"A pretty girl is like a melody..."

"Girl! You have curves! Men want a woman who looks like woman, not like a boy! Now knock it off and eat a sandwich!"

So stated a teen I live with to another teen I live with. Wow. Someone heard me. The fact that she used the terms "men" and "woman" is still somewhat disturbing to me.

"What men? Who are these men? And what woman? I am the only woman in this house!" I proclaim just before I remember the cup sizes of the not so little girls I live with anymore. Sigh...

I spent some time with a friend recently who has struggled with that woman in mirror as much as I have. We joked, with a lot of truth in there I should add, that while we hated that a friend of ours suffers with Crones...she always looks so great! Another woman at church recently confessed that she envied another woman we know who was never able to have children....'cause she looks so great.

Can we all agree on how sick we are now? I mean seriously? Would any of us give up our babies to be thin or suffer with a horrific disease to have a concave belly? Perhaps we should all sit around and look with admiration at some Auschwitz survivors? Oh, I know, there are woman starving and dying in poverty over in Haiti....lets join them, shall we? Excuse me while I put away my soap box...I am back. Knew you would miss me.

Sigh again. What can I say that would make the woman in the mirror shut up.

"Seriously, lady in the mirror, I know about the back fat. Now shut up. "

Actually, I am the size I am now for you all, dear readers. My weight has become an act of public service to you all. Seriously, I have made many of you feel way better about your waist lines, just by seeing mine. You can gladly look at images of me and say, "Well, at least I am not that wide." So consider yourselves blessed while I try to jump start my IBS and have another bakery cookie. And by the way, to the reader who offered to throw me an intervention at the local bakery...back off lady. I am not giving the stuff up!

What to do, as a woman in the 21st century? We are bombarded with images of touched up models who spend their lives trying to look skinnier...Again, sigh.

Even our government is in on it now days. God forbid our kids should drink whole milk or have a blasted Happy Meal once in a while. There was some news story about how our school lunch programs will no longer offer french fries...seriously? Well that should take care of everything. If obesity is the new epidemic, why do we have so many girls starving themselves to death or longing to do so anyway? Catch 22 I suppose.

"Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like." James 1:23-24

Now I know that James was talking about The Word here...but it does fit doesn't it? And if we read the word and consider what true beauty is (think about our friend the Proverbs 31 lady!) but constantly complain, we are doing just what James has stated.

Hearing my daughter tell her sister to enjoy her curves means that something broke the spell our society seems to hole over us. She heard truth. Maybe that is all a mom can hope for some days..And prayer...Gallons and gallons of prayer. That and hide the bakery cookies so they won't have to be shared. Maybe.