Too Sexy For TV

Can you spot the difference between these two women?

Allow me to clarify; the woman on the left is too sexy for a commercial airing during the 8PM prime time TV spot on ABC, the woman on the right is not.

My husband recently sent me a news report about how Lane Bryant’s new advertisement for its Cacique lingerie line was pulled from ABC’s prime time (8PM -9PM) time slot for being too sexy, while at the same time ABC left the self-groping Victoria’s Secret ads firmly in place. Both feature attractive young women in lingerie – so… what’s the difference?

My immediate response was quite different from my husbands; while Ted got angry and assumed they were saying that the LB model was “too fat” for prime time, I was wondering if the Victoria’s Secret models were offended by the idea that they were so "unsexy" they could be aired during cartoons and nobody would object.

Basically the unfair labeling of women bothers me on behalf of both my large and small sisters.

It’s just ridiculous. It’s sizeist. And it quite frankly pisses me off.

Not that I think we need ANY underwear commercials while people are trying to watch family oriented programming, but for craps sake – a skinny woman can touch herself on ABC at 8PM on a Tuesday night but a curvy woman admiring herself in a mirror is obscene?

Sometimes I want to go live in the woods and just quit this stupid society altogether.

http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/lane-bryants-plus-size-lingerie-commercial-gets-censored-by-networks/

Little Things

Weight loss is an exceptionally slow process with virtually no instant gratification. I think that’s one of the myriad reasons it’s so difficult to sustain.

I can work very hard every day for an entire month, and lets face it – I still won’t be a size eight at the end of that month. If I want to be a size eight I have to work hard every day for more like a year.

It’s really difficult to sustain that level of hard work for so long when you can’t see the difference you’re making on a day to day basis.

So I’ve been thinking about what little things I can do for myself to help my self esteem right now instead of solely focusing on results that may still be years ahead of me.

Right now for me it’s skin care.

It doesn’t take long, just five minutes or so in the morning to smooth on the three (yes I have three) different kinds of skin care lotion I use on various parts of my body every day. It makes me smell good, makes me feel good, and gives me a chance to perform a sort of daily visualization exercise.

I rub my hands over my limbs and visualize the fat and cellulite smoothing away beneath my hands, shedding off the unwanted part of me like my snake casts off his old skin every few months. I admire the smooth softness of my skin and it helps me to see something pretty about myself, even as I am right now.

It helps.

For different people this is going to be different things, but for every person there’s something you can focus on about yourself right now that’s good. Be it your hair, your face, your legs, your boobs – whatever.

Focus on that thing and give it some love and attention. It gets us a little bit closer to loving ourselves today no matter how long the road ahead may be.

Beware the Bunny

The school semester will be over in another two weeks which should herald the return of more regular posting. I’m taking a writing class which has been sucking up a lot of my creative juice, although that’s not the only reason for the dry spell.

To put it blunt: there’s a lot of crap going down right now.

My eating plan has done a pile drive into the dirt, so I’ll just go ahead and confess right now:

I’VE BEEN EATING MEAT.

Not a lot of meat, not often… but every other day or so.

Obviously I need to get back on track.

So here’s the plan: grocery shop tonight and re-stock my pantry with the healthy, tasty tools I need. Investigate and invest in some quicker vegetarian foods that I can reach for quickly so I don’t feel like I have to spend two or three hours cooking every night. And prep ahead, prep ahead, prep ahead!

Also I need to get the last chocolate Easter bunny out of the house before I devour it.

The bunny. It’s haunting me.

Free to Wear Sunscreen

There’s a line in the Baz Lurhmann song: Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) that goes:

“Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.”

I’m really feeling that right now. Life is changing too fast, like trying to hold water in my hands. No matter how hard I clench it still escapes me.