Why, in my fantasy life, Annie Leibovitz is my best friend and travels with me everywhere I go

I was spending the day with a friend of mine recently when she showed me some pictures from a recent family trip. I noticed almost immediately that there weren't any pictures of her, and when I asked about it, she said, "I don't like having my picture taken."

I get it. I really do.

Because that was my attitude most of my adult life—until a few years ago, I HATED having my picture taken and looked pretty awkward almost every time I was forced to do it, which I talked about in my "Who is the girl in the picture" post. I'm still not great about posing for photos now, but I'm working on it and try my best to have a good attitude, which I think is crucial to taking a good photo.

Lately, though, I'm beginning to wonder if it's about more than just having a good attitude. Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to have my picture taken by more than one professional photographer, and I am always shocked by how good the results turn out. (The photo of me above was taken by one of those pros.)

As a result, it started to occur to me that maybe the reason I hate having my picture taken is because I don't have a professional doing it all the time. In fact, it's usually my husband or one of my friends taking my picture, and they usually do it quickly—in between talking and hanging out—without really thinking about it.

All of this had been in the back of my head when I saw a new photo of a friend on Facebook and actually thought, "Wow, that doesn't even look like her. She is so much more attractive than that." And that's when it hit me—the reason our photos don't look as good as the ones we see in magazines is simply because we don't have a professional photographer following us around all the time.

Maybe this sounds obvious, but I have witnessed too many people—men an women—bemoaning the way they look in pictures for me to believe that people understand this is the case. I think we all want to look like a celebrity every time we have our picture taken even though we don't have half the resources that most of them do.

And then I saw something that made me sure that taking a good photo doesn't usually happen by accident but rather requires some serious effort as well as a professional photographer.

I was watching Letterman a few weeks ago when Courtney Cox was on the show talking about a recent trip to St. Bart's. While she was there, Letterman held up this photo of Cox from that trip:

Letterman oooohed and aahhed over Cox's amazing physique, but she resisted the compliment, explaining that she doesn't normally look like that and that she was doing everything she could to look her best when the photo was taken.

"Well, Dave," she said. "You know when the paparrazzi are there, so that's not real . . . I mean that's real, but I was working it pretty hard . . . We made a joke about it. Let's see how Sports Illustrated we can get. And I really was like . . . I sucked in, I moved my body, and my arms are streched out. I don't walk like that!"

Cox even claimed that Letterman would be horrified if he saw the way she sits on the beach when nobody is looking and imitated herself seaside, hunched over and limp.

Whether you believe it or not, her message was clear: people don't normally look the way she did in that photo. And for some reason, I believed her. I believed that she could suck in her gut and pump her arms and legs in such a way that put her best features on display.

Do I believe I could strike the same pose and appear as hot as Cox does in her string bikini? No way, but I do believe that trying to look good and believing you can look good goes a long way towards accomplishing that goal.

And while writing this post, I decided to Google "Courtney Cox at the beach" to see if there were any pics of her looking the way she described, and believe it or not, one of the first pictures I came across was one of Cox looking the same way she imitated herself looking on Letterman . . .

Is she still beautiful? Absolutely. But she also looks real because she's not posing for the paparazzi.

It's easy for us to imagine that the beautiful people look beautiful all the time, but the truth is, when they're just being normal and goofing around with their friends and an iPhone, they take crazy photos too.

The only difference is that their bad photos never show up on Facebook.

Real bods in the boudoir: "What matters is how you FEEL"

My friend Alison turned me onto a story about a plus-sized woman—"Ms. N"—who wrote about her incredibly positive experience at a Seattle-based photo studio that specializes in "boudoir" photos, and I just had to write about it.

The goal of Seattle Boudoir Photography is to take alluring and provocative photos of women of all sizes.

(One of their photos is featured above, but be warned that if you decide to go to their website, not all of their photos are kid- or work-appropriate and some—especially the couples photos—are pretty R-rated.)

If you do look at their gallery, you'll see skinny women, plus-size women, curvy women, flat-chested women, tattoed women, pierced women, older women, pregnant women, women with crow's feet, women with tummies, women with generous derrieres, women with fleshy arms and legs, women with men, women with women, and more—one of my favorite photos is of a woman who is small on top wearing a wife beater that says "Sexy Little Bride."

The women in the gallery have different body shapes and different types of faces, but what these photos have in common is that all of them are absolutely stunning—and somking hot. I highly recommend that you take a look at SBP's galleries (especially "Bombshells & Babes") in order to see a great visual representation of the idea that beauty does not come in one size or shape.

Ms. N detailed her own experience at SBP for Offbeat Bride and explains, "I got to spend 2 hours with amazing people who, very honestly and sincerely, thought that I looked beautiful, and did everything they could to make sure that I knew it. And not only KNEW it, but FELT it, too. Nobody ever once looked at me and said, 'Oh, I sure wish you were thinner,' or 'Wow, those stretch marks really take away from this photo.' What I heard instead was, 'Oh, you have killer boobs!' and 'You look so hot in that pose, for real!' I could NOT believe my ears. And really, that was all it took for me to suddenly realize this: I'm freakin' HOT! It doesn't matter about size or scars or weight or anything. What matters is how you FEEL. And I have never been more amazed at how comfortable I could be with myself."

I could not have said it better myself.

In fact, "What matters is how you FEEL" would be an appropriate tagline for I Will Not Diet.

As long as I've been writing this blog, I've fantasized about posing in my underwear in order to prove that I'm happy with my bod—all 197 pounds of it—but also to show that women's bodies can look attractive at an average size, one that's more attainable than those of the models and celebrities we see in the media.

Looking at this studio's work makes me realize I'm not the first person to have this idea and that I really do have to follow through on that goal some day.

Nevertheless, I'm not going to lie—I may pose in my underwear, but I'm never going to show any boob. I'll leave that to the women who are braver—or crazier—than me.

Who is the girl in the picture?

About a week ago I had to have an official author photo taken for my upcoming book by the lovely and talented Victoria Taylor, a photojournalism student here at WKU.

Like most women, I'm not a big fan of having my picture taken, but over the years, I've tried to have a better attitude about it. After spending my entire life watching the women in my life groan every time they see a photo of themselves—and immediately pointing out their worst flaw—I grew tired of the pessimism and negativity.

For that reason, I have tried as much as I can to have a good attitude when my picture is taken. It's never easy, but I do my best, and for a few years now, I've been pretty good about noticing what looks good rather than what looks bad when I see a snapshot of myself.

I do the same thing in my daily life—when I look go shopping or even just when I look in the mirror each morning—so I had naively started to believe I had kicked the low self-esteem habit.

But while sitting in front of a high definition camera with a professional photographer, all of my insecurities came flooding back to me. When I looked at the images on her three-inch screen, all I could see were the flaws—why was my nose so big? my hair so flat and dark? my lips so thin? After years of teaching myself to focus on the positive, I was suddenly and completely only able to see the negative.

Not only was my inability to see my assets gone, but so was my ability to see myself at all. When Victoria showed me the images she'd captured, I could not even recognize myself. I looked that strange and unfamiliar. It was as if I was suffering from a severe case of amnesia except that the only thing I couldn't remember was what I looked like.

I would glance at the images on her screen and frown. Who was the person staring back at me? Where was the person I saw in the mirror every morning? The person with a few stray blonde highlights from her youth? The person with a normal-sized nose?

Poor Victoria had to put up with my inability to see the pictures clearly for two hours before she was finished. Every time she showed me a new shot, my face would drop, and she and Dave would have to reassure me that the pictures were good.

Now, over a week later and after posting the new photo on Facebook (and getting a dozen positive responses to it), not only do I know that the photos are good, I also know they really really do look like me.

So why couldn't I see this while they were being taken? What happened to make me so unable to see my own image?

I'm really not sure, but I think it has to do with how slowly we change.

Whenever I look at anyone in my family—my husband, my parents, or my sister—I don't see them as they are now, in 2011. Instead, I see a compilation of who they've been over the years. I see my husband's longer hair and too-big concert t-shirts, my parents' young faces and rich brown hair, my sister's glasses and pigtails. I don't see them as flat images. I see them as fully developed people with complex pasts and interesting histories.

And I think that's also what I see when I look in the mirror—the little girl with the boyish haircut, the teenager with the perfect bod, the young woman with blonde highlights. So when I looked at the photos Victoria was taking I was confused—where was the girl I used to be, the young woman I was only a few years ago?

In the end, I'm thrilled with the photos Victoria took, but I have to admit, it's also a little bit scary to realize that I've let those parts of me go. But it's letting them go that allows me to see that beauty can change and evolve just as we do as people.

Fat and happy? Or thin and sick? You make the choice.

As I mentioned last Tuesday, my father-in-law, Herb Bell, died about ten days ago.

Though it may sound strange to talk about the positive aspects of losing someone you love, I have to admit that one of the most heartwarming aspects of the experience was looking at all the old pictures—pictures of my father-in-law, my husband, and the entire family. Over the years, I’ve seen numerous photos of my husband and his parents from his childhood, but last week I think I saw every single photo taken during his childhood—and his parents’ childhoods before him.

It was fascinating on many levels.

Some of things that fascinated me were obvious—how different my father-in-law looked as a child and young man. In one picture, from around the time he was twenty, he is leaning against a brick wall, his knee folded against the wall in an pretty close replica of the famous James Dean photo. I saw that photo, and a man who always looked like a grandfather to me actually appeared hot.

Yes, I said it.

Back in the day, my father-in-law was smoking hot.

But the most interesting part of looking at these photos was that we were all searching for a picture in which Herb looked . . . well . . . I guess the only way to say it is heavy.

Why heavy? Because that’s the way we all remember him—with big glasses, a cigar in house mouth, and a bit of a belly. Like Santa Claus without the hair.

So even though we were tickled to find Herb’s James Dean photo and formal Air Force portrait, we were even happier when we put our hands on a picture of Herb the way we remember him—before he was sick, before he weighed 119 pounds as he did in the days leading up to his death. We desperately wanted to remember him as the happy and healthy man we all loved.

And the whole time we were searching for evidence of his healthier, happier self, I kept thinking about how ironic it was—after Herb got sick, he was initially thrilled by his weight loss and would often brag about how many pounds he’d lost. But at some point, the novelty of being thin wore off, and we were all left with the fact that no matter how svelte and dapper the new Herb looked, we all wanted the old one back. In the end, we longed for the healthy and plump Herb and broke down at the sight of sick, gaunt Herb.

It made me wonder why we are all so obsessed with thinness when, for some of us, being plump means we’re healthy. I even had to ask myself, what would you rather be? Thin and sick or healthy and overweight? Of course, we all would choose the latter, but if that’s the case, then why is it so difficult to accept ourselves the way we are? Imperfect, yes, but still wonderfully, vitally alive.

If I had a wish for all of us, it would be this: I wish that we would all be able to truly believe this—believe that we are better the way we are—long before old age and disease makes waifs out of us, and it is finally—and regrettably—too late.

Teach your children well

196 pounds
Some of my body issues come directly from my body—its imperfections and flaws—but most of them come from my childhood.

You see, I was raised in a house where one of us was considered pretty and one of us was considered smart.

I'll give you one guess which one I was.

As a result, it's taken me years to understand that it's possible to be pretty and smart and to have even an iota of objectivity about the way I look.

I might have mentioned this on the blog a while ago, but back in 2007, I had a bit of an epiphany about my looks. I was giving a reading and used a photo from myself at age ten for the publicity materials. When the advertisement went out via email, one of my students said something like, "I should have known you were always pretty."

The comment shocked me because until that moment I don't think I had ever thought of myself as pretty. Attractive, yes. Sexy, hell yes. But pretty? Not really. And I definitely hadn't thought of my childhod self as ANY of those things simply because of the dichotomy I was raised under ... Molly smart, Katie pretty.

For years I've thought about this dichotomy—wondered about it, analyzed it, written about it—and sometimes I find myself thinking, maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember. Maybe I'm being too hard on my parents.

But then, one of them slips up and says or does something that puts me right back at my ten-year-old insecure self.

This weekend that honor went to my mother.

I hadn't talked to her in a while, so I was catching her up on what's been going in my life lately. And when I told her that I was going to have a new author photo taken for my upcoming book, she said, "Make sure the camera isn't too close. It will look better from farther away."

Ouch.

I realized immediately I should have been wounded by this comment, but it was so offensive and so like my mother, that it was more laughable than hurtful.

Still, I didn't laugh.

Instead, I decided to send the message that—despite my parents' best efforts—I am no longer nervous about having a close-up photo taken. But my mother wouldn't let it go, insisting that "you don't want it to be too close."

At that point, I was fed up and explained—loudly, I might add—that author photos are never full body shots, that they are always, by definition, close-up.

She got the message—probably because of my volume—and backed off.

But later I kept thinking about it—does she really think I would look that bad close-up? Does she really think I'm that hard to look at? And is this why I thought I was unattractive until I was twenty years old?

It occurred to me then that my mother's comments were more about herself than they were about me. This is a woman who didn't want to join Facebook because she didn't think she had a good enough photo for her profile picture, a woman who looks stiff and unhappy in nearly every snapshot. She didn't want me to have a close-up taken because she never wants to have one taken of herself.

The truth is that it wasn't that my mother believed that only my sister was pretty when we were growing up or that she wanted me to look more like Katie. It was that she wished she looked more like my sister—more blonde and more thin. And she just assumed that everyone would have that same wish—including me.

Sure, it only takes me a few minutes to figure that out now, but when I was growing up, I lacked the critical thinking skills that allow me to understand this. So I walked through childhood believing I was gross.

I suppose that if I had a daughter—or even a son—I would be falling all over myself to make sure I didn't injure her self-esteem because of my own issues the way my mother did with me. But since I don't have any kids, I guess I'll just have to rely on all of you to take care of that for me.