Mike & Molly premieres Monday, but still no show with people who look like this Molly

195 pounds

CBS is launching a new sitcom called Mike & Molly on Monday September 20th at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time.

In some ways, the show is not unlike all of the other half-hour comedies we've been watching for years—it's just a show about two people falling for each other.

But there is one unique thing about the show. The two main characters—played by Melissa McCarthy (formerly of Gilmore Girls) and Billy Gardell (My Name is Earl)—are both obese.

First, I need to give this show the credit it deserves. As I said in my "Couples Retreat" post, over the past ten or so years sitcoms have fallen into a big-guy-thin-girl rut that is not only trite but also offensive. So a show about a big guy and a big girl feels revolutionary.

Sure, Roseanne did it first, but that was a show about a family struggling economically, and since we all know obesity is tied to income, the stars' sizes seemed to be making more of a comment on their economic class than their romantic appeal.

On the other hand, Mike & Molly is a show about falling in love. The two leads meet in the first episode—unfortunately at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting—and the show goes from there. Two big people as romantic leads? That really is revolutionary.

It's clear that we're having some kind of moment where shows about bigger people are suddenly hip—look at Huge, More to Love, or Drop Dead Diva—and I'm absolutely thrilled about that. But my concern is that, though Hollywood is finally starting to show people who are bigger, they're still not showing anyone in the middle. There is still no one on my small screen who looks like me.

Nevertheless, I'm happy about Mike & Molly and look forward to watching it Monday night. But what I'm really hoping is that shows like this and the others I've mentioned are just the beginning. That they are opening doors that desperately need to be opened. And that though we only see two sizes on TV now—big and little—we will soon seen people of all sizes.

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.

Loving whatever size you have and aging gracefully

198 pounds

Since I wrote about women who don't have a lot up top in my last post, today I want to write about women who do have something upstairs.

I once heard Madonna say that when you're in your twenties, your breasts stand at attention, when you're in your thirties, they start to sag a little, and when in your forties, they are hanging pretty low.

In general I would agree with this assessment, but what I take issue with is the implication that this is a bad thing. Sure, when I was in my teens and twenties, the girls were pretty perky, standing proud every day, but they were also not quite big enough to offer me any real cleavage, which was for all practical purposes nonexistent. But now, twenty years later, I'm all about the cleavage.

Which raises the question, which is better—perky breasts or ones that give you good cleavage?

If you ask me, the answer is both. When they were perky, I loved that about my body, but now that I have cleavage, I love that too—possibly even more.

And maybe that's because we're not supposed to look—or be—the same as we age. I wouldn't give up my cleavage for anything right now—even my former perkiness—and when I see middle-aged woman who have breast implants that look like they could take someone's eye out, I think it looks not only fake but ridiculous.

During a recent trip to visit family, I had the pleasure of seeing Solitary Man, an independent film about a divorced couple played by Susan Sarandon and Michael Douglas. In one scene, Douglas' character visits Sarandon's and finds her in a low-cut top that perfectly shows off her cleavage. I have to say that Sarandon looked amazing. But more than anything, I loved that—at the age of sixty-three—she was still working it. And why shouldn't she?

Dave and I saw that movie with my mother, and I wondered then why Mom almost never shows off her assets, which are plentiful. I think it's because we're taught that after a certain age—possibly after childbearing age—women aren't supposed to be sexual creatures.

Well, I think that's a load of crap.

And I'm thrilled that Sarandon is bucking the trend.

The same week we saw that movie, I also spent a good deal of time with my two nieces, who are now becoming very curious about women's bodies. They talk about them constantly and are always launching questions in my direction that I find hard to answer. Maybe because they think they can get more out of their aunt than their parents? Perhaps, but I also know their mother is pretty up front with them about this stuff too.

No, I think that they are just trying to cull information from as many different sources as possible, so they can make up their own minds about this issue. One of the things they taught me is that some women have "sporty" breasts—read small—while others have big "pillows." (Cute, huh?)

But I noticed that they didn't make a connection between body size and breast size. They claim that when they grow up they want to be really skinny but have big pillows, a fact I digested with horror while also taking the opportunity to explain to them that there is usually a direct correlation between body size and breast size and that not very many women get to mix and match, per se.

They seemed to get it, and by the time Dave and I were heading home a week later, they knew how to answer the question, "Which size is best?"

"Whatever size you have," they said in unison, and I smiled with relief.

The Oscars, Part II: Where are all the curvy white women???

192 pounds
If you didn't watch the Oscars on Sunday, then you might not know that, in her acceptance speech, Oscar winner Mo'Nique mentioned Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar for her supporting role as "Mammy" in 1939's Gone with the Wind. Mo'Nique said, "I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she to, so that I would not have to."

The next day, commentators were discussing Mo'Nique's acceptance speech and one of them also included a video of McDaniel's original speech, which I watched immediately.

As I watched McDaniel accept her Oscar, it hit me rather suddenly that her body, like Monique's and Gabby Sidibe's, wasn't typical of Hollywood actresses.

And that made me think more deeply about an issue that I often don't talk about: the fact that in our society women of color are allowed to be curvy, and "white" women are not.

I'm not saying this is a hard-and-fast rule. There are certainly women of color—Halle Berry, for instance—who are super thin, and I'm sure there are "white" women who are not—Kathy Bates comes to mind. But, for the most part, in the mainstream media, women of color are given more latitude in terms of what their bodies can look like than their white counterparts. A quick glimpse at my Gallery of Gorgeous Women proves that.

Still don't believe me?

Let's do a quick rundown of who was on the Red Carpet . . .

Mo'Nique, Gabby Sidibe, Queen Latifah, Mariah Carey, and Zoe Saldana were the African American women who walked the Red Carpet before the ceremony. Four out of five of those women could not fit into the sample sizes used at Fashion Week.

JLo, Penelope Cruz, and Cameron Diaz were the only Latinas there Sunday night. JLo is obviously curvier than most of her "white" peers, and Cruz is on the fence—she's got some real curves, but she's also pretty fit. Diaz, on the other hand, has always been super thin and is the only one of these three who clearly fits into the waif-like model, but one could argue that most people are ignorant of Diaz' Cuban roots, meaning she has to fit into the "white" model of beauty despite her ethnicity.

And what about the "white" actresses?

That list includes Sandra Bullock, Kathryn Bigelow, Charlize Theron, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams, Carey Mulligan, Anna Kendrick, Amanda Seyfried, Helen Mirren, Demi Moore, Sigourney Weaver, Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Kruger, Kate Winslet, Nicole Richie, Miley Cyrus, Tina Fey, and Meryl Streep.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?*

Out of these twenty women, only two have slightly real bodies . . .

Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver.

Let me repeat that . . . only two of the twenty "white" actresses on the Red Carpet last week have a normal body, and both of them are not only older than the others, they are also already established forces in Hollywood, a feat I might add they both accomplished when they were still very, very thin.

And really, let's be honest . . . Streep and Weaver have phenomenal bodies. Neither one of them are the slightest bit overweight. Who knows what I would do to look like them? Certainly, I wouldn't kill for a great bod, but I might lie, cheat, and steal to get one. And in that sense, they really can't even be put into the same category as people like Mo'Nique, Sidibe, Queen Latifah, or even the always voluptuous Lopez and Carey.

So why the double standard, Hollywood? Why are you willing to accept women of color in all shapes and sizes but only accept "white" girls who look like they stopped eating after puberty? I mean, really, Hollywood, what gives?

I don't know the answer to these questions and I fear that racism has something to do with some of it, but I do know this: until we allow women of ALL races and ethnicities to be different shapes and sizes, we will never have a healthy idea of what women's bodies should look like.

*I'm also seeing that "white" actresses significantly outnumber non-"white" actresses, which is another problem, but not one that has to do with the themes of this blog.

The Oscars, Part I: A plea to all Hollywood starlets

192 pounds
As I'm sure you all know, the Oscars were Sunday.

It was a great day for women because Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman in history to take home the Academy Award for Best Director. And her film—The Hurt Locker—also won the Best Picture award.

I also felt like the narrative of the evening focused on strong women—Sandra Bullock, Mo'nique, Meryl Streep, Gabby Sidibe, and Bigelow to name a few—and that those women thankfully had bodies of all sizes.

But before the actual ceremony began, I found myself cringing during the Red Carpet show.

At first I wasn't sure why the Red Carpet didn't have as much appeal for me as it normally does, but after the first sixty minutes or so, I put it together: many, many of the women who walked it looked too thin to me. To the point that they almost looked as if they were sickly.

I've made it a point on this blog NOT to criticize skinny women or name names about women who I think look like they are at an unhealthy weight, and I think I'll stick with that decision because it doesn't really help anyone to attack the way certain women look—whether they be too small or too big. I've always said that the point of this blog is too help people accept themselves they way they are, and calling someone anorexic-looking doesn't really serve that purpose, does it? After all, it's just as easy to be naturally thin as it is to be naturally curvy.

But I do want to make a plea to the actresses and celebrities of our time, and that plea is this:

Please be true to your bodies! Please accept your body at the weight it should be rather than giving into the weight everyone else tells you it needs to be! We need you to do this for us! We really, really do!

My husband always says he believes that after we stop growing, people settle in at a certain weight, and that that weight is often where we are supposed to be.

And, for the most part, I agree with him.

It's the same principle as aging gracefully—meaning, accepting the fact that at the age of forty, you shouldn't have the same body you had when you were twenty. We don't expect our faces to look the same as we age (at least most of us don't), so why do people expect their bodies to look the same?

And when I see people—and by people, I mean, celebrities since I don't know ANY regular people who have this problem—who are my age but weigh the same or less than they did when they weren't even old enough to drink, it scares me. There is no doubt that there are some really young celebrities out there who are pushing the thin thing too far, but there are also plenty of middle-aged superstars who are simply way too skinny.

To be honest, I find that extreme gauntness actually ages women dramatically, making them appear much less attractive than they would with just five or ten more pounds on their body. Let's face it, at some point—maybe around the age of thirty-five—women no longer look healthy being the same weight they were when they were eighteen.

Don't get me wrong, I get it.

I get why they do it.

I get that the pressure—pressure from the media, pressure from casting agents, directors and producers—to be whippet thin in Hollywood is completely insane and insanely unfair.

I've even witnessed evidence of that insanity this week. Since the Oscars I've heard one fashion commentator say something like Kate Winslet (see picture above) "has always been bigger" and another point out that Molly Ringwald (pictured below) is "not a size 0."

I mean, why is it necessary for us to talk about Ringwald not being a size zero? Is that really supposed to be some kind of freaking ideal?

And in what universe could either of these women be called "bigger"?! That is complete crap! If anything, they look pretty darn thin to me. Maybe what these critics meant to say is that they don't look anorexic or unhealthy, and it scares me to think that not looking anorexic translates to "bigger" on the Red Carpet.

So, yes, I get it, but I'm begging all of you Hollywood types out there: Do not give in to this bullshit! Let your body be the size it wants to be!

If nothing else works, look at Meryl Streep, the most successful actor in history, and recognize that you don't have to be super skinny to be huge.

Clothes make the woman

191 pounds

It has taken me nearly all of my thirty-nine years to finally understand that self esteem is more about the way you dress than the number of the scale.

I started figuring this out a few years ago, and I am still learning how to dress my body for maximum appeal. As a result, I have become a bit obsessed with fashion, which is why awards shows like the Golden Globes are a big deal for me.

Unfortunately, after watching Sunday night's red carpet show, it seems that very few women—even women who have access to stylists and free designer duds—know how to dress for the bodies they have, whether they are wonderfully curvy or fabulously fit.

Because dressing for your body is something that all women have to do and because this blog is about feeling good about yourself no matter what your size, I think it makes sense to take a day to talk about how to do the former.

There were a few women at the Globes who knew how to dress for the body size and shape, but mostly it was one fashion faux pas after another on the red carpet.

Let's start with the people who got it right.

For my money, Meryl Streep was one of the best dressed women on the red carpet Sunday night (thanks to her designer, Project Runway's Chris March), and (as I mention in my Gallery of Gorgeous Woman to the right) she's admitted to being a size fourteen, a healthy size we can all aspire to, so it makes sense to discuss why her look was so successful . . .

It's the neckline and the fit that make this dress work so well. The off-the-shoulder asymmetrical neckline is a fabulous choice for women who want to draw attention away from their middles and up to their faces and necks. Also, the fit is outstanding. The dress skims her body but doesn't squeeze it, highlighting her silhouette without letting it overpower her, which is crucial for curvy women. Finally, the belt perfectly accentuates her torso because it shows off her waistline without cinching it. This dress is simultaneously sexy and age-appropriate without ever wandering into mother-of-the-bride territory as so many women her age do.

Though she's only curvy because she's pregnant, Amy Adams also offered us a great model of how to dress if you have ample assets . . .

Adams' little black dress is another example of how an off-the-shoulder neckline, like Streep's, goes a long way towards downplaying busty cleavage, and her fitted waist and just-above-the-knee hemline show us how to camoflauge the area in the middle without hiding it from view. The short style also draws our eye to her legs, which look even longer because of her bronze-colored shoes. Adams' look is a wonderful lesson on how to dress if you want to feature your legs and shoulders and hide a bump in the middle.

On the other end of the spectrum of women who looked great on the red carpet is Big Love's Ginnifer Goodwin . . .

What's great about Ginnifer's look is that it very smartly creates curves that she doesn't really have by adding material to her hips and her waist but also shows off her slender shoulders and legs by keeping them exposed.

Though Goodwin took a risk by enhancing her frame, usually the best way to show off a super fit body is to keep it simple, and there were a handful of women on the red carpet who did that just right . . .

Kate Winslet's dress is just tight enough to accentuate her curves rather than ruin them. If it were any tighter, it would be too much.

Julianna Margulies' dress was a bit daring with the glittery red top, but the bottom of her dress was sleek enough that it still worked.

Courtney Cox's straight neckline and sleek silhouette was perfect for a woman as thin as Cox because it emphasizes her frame without making her look too skinny. She's 46 but has managed to stay extremely fit and, therefore, has every right to rock a look this sexy.

Glenn Close's dress worked for the exact same reason: simplicity . . .

If you're 62 and look like this, you have got to show it off. On a side note, I'm just so glad that "older" women in Hollywood aren't dressing like grandmothers anymore.

Sofía Vergara followed this long and sleek model and wisely only added extra material to the back of her dress in order to keep the front uncluttered.

Gabby Sidibe also dressed perfectly for her body . . .

Like Streep's, her dress gently follows the shape of her body and tucks in at her waist, emphasizing her silhouette without cling too tightly to it. This is a wonderful example of how a woman Gabby's size should dress for a formal event: she didn't hide her body in a tent dress but instead flattered it with clean, feminine lines.

Admittedly, Chloe Sevigny's dress was a bit of a controversy. Some people hated it, and others loved it . . .

There were clearly a few too many ruffles going on, but what I loved about this dress was that she looked stunning without looking super thin. The dress really showed off her curves in an interesting way. My God, she even had a little tummy! (Though it was more visible in the broadcast than it is here.) I love that!

Unfortunately, there were just as many women who didn't dress appropriately for their body.

Sadly, one of them was Christina Hendricks whose dress was designed by another Project Runway alum: Christian Siriano. . .

You might know from my "Why we should all be watching Mad Men" post that I adore Hendricks and completely worship her va-va-voom curves (in fact, I'll be adding her to my Gallery of Gorgeous Women soon), but the fit of this dress was all wrong for her. When you have a body like Hendricks', fit is crucial, and this one was too tight both in the front and in the back, pushing her girls (and the skin on her back, which you can see clearly in other photos) up and out rather than holding them in. I was devastated to see that the dress fit so poorly since I do love Hendricks and since, otherwise, she looked so stunning. But it's a good lesson about the importance of finding something that fits and it's even good for us to see that someone as amazing as Hendricks can make mistakes too.

Another curvy woman from my Gallery of Gorgeous Women who struggled on the red carpet was Patricia Arquette . . .

From my way of thinking, Arquette has a perfect body. She's not too big and not too small, but just right. Unfortunately, the criss-cross draping of this dress made her middle look MUCH bigger than it is and actually fought the shape of her body rather than working with it. Arquette would have been better off picking a style that drew attention away from her middle rather than emphasizing it. Patterns are also notoriously hard for any size woman to wear, so it's a mystery why Arquette chose one that was so busy.

Sigourney Weaver, at 60, is another older woman who still has a simply amazing body . . .

But though we can applaud Weaver for her physique, we cannot applaud her dress, which did the same thing that Arquette's did—it criss-crossed her body several times, drawing attention to her middle and make it look bigger than it is. It's a shame, too, because if you really look at this picture, you can see that Weaver has a wonderful waist, but you're so distracted by the dress' design here that her body almost gets entirely lost.

Oddly, the normally spot-on Heidi Klum committed a similar faux

pas . . .

Klum just gave birth and is, therefore, a bit curvier than normal, so maybe that's why someone who normally dresses in a way that is perfectly flattering stumbled this time. Because instead of wearing a dress that showed off her assets, Klum chose a dress that drew attention to all the wrong places. The wide neckline made her look bigger on top, and the starbust pattern and mermaid silhouette made her look bigger on the bottom. Like Hendricks' dress, this one was also too tight, a problem that may have been the result of her recent pregnancy, but one that she should have been smart enough to avoid by choosing a different dress when it was clear this one didn't fit.

Even the lovely Penelope Cruz didn't choose the right dress . . .

One of the main problems here is that there is too much going on—I mean lace, stripes, and a layered train?! Come on, Penelope! I know you can do better than that! I've seen you do better that. It looked a bit like dress by committee, which is a problem no matter what your size. (Come to think of it, this was a bit of a problem for Klum too.) But Cruz also choose a dress that had horizontal stripes that over-accentuated her wonderful curves and, like Klum, a mermaid silhouette, that made her look bigger than she is.

Rita Wilson . . .

and Lauren Graham . . .

repeated Cruz's and Klum's mistake—too tight, too mermaid-like—but exacerbated that misstep by adding a pattern (in Wilson's case) and a bright color (in Graham's) that, again, made them look bigger than they are.

While Mariah Carey took it one step further with this absurdly low neckline . . .

People made fun of Carey's dress all night, and that ought to be a lesson to all of us about the importance of suggesting our curves rather than simply showing them.

(Anna Paquin, I hope you're listening. This could be you someday if you're not careful.)

Cameron Diaz had the opposite problem . . .

Her dress made her look even thinner than she is because it wasn't as streamlined as someone like Cox's. In fact, the repeating V-pattern (in the neckline and the waist) draws more attention to her sharp angles than her sweet curves.

If Diaz's dress had too much material on top, Julia Roberts' dress had too much all over. . .

Her dress was the opposite of fitted, so much so that it's hard to tell she's got a body under there at all. If it hadn't been for her legs, this look would have been pretty close to a muumuu. As it stands, it looks more like a trench coat than a dress. There was simply too much material in the arms, the chest, and the stomach, and Roberts got lost in it.

Speaking of getting lost in a dress. . .

Where is Julianne Moore's body in this dress??? I can't see it anywhere! This is another common mistake: hiding your body behind a sea—or in this case, a wall—of fabric.

Calista Flockhart has always been underweight, and for that reason it was surprising that she too wore a long, shapeless dress. . .

There were also some women—specifically Zoe Saldana and Mo'nique, come to mind—who made the mistake of choosing a dress that highlighted weaker aspects of their physique rather than their strengths.

I almost never go sleeveless anymore, so it always surprises me when women choose to do so on national television. From my way of thinking, you've got to have amazing arms to look good in a sleeveless dress after the age of thirty. Both of these women would have benefitted from dresses with sleeves, proving that it's not just curvy women who need to dress for their size . . .

Saldana's dress is actually gorgeous, but we are so distracted by her emaciated arms that we don't notice the dress much at all. In fact, this is not the first picture I've seen lately of Saldana where she appears way too thin, to the point of being unhealthy looking, and I sincerely hope that she returns to her formerly healthy size.

I realize that by deconstructing the attire of all these amazing women, I open myself up for attack. But please know that I am not trying to criticize them. I just believe that there is so much we can learn from them. If nothing else, it's refreshing to know that skinny women make as many mistakes as curvy women, emphasizing yet again that it's not our body size that matters but how we wear what we've got.

All I want for Christmas . . .

190 pounds

A few days after my "These Kids Today" post, I followed up on my promise to talk to my nieces about body image after my older niece made some slightly inappropriate comments about my body.

I waited until we had a few moments alone—when the girls were changing into their pajamas on Christmas Eve—and then told them that even though I was bigger than their mommy that didn't mean I wasn't pretty.

(It was easy for me to say these words to them at this point in my life, but when I said them, I was still well aware how far I've come from the person I used to be, the person who couldn't see herself as remotely attractive, much less pretty, especially when compared to my super fit and adorable blonde sister.)

Immediately, the girls jumped in.

"You are SO pretty," they said, repeating themselves over and over in case I didn't believe them: "You are! You are!"

But I did believe them.

Not just because I have more self-esteem than I've ever had, but because the two of them routinely compliment the way I look. Yes, they had made some inappropriate comments about my size a few days before, but those comments were the exception rather than the rule, which was another reason I wanted to use those remarks to start a larger discussion about women's bodies while I had the chance—for all I knew, they would never say anything like that to me again.

"But I want you to understand that size doesn't have anything to do with beauty," I explained. "Bigger woman can be just as beautiful as smaller women."

"Of course, they can!" the girls both agreed without hesitation.

I could see that this was going to be an easy sell, so I decided to go further, explaining to them in detail how genes work and how our body size is determined more by our parents than by our eating and exercise habits. Of course, little kids never miss an opportunity to use any new situation or experience as a way to get even more information, and it wasn't long before they were asking me if I thought their genes would give them big breasts. I stepped around that minefield as carefully as I could and told them they'd probably look just like their mommy when they grew up, and that seemed to satisfy them.

I also took the opportunity to tell them what I thought of the word "fat"—that it's a word that is normally used in a mean way, so they shouldn't use it. They were nodding and seemed to understand, but I wasn't entirely sure they were still with me.

If I had any doubts about the effectiveness of our talk, they were erased the next day—which just happened to be Christmas—when someone used the word "fat," and my older niece jumped up from her chair and said, "That's a bad word! You shouldn't say that."

I can honestly say that it was one of the best Christmas presents I have ever received.