Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness... but only if you're tall thin and beautiful...

Today's post hast two titles... you can choose the one you like best when you're done reading this...

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness... but only if you're tall thin and beautiful...

OR

The Day I Liberated My Butt

As a little girl, I remember loving noodles. I mean, every time my mom cooked them, I wanted to eat every one. I especially enjoyed eating them straight out of the collander, all tacky and warm, after a good spaghetti dinner... already full of dinner, mind you... I would eat them until my mother ran me out of the kitchen. Yum.

I also remember that while I didn't think I was fat (we're talking childhood here... adolescence is a completely different story), I also knew that I wasn't a skinny minny. When I was around age 9, my much older and terribly glamorous sister regaled me with rapturous stories of how her "baby fat" magically melted off of her at age 12. She assured me that one day, mine would too.

"Baby fat? I have "baby fat?" the solidly built, muscular little little fourth grader thought.

And this is how quickly and innocently we get screwed up over our body images. I wasn't fat, and my sister wasn't telling me that I was. In retrospect, I think she was marking the difference between the soft, shapeless body of a girl compared to the svelt, curvaceous body of a young woman. However, now I longed to be twelve so I could be thin and eternally rid of that silly "baby fat."

Now, I've told you about my thin friend and how I learned to base my body image on her body image... completely negating my own opinion of myself, which had never been very bad to begin with. I rememberd thinking that my apple bottom was pretty cute, but in my circle at that time (mid 1980s), it wasn't very copecetic to:

1. think that anything other than a complete and utter lack of a butt was appealing
2. think anything about your own self was even remotely attractive
3. to strive to look like anyone other than 5 foot 10inch, brunette supermodel of supermodels, Cindy Crawford

Anway... in the last few years of my life, I decided that it was okay to

• both have AND like having a round 'ole booty...Thank J. Lo for that!

• to think that I looked pretty dog gone good most of the time and downright hot some of the other time; (I came to this one on my own... well, I always knew it, but I decided I didn't have to pretend the opposite any more...);

• to realize that while Cindy Crawford is beautiful, she's not the only kind of beauty in the world. My own brand of beauty is no less valuable just because I don't get paid money hand over fist to be photographed (okay maybe less valued monetarily... but you get the drift).

{Cue the harp music that TV shows use to symbolize a revelation!}

Now, I must admit that I had to marinate in all of the juiciness of this realization for a while before I was willing to do anything drastic... cause, you know I'm no size 4... but one day I decided to do it... to do the thing I feared the most...

I liberated my butt.

I did it at a safe place, where lots of people, of all shapes and sizes, have already liberated their own... the gym. I wore black bike shorts because their darkness provided me with some measure of security, and I intentionally didn't wear a long shirt that covered everything down to my knees.

Do you know what happened? The world kept on turning. No one noticed, or if they did, they didn't tell me... and as I swiveled and salsa-ed and merengue-ed my way through that morning's Zumba class, all I could do was giggle at the joy of seeing my very own booty, liberated for the first time, dance itself away!