celebrities. The women who are routinely cast as the goofy sidekick or the "fat girl."

Have you ever noticed that we almost only ever see these two extremes—the plus-sized sidekick or the impossibly thin glamazon? I don't look like either of these kinds of women, and I don't know anyone who does. So why are these the only two options we get? For God's sake, where are all the real girls???

You might have seen the advertisements for a new television show called Drop Dead Diva. The premise of the show is that "a thin but shallow woman's soul lands in a larger woman's body" and must come to terms with this change. (The two actresses who star in these opposing roles are pictured above.)

Let me say first and foremost that I am flat-out thrilled that this show is taking on the issues of fattism and body image and that it's featuring a gorgeous plus-size woman in the lead role. I hear that actress Brooke Elliott gives an amazing and believable performance, and I'm rooting for both her and the show.

But what bothers me is that we still don't have any television shows or films that feature women of average size—women who don't wear a size twenty or a size zero, women who have a body I can realistically aspire to have. (I'm not sure Ugly Betty counts since the only reason Betty has a normal sized body is because she's supposed to be "ugly.") Again, I can't help but wonder why these women—women who look like me and almost everyone I know—are all but absent from film and television. Why are we so afraid to show women in this middle group? Why is it so important for every character on screen to fit into one of these two extremes—overweight or underweight? Are we simply that opposed to complexity? Or, on the other hand, do producers think we're simply too thick-headed to judge a female character based on her actions or words rather than on her extra small or extra large dress size?

If that's the case, it's time we started letting those in power know that we're smarter than they think we are. We need to talk about the kinds—and sizes—of characters we want to see staring back at us from our television and movie screens. I'm not sure how exactly we can communicate this, but I'm hoping that this blog—and the women I feature on it—will be a step in the right direction.