Mariah Carey Gets a Modesty Makeover

We've all seen Photoshop used to slim down "fat" people (read: everyone not emaciated), hid pimples, smooth aged skin and even to plump up sickly thin people but the Saudi Arabian censors have taken computer image enhancement to a whole new level: They used it to de-sluttify Mariah Carey. Somebody nominate them for the Nobel, pronto.

Confession: Mariah Carey's music is like nails on a chalkboard to me, especially when she sings in her famous upper register (she sounds exactly like a Whistling Pete firework - you know, the ones that screech higher and higher until they end with a bang and have no cool lights or sparkles or anything to recommend them except they're guaranteed to make small kids cry?) But even setting aside my inherent dislike of her singing, girl has worn nothing but 700 different takes on the micro-mini dress over the past decade. She's totally gorgeous and has a bangin' body but seriously, haven't you ever wondered what she would look like in sleeves? Or even - hush now - pants?? Wonder no more my friends. To make her modest enough to sell in more conservative countries, entrepreneurial Arabs gave her a Modesty Makeover. It almost makes me want to like her. That is until I remember that she sleeps in a Hello Kitty bedroom and has dedicated an entire bathroom to the mouthless kitty, despite being a fully grown woman. That makes me feel all stabby again. (Not that there is anything wrong with a little Hello Kitty love, Java Chick!)

Check out my post on HuffPo to see the full slideshow!

Am I unfairly maligning Ms. Carey's vocal talents? Do you think she actually looks better post-makeover too?? Any of you have a go-to wardrobe item that you have in 20 different colors because you know you look awesome in it?

When Makeovers Go Bad

Orange Velvet Suit Man at the Twin's baseball game the other night: I salute you. Not many people would go to a ball game decked head to toe in a bright orange velvet zoot suit with matching orange fedora. I love that about you! And I don't even know you! Ignore the frat boys calling you "pimp", revel in the gawkers - you are awesome and I hope you never change.

My love for the Orange Velvet Suit Man might stem from the fact that I too will take any occasion to dress up - I myself wore a kicky little dress and strappy sandals to the game (yes, I was cold and no I still don't regret it although I did see a blinged out jersey that I would totally wear if I ever go to another game, which I probably won't because, well, baseball is pencil-in-the-eyeball boring). Frankly, there are not enough orange velvet suits in the world.

A pet peeve I've long had is when people - usually stylists from a TV show or magazine - makeover a person with a very distinctive personal style to make them look more in line with popular culture's definition of good looking. I call it the "Average Makeunder." Sure they look more like everyone else but often they look nothing like themselves. I know Stacey and Clinton mean well but I think a makeover is only warranted in the cases where the person themselves feels badly about the way they look and they want to make a change. I hate it when people are forced or tricked into going on those makeover shows. Who cares if they're still wearing their beloved Two Wolves Howling at the Moon cross-stitched sweatshirt? Eventually it'll come back in style!

I never thought I'd have strong feelings about The Jersey Shore boys - they created the stereotype of douchebag, after all - but after I saw what happened to them when GQ got a hold of them... well, it's bad people. To see pics and read my take on their Average Makeunder, check out my post on Huffington Post.

How do you feel about quirky dressers? Do you love a character or do you think costumes should be reserved for major holidays and/or parades? How do you feel about the myriad of makeover shows on tv now? Have you ever wanted a makeover?

"Truthiness" in Advertising

You already know that many starlets grace (is grace really the word I'm looking for here?) magazine covers half undressed but did you hear about Carey Mulligan wearing a towel around her bottom on the cover of Vogue this month? No it's not the latest terry-cloth fashion hot off the runway - as if! - poor Carey was actually the victim of an ill-fitting haute couture dress. As she explains: "The cover dress was very pretty but wouldn't go over my arse. Sample size is very, very tiny. I'm actually wearing a towel around my waist and the bottom is clipped up because I couldn't fit."

While Carey seems to be taking it all remarkably well - further on in the interview she talks about feeling free from the thin pressure that crushes many other actresses her age - but that had to have been at least a little unnerving. You're on the cover of Vogue and you have a priceless dress on your top and a towel on your bottom. What do you say when a Vogue stylist hands you a dress and you can't get it over your hips? And then how do you work a towel into that conversation?? But what really irritates me is that they made her do the cover shoot anyhow, even in such a state. Instead of finding a dress to flatter the already gorgeous actress, they forced the actress into an unflattering dress. All to sell more "aspirational fashion" to women who probably can't fit in it either.

The twisted marketing reminded me of this adventure with Gym Buddy Allison:

Random Suburban Mall, Old Navy, 10:05 a.m.

me: What is THAT?!?

Old Navy now specializes in rib removals. For $10. Suh-weet.

me: Did they lose all the non-anorexic mannequins?

Allison: How do I look?

me: Hi, Cher.

The beauty of a 16-inch waist is you can totally heimlich yourself.

And it gets better. Not only was the shirt pinned within an inch of its sweat-shop life in the back:
But it was a size small to begin with:
We left the store empty handed.

Store mannequins are basically the photoshop of the physical world - you've seen the ones standing (shirtless) sentry at Abercrombie and Fitch, right? - so I don't really expect much. After all, they don't even have heads! Or hands! Or even a spot to house pretend internal organs! And then there's Lane Bryant using a size 8 mannequin to model size 16 + clothing (with more outrageous pinning, I'm sure). But in a world where tiny Carey Mulligan can't fit in the couture dress they forced her to wear on the cover of the magazine anyhow, do we really need mannequins adding to the lies and deception?

What do you think of Carey's confession? Brave or embarrassing? How do you feel about mannequins so small they can't even model the smallest size of clothing in the store? Anyone else feel compelled to manhandle the mannequins?

How Thin is Too Thin?

Photo Credit

Our society is warped. Twisted. A veritable fun-house of fat and thin mirrors when it comes to body image. One on hand we have Kim Kardashian, queen of curves, compelled to exclaim in an interview, "I look a lot bigger on TV. When I meet people, the first thing they say is, 'Wow, you're so much smaller than I thought'. I look about 15 lbs heavier. I'm only 115 lbs, and everyone thinks I'm like 130 or 140. It's bizarre. I'm a US size 2!"

On the other hand we have Kai Hibbard, a finalist on Season 3 of The Biggest Loser, interviewing about how the show gave her an eating disorder to the point where she was eating 1,000 calories while working out 5-8 hours a day. Says Kai about the consequences of her experience, "It gave me a really fun eating disorder that I battle every day, and it also messed up my mental body image because the lighter I got during that T.V. show, the more I hated my body. And I tell you what, at 144 and at 262 and at 280, I had never hated my body before that show."

Kim Kardashian and Kai Hibbard I am not (and not just because my name doesn't start with K) but I really sympathize with their feelings about being on TV and dealing with the resultant body image woes.

I've gotten a lot of interesting feedback from my 20/20 piece but one of the most common comments I've got is some incarnation of "But you never looked that skinny." The implication of course is that I wasn't skinny enough to have an eating disorder. I first encountered this during my pre-interview process with Fox News. The producer kept asking me for my "skinniest skinniest pics, the ones that show the most bones." I knew what they wanted. They wanted to see a 64-lb walking skeleton with a nasogastric tube and furry arms. Because that's good television. From the very beginning I told them I never got that thin but sent them some pictures from that time period. They weren't satisfied and kept phoning, texting and e-mailing me for better pics all the way until I'd boarded my airplane. If I were more technically savvy it would have driven me to Photoshop, I swear.

The Skinny Pics Debacle Take 2 happened after the 20/20 interview taped, but before it aired. The producer for the segment e-mailed me many times asking for better shots with the implication being skinnier shots. But it wasn't limited to just TV people with their characteristic penchant for extremism. My own family joined the chorus. In an e-mail to my uncle about the piece, my father wrote, " I saw her frequently through the whole time period in question and yes, she was slim, but she was healthy, energetic, and happy (as far as I could see), and so I was never worried. I admit freely that she cares about food in ways I don’t, but hey, different strokes for different folks."

I love my dad dearly and consider him a great friend as well as a great father but his seeming dismissal of my illness stung. Friends and acquaintances jumped on the bandwagon as well - some by comparing me to the super-skinny Johnny of the 20/20 piece and others by comparing me to popular TV or movie stars. "Well, you were thin but not like Angelina Jolie thin. And she doesn't have an eating disorder." To my crazy mind all of these comments came out sounding like "You weren't thin enough as a normal girl and you certainly weren't skinny enough as an anorexic/orthorexic. Even when you're bad you're not good enough!" How skinny would I have to get before people thought I was actually sick?

Here's the thing: I had a BMI of 17. According the World Health Organization anything under 18.5 is considered unhealthy. But in a world where Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham subsist at about a 16, I do look kind of porky. And it wasn't just low weight. I lose my period when my BMI dips below 19 - a fact I've discovered on several occasions in my post-pubescent life. Amenorrhea is indicative of such poor nutrition that the body feels like it cannot support a baby. I had low iron, whacked-out electrolytes, vitamin deficiencies, a suppressed thyroid, heart arrhythmias and hair loss. But worst of all was the mental damage. I was depressed, neurotic and withdrawn.

It's true that I didn't break any bones, lose teeth or end up in the hospital with a tube up my nose - a fact for which I am deeply grateful. But I did hurt. It's just most of the hurt was emotional. And that's the wound I'm still working on healing.

At my thinnest - and most fragile mentally - I got tons of compliments. Everywhere I went people commented on my physique. One woman at the gym even told me I had "the perfect body" (as if there is such a thing). I loved how I looked in clothes, even while I was secretly horrified at how I looked naked - since I lose weight in my upper body first, my chest looked like a xylophone while my legs still kept their fatty bits. My therapist maintains that the compliments came because of my increased self confidence - and she may be right - but I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we are conditioned to appreciate only extremely thin women.

A lot of women with eating disorders look "normal" to us.

My dirty little not-so-secret is that I would love to be that weight again, ribs and all. But I can't do it and remain healthy. Some women probably can weigh what I did and keep their periods and their sanity. Not me. Not my body. And so I choose to maintain a weight higher than what is comfortable for me and waffle back and forth between self -hatred and -love because I know where the alternative leads and I can't pay that price anymore. Even if that makes me look 15 pounds too fat on camera.

What about you - does the weight you personally like yourself best at correspond with the weight other people think you look good at? Have you, like Kai, ever felt worse about yourself at a lower weight?

Hooters Waitress Suspended For Not Fitting Uniform

Hooters made news today by admitting what most of us already know: Despite claims that it is best known for its wings it turns out it is really selling breasts. And the rest of the well-shaped bodies of their famous scantily clad waitstaff. A Hooters in Detroit - does this city really need any more bad publicity? - recently put 20-year-old Cassandra Smith on probation for gaining weight.



The pretty blond waitress and two-year Hooters veteran was called in for her annual review only to be confronted by her manager and a representative from corporate headquarters about her recent weight gain. The company offered her a free gym membership and 30 days to slim back down into tip-top short-shorts shape or face a "separation" from the company. (No word if she would be able to sue for alimony.) While this might seem despicable at first glance, the company defended itself by making the comparison between their waitresses and the Rockettes and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders saying, "We will say that our practice of upholding an image standard based on appearance, attitude, and fitness for Hooters girls is both legal and fair."

Certainly Smith had to know when she was hired that they weren't paying her for her stellar mastery of the menu nor her uncanny ability to remember all her customer's names. So while she doesn't have the paycheck or the celebrity (or the rockin' costumes - those orange shorts are a travesty of American Apparel proportions) of a Rockette or Cheerleader, she shouldn't have been surprised when she was commoditized like one, right? Only two problems with that argument:

1. Smith is 5'8" and 132 pounds. Yeah she's changed since they hired her but she's hardly portly by any stretch of the imagination.


2. Her boss is this guy. Granted he's not the one, er, pushing wings but really the irony had to be rich in that room. Normally I would abstain from making a comment about anyone's weight but since he brought up the topic, I say he is making himself fair game for public scrutiny.


Smith is said to be considering legal options but I'm guessing that the corporate giant is going to win this one. First, it's an industry truism backed by research that the hotter the waiter or waitress, the better the tips and the better the customer perceives the establishment. Hooters just happens to be more honest - and brazen - about that fact. Second, it's certainly not the first company to fire employees based on physical appearance. Even Prada does it. Third, as much as I hate that this is the case, women are sexually objectified in many, many industries. Heck we're even teaching 7-year-olds that the way to be loved and celebrated is to shake it like a stripper:

Do I wish that Cassandra Smith hadn't been suspended from her job for her weight? Absolutely. Do I also think that she should have expected this given the company? Yeah, probably. Do I think that this would be the perfect opportunity for her to find a new career based on something other than her looks? Definitely. Am I done asking myself questions so I can answer them? Apparently not.

What's your take - was Cassandra Smith fairly suspended? Have you ever worked at a job that required you to look a certain way? How did you feel about it? Did you see the "Seven Year Olds Going Hard on Single Ladies" video? (Tough luck if you didn't, it's already been taken off YouTube for copyright violations.) What do you think - little girls just having fun (and being really really talented dancers) or little girls being pornified with the consent of their parents?

Confessions of a Celebrity Blogger

It all started with a dubious website for underemployed writers and a post that can best be described as the Internet equivalent of a casting call for a Valtrex ad. "Writer wanted for popular celebrity blog. Style must match exactly. I need to take a break for personal reasons and want to keep posting continuous for the readers. You will post under my name only. Send two sample posts to xxxxx@hotmail.com. Pay good."

It was the last bit that snagged me. I needed money and I don't have a lot of pride. I also don't have a lot of knowledge about celebrities so I went over to the site and checked it out. It was your basic celebrity blog: paparazzi pic, 100-word snarky description and hundreds of venomous commenters. I could totally ghost this. So I practiced my typos, snagged a couple of (probably copywrited) pictures off another blog and sent it in.

The reply was immediate via an obviously faked e-mail account. "I'm putting your posts up. If the readers like them, you're in."

The readers liked me. Or at least my slightly better grammar (I couldn't help it!) didn't tip them off that I wasn't Madame herself. Although technically it could have been Monsieur. Throughout our entire time together I never was exactly sure whom I was speaking to or what exactly the crisis of a personal nature entailed.

The job description was straightforward: There was a morning push and an afternoon push. I needed a minimum of four posts in each push. The pay per post ended up only being "good" if I could do each push in under an hour. Four posts of 100 words? Easy peasey.

My first day, I blocked out an hour before the morning push was due and started scanning the photo sites Madame had sent me for a usable picture. Sifting through pages of blurry camera phone shots (if only Big Foot were considered a celebrity!), irrelevant and thankfully indiscernible nudie pics and thousands of inane comments took me forty five minutes and left me with an undated picture of Rihanna on a beach and an Angelina Jolie promo shot from her latest movie. But they were of a decent quality so I downloaded them and dutifully started the posts. Blankness. How was I supposed to know what Rihanna does at the beach? Sweating now as I watched the clock tick by, I hastily googled her, hoping to find some story that would give me titillating information to attach to the otherwise bland picture. Still nothing.

Timidly I e-mailed Madame, who responded promptly from her Blackberry, "Don't worry about the story. Just get good pic. Write something. Love sources." Well, that was the gist of it anyhow, minus the punctuation. I gulped and finally wrote some inane blather about her unflattering bikini and athletic thighs. As soon as I hit post, I knew I'd betrayed my gender. And my own thighs. And intelligent folk everywhere. I hastily edited it to add a line about her "glowing skin." All better. Right?

The commenters eviscerated me. The picture was apparently over a week old, had already been discussed ad nauseum earlier, and how did I not remember that her thighs were fat, not athletic. One more-observant-than-normal person wrote, "Madame, are you sick? Is this even really you?"

Madame was furious and let me know it short, grammatically challenged bursts. What I took away was that I needed to, duh, check the archives before I posted and also check the archives of every other celebrity blog on the Internet to make sure they hadn't already covered it. If they had, I had to either scrap the post or come up with a better angle. Slowly I realized that this was going to take me a lot longer than fifteen minutes a post. There are only so many angles on Angelina Jolie, and I'm not just talking about her collar bone.

I stumbled along through the rest of the morning push, coming out with several inoffensive, mostly incoherent, but at least current, posts. There was Liv Tyler. And something about Lindsay Lohan (isn't there always?). I had to kill the Angelina Jolie story because, frankly, I couldn't think of a single new thing to say about her.

Madame checked in with me before the afternoon push. I asked her how she knew what celebrities ate (or didn't) and watched and did in their spare time. There wasn't even a pause before I got her reply, "I don't." And that was the missing piece. All that time I had spent researching my story? Unnecessary. The direction was implied: just make it up. With this new knowledge I flew through the afternoon push and the next couple of days. Just as I was beginning to think this job was going to work out (when I bothered to think about it all, which I tried not to do because then I had to pay attention to the Jiminy Cricket drowning in the fountain of bile in my stomach), a celebrity struck back. I had felt safe in my electronic nowhereville, hadn't even imagined that the people I was writing about might actually read what I had written and, heaven help me, have an opinion about it.

Michelle Williams tripped me up. Heath Ledger wasn't dead yet and so she was still a middling celebrity. But she made the mistake of wearing a blousy shirt and getting photographed at an unflattering angle so I did what any good first-time celebrity blogger would do: I cried pregnancy. I even cited a "source" confirming the happy news, that actually linked back to an interview with Williams in which she discussed nothing even remotely close to children or pregnancy or even Heath. It was no bigger a lie than any of my other posts (and probably nicer) but, strangely, the celebrity blogs went haywire with it. The link was posted on numerous other sites, corporate media ones even, all citing me (well actually Madame) as the source. Apparently none of them bothered to fact check my post. By the next day, it was everywhere. Williams' rep even issued a statement vehemently denying the rumors.

Madame was giddy. I was horrified. How angry was Williams when she when read my post? Was it possible she could sue me? I'd been a celebrity blogger for all of three days and suddenly I was facing possible legal action? Madame comforted me by pointing out that celebrities don't have time to sue everyone who writes crap about them. Plus Williams got tons of free publicity out of it, so she probably secretly liked it. Great, now I'm a literary rapist.

If Michelle Williams was the beginning of the end, then Posh Spice was my undoing. Like every Gen-Y'er, I could tell you what I want, what I really, really want. Even if that thing was the incoherent "zig-a-zig-pie." But I had made the mistake of not keeping up with Victoria Beckham as she dropped the rest of the dollar-store dried parsley and transformed from merely a condiment to the whole spicy meatball - not that she would eat one.

So when I heard on the early radio gossip show which I only listened to since becoming Madame's flunky in the vague hope it would be able to make up for 10 years of cultural laxity, that "unauthorized" pictures of Posh had surfaced, I didn't know enough to drop my scrambled eggs and run for my computer. Apparently the pictures showed a small unidentified growth under her right armpit that the host insisted was evidence of her plastic surgery. Because we need evidence? But I jotted down the website anyhow.

Eventually when I made it onto the web, I typed it in and sure enough there were a few of the most unshocking pictures of Ms. Spice-Beckham I'd ever seen. (Seriously, if you caught the August 2007 cover of W then you're already 10 steps down the skank path from these pics.) There was no explanation other than a melodramatic "See these pictures now before her lawyers get to us! They won't be here long! Tell the world!!!!" Tell the world what, exactly? That Posh has a huge skin tag? Cancer of the armpit? A too-tight shirt and a phenomenon women around the world know as "armpit boobs"?

Still, I was becoming accustomed to the minutiae of Celebrity Blogging and besides my morning push started in a mere hour. Plus the pictures were high-res and in my book that was reason enough to use them, even if they had been, say, Madeleine Albright in a bikini. Armpit boobs it was.

Suddenly, shaming lazy abusive boyfriends everywhere, Madame's pre-dawn stalker e-mail arrived, wanting to know what I was working on. Her "crisis of a personal nature" obviously didn't involve her fingers, retinas or perfectionism. I told her about the radio show only to be interrupted with "U got scooped by RADIO??? Our readers go to US first!!!!" - thereby making up for an entire week's worth of omitted punctuation.

I didn't bother pointing out that a) I'm not psychic and b) none of the other celeb-sites were reporting it either. Somewhere a radio reporter was cackling gleefully. Radio: 2 Internet: 8,234,987,201 (in 2.3 seconds) I threw the post up and e-mailed her the source link, feeling a teeny bit excited that we were the first site to report it. An uncharacteristic silence reverberated from her BlackBerry. I took that to mean she was proud.

I would be wrong.

Madame: WHAT HAVE U DONE

Me: Ummmm

Madame: Am taking it down

Me: Why?

Madame: Obv faked

Me: If using photoshopped pics is off limits, we'll have to retract 70% of our posts, including every magazine cover you've ever ran. I didn't add, "If honesty were truly a virtue then there goes the remaining 30% and you'll have to go back to selling beanie babies on E-Bay."

Madame: Lawyers (the "idiot" was implied)

Me: I thought we didn't have to worry about that (See Williams, Michelle).

Madame: Idiot (no longer implied)

Me: Thank you?

Madame: THIS IS VICTORIA BECKHAM

Me: Yes, we've established that

Madame: $$$ = LAWYERS

Me: Which is why we never cover Tom Cruise?

Madame: Look... this isn't working out

And then I knew what was coming. A brief flare of indignation.

Me: Are you firing me?

Madame: Your morning push is late

Me: But I HATE this job! You at least owe me the dignity of QUITTING.

Madame: Don't owe you anything

Me: Crap. Does this mean I'm not getting paid?

It did.

(Note: In writing this post, I did go back and try to find the original Posh Spice Underarm Growth pictures. Not that I tried very hard, but I did google at least seven different search strings, and nothing came up. As far as I can tell the original site was pulled and no other celeb blogs reported on it. Apparently the lawyers got us.)

Anyone else had a job they are too ashamed to tell their family about? What's the worst job you've ever had? (Unless it's hooking, I win.)

Pregnancy: Attack of the Body Snatchers, Jillian Michaels Edition

Tiger Lady. That's what my oldest son christened me as soon as he could talk, thanks to my knees-to-navel stretch marks. (Note: that proud day was also the day I decided he was too old to shower with mommy anymore.) So I will be the last person to tell you that you can have a baby and bounce back to exactly the same shape you were in before having a human erupt from your loins. Even if you do get down to your pre-pregnancy weight - a touchy enough subject - most likely things will settle into new positions. (We won't even talk about the disasters that befall your nipples.) For every Heidi Klum in her Victoria's Secrets, there are a hundred Charlottes in our control-top tights.

And yet it still rubbed me the wrong way when Jillian Michaels said in a recent interview with Women's Health that she didn't want to get pregnant because of the effect it would have on her body:

There is no doubt that “The Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels has one of the best bodies in America, and given her childhood history of being overweight, it's something the 36-year-old has worked ultra-hard to achieve. So hard in fact, that she’s not willing to let it slide even to become a biological mother.

“I’m going to adopt. I can’t handle doing that to my body,” Michaels told the new issue of Women’s Health magazine. “Also, when you rescue something, it’s like rescuing a part of yourself.”

Not being an adoptive mother, I'm going to let that comment about "rescuing something" slide (okay I can't let it slide: Children aren't puppies. And also, adoption is not about fixing yourself. Now I'm done.) but I'm always a little leery when women tell me they don't want to biologically have children for fear of marring their bodies.

While there are many good reasons not to have children - and I am in no way saying that all women should start popping out young 'uns like a Pez dispenser (oh, if only labor was that easy!) - I don't think fear is a good one. Especially not fear of losing your looks.

Jillian may be in a particularly unique position due to her job depending primarily on her physique but she certainly isn't the first woman who has voiced this concern. In a society that trades in sexuality and abhors aging it is often seen as a woman's currency to stay looking as youthful is possible. (The irony of living in a culture that worships sex but freaks out over the product of sex - see: men who love looking at boobs... until there is a baby attached to them and then they're "disgusting" - is a different rant for another day.) The problem with that is that everyone, even Demi Moore, will age eventually. The laws of physics will not be denied: Your body will move towards entropy. Not having children may buy you a few more years but in the end, everyone's boobs sag and their butts droop and their tummies deflate to bread dough.

Whether or not Jillian (or anyone else) ever has kids, or even wants kids, is none of my business. I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if she'd just said "I don't want to have children" or "I'm planning to adopt." Likewise I would have been fine with "I have a family history of illness I don't want to risk passing down" or "I don't have the resources to support a child" or even "I have a deep-seated fear of Ronald McDonald and the chance of running into that evil clown is exponentially higher with wee ones around and I'm just not willing to risk it."

Putting the blame on her body bothers me for two reasons: 1) I think her stance reinforces the view that pregnancy is an illness or a condition to be feared, rather than a natural bodily function for women and 2) It reads as if she is saying that women who have had children are inherently less beautiful and that our self worth should be tied to what we look like rather than who we are.

My last point may be purely speculative based on the wonderful experiences I've had with my kids but I also worry about regret. Call me biased (I did birth 5 of the little nippers after all) but I just think that if the only reason you choose not to have kids is fear of stretch marks and loose skin then there is a good chance you'll regret that choice when you realize you have stretch marks from puberty and loose skin from aging anyhow.

I'm not trying to come down on Jillian for speaking honestly; I just don't want her to miss out on an amazing experience because of something so ephemeral. You tell me - is Jillian just saying what everyone else is thinking? Did I misinterpret Jillian's meaning? Does fear of ruining your body impact your decision to have a baby? Do you feel like pregnancy has wrecked your body? Any thoughts on "rescuing yourself" by adopting a baby?


UPDATE: Jillian Michaels has taken to Twitter to further explain her comment. Like many of you suggested might be the case, she clarifies by saying "I never said I was anti-pregnancy or taht pregnancy ruins a body. I said that 'I can't put my body through it.' There are emotional issues and physical LIMITATIONS that have resulted in that conclusion. Some I have discussed publicly and some I haven't." [emphasis hers]

I want to thank Jillian for taking the time to clarify her comments and to apologize for misunderstanding her intent.

Wonder Woman Eats Right and Exercises Sensibly

Judging from this pic, I think Wonder Woman is wearing a thong - not ideal for crime fighting but I bet it sure keeps Superman in line!

Wonder Woman, sometime paramour of Superman with her bullet shaped bras (Superman has a fetish?) and athletic legs, has long been considered a heroine in her own right by millions of fans - girls and boys alike. But is she a good role model?

When my second son insisted on checking out a Justice League book from the library with she of the Barbie waist and wedgie-defying leotard on the cover, I cringed. Surely this was not appropriate fare for a young developing mind. At the very least it would teach him that DDD breasts are self supporting and GoGo boots are the footwear of choice when fighting crime - both concepts that would make a real-life woman laugh hysterically before remembering with both chagrin and nostalgia the little girl she used to be who was Wonder Woman four years in a row for Halloween. (Not that I'll ever admit to it. Or to the red, white and blue swimsuit with tin foil armbands that has grown musty with age but still has a place of honor in my memory box.)

My second son being the stubborn child he is, he made his case (loudly) and I acquiesced (quietly) and the book came home with us. That night during bedtime stories, I discovered that the first page has Wonder Woman's vital stats - because of course we judge even our Superheroines by their bust-waist-hip. But before I could roll my eyes a second time, I was first surprised and then impressed to note that Wonder Woman is (are you ready for this?):


Height: 5 ft. 11 in.
Weight: 155 lbs
Birth Date: Winter 1941
Occupation: Ambassador
Real Name: Diana













Besides being surprised that Wonder Woman is not her actual name (next thing you'll tell me He-Man is really Dexter) and that one can be an ambassador with a cloth-to-flesh ratio that would embarrass a street walker, I was impressed to note that her animators had actually given her a very realistic weight for her height. This gives her a BMI of 21, solidly in the "normal" range. (Note: BMI charts are totally fine for comparing cartoons. Just don't attempt using them on yourself. Unless you're Jessica Rabbit, you minx, you.) When you think about it, it makes sense - she certainly gets plenty of butt-kicking exercise and you never see her eating junk food. Not bad for a 69-year-old!

The other Superheroines also followed suit: "Oracle" is 5 ft. 6 in. and 126 lbs. "Queen Bee" is 5 ft 9 in and an impressive 226 lbs! Hellloooo Queen Latifa! The only ridiculousness is "Sorceress" who is "tall as a willow" and "light as a feather." Of course, she was invented in 2000 and bears more than a passing resemblance to Linda Evangelista.

It seems like Wonder Woman, fake as she is, at least has a good self-image. I'm not saying she's perfect but at least she has some serious muscles. Ever seen a Bratzz doll? Skinnyplasticfat. Now if she would just lose the implants and the boots, she might regain a place in my heart. Okay, she can keep the boots - I've been known to wear some impractical footwear myself.

What superhero was your favorite growing up? Was anyone else convinced they had a superpower (I was 100% positive I was telepathic because I always knew what my best friend was thinking - she was thinking that she was telepathic because she always knew what I was thinking!)?

Weight and Fertility Problems

As if it isn't enough that a woman's weight is intensely scrutinized for reasons ranging from medical to vanity to rank curiousity while she's pregnant, now she has to worry about her weight if she so much as merely wants to have a baby. Last week super skinny E! correspondent Guilana Rancic (you may remember her as the red carpet crazy who grilled all the actresses about their diet and exercise regimes until Christina Hendricks put her in her place) made headlines by telling the View cabal that she refused to gain 5 pounds even though her doctor told her it might help with her struggle with infertility. Bloggers, pundits and playground mommies everywhere jumped in on both sides of the controversy, with the general cry echoing (childless (correction: I was informed by Karen in the comments that Whoopi actually does have a kid. And possibly a grandkid. Whoops!)) Whoopi Goldberg's words for Rancic: "If she wants to have a baby, she needs to eat because the baby needs to eat! To hell with that girl!"

Rancic's reply to the angry View host and irate fans was a rambling explanation saying that she was a victim of The View's agenda, that she had gained "some" weight and also that it is her job to fit in sample sizes. She topped it off with a slightly irrational, "Well Nicole Richie, Jessica Alba - they both had babies!" Although she failed to account for the fact that the skinny-yet-fecund Richie and Alba are a good decade younger than her and age is perhaps the primary factor in fertility. All of this verbiage was spouted in - naturally - a restaurant in front of a ginormous plate of pasta that Guliana said she could eat all of and yet only took one bite, convincing me not that Guliana doesn't have an eating disorder but rather this is just one more piece of the media machinations that run the reality star's life.

However, I'm not going to take sides on Guliana's weight gain. It's not that I don't have an opinion but rather it's just not that simple. Rarely is someone's fertility solely a function of their weight. It's possible that gaining a bit of weight would kickstart Rancic's ovaries. It's also possible that it wouldn't. Her doctor, I expect, wasn't proposing weight gain as a cure but rather one more thing to try on a long list of supposed fertility boosters like acupuncture and laying on your back with your legs in the air after sex. How do I know this? Because it took my husband and I over 2 years to finally have our son. While our fertility issues weren't with getting pregnant - something I seem to do if I so much as wash our underwear together - but rather with maintaining healthy pregnancies, I have a lot of sympathy for women who desperately want to have a baby and yet can't seem to do the one thing which should come naturally. There is a lot of woman-blaming in the conception process and it is heartbreaking on so many levels.

This isn't to say that weight doesn't affect fertility. Estrogen is inextricably tied to body fat. More estrogen leads to more body fat and more body fat increases estrogen levels. From this vantage a little bit of gained fat would make sense to aid fertility - but only to a point. Being very overweight and therefore overly estrogenic can be just as hard on a woman's cycle as being underweight. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), a syndrome marked by obesity, is one of the leading causes of infertility in younger women and losing weight often remedies the infertility. I tell you, the more you learn about how fragile this whole conception and birthing process is, the more amazing it seems that the human species has managed to propagate as long as it has.

All of which brings me back to Guliana and her conflicting desires to have a Jelly Bean of her own and also maintain her career which happens to be dependent on her body size. Having had 5 kiddos of my own, I would tell her that it is totally worth it to do whatever you have to do to bring them here. Even on the days they drive me absolutely nuts (case in point: today my 3-year-old had to take a state mandated developmental assessment test and what did he do to start off his budding academic career? Took his shirt off, ran in circles, stole the pile of pennies and hid the rope down his pants. All of which would have been bad enough had his older brother not topped him two years ago by crawling under the table and screaming "Stop talking to me or I'll throw up on you!" until they gave me pamphlets for the special preschool and showed us the door. We're probably on some sort of Toddler Terrorist Watch List now. Good times!) when I tuck them into bed I still know they were worth the huge amount of personal sacrifice it took to get them here. And maybe that's what I would most want Guliana to know: your body is just the beginning of what you will have to give up for your children. Whether that means sacrificing your hard-earned body (her) or your tenure-track professorship (me, sigh), in the end you will only wish it could have been more.

What's your take? Should Guliana quit her whining and gain some more weight on the chance it will fix her infertility? Or is she just verbalizing the fears that so many of us think but never say? Any of you struggled with infertility and if so, was it related to your weight? And when did everyone's ovaries get to be our business??

Strangers Will Tell You You're Fat But Your Friends Won't

A waitress friend of mine recently snapped a pic of an overweight patron's meal. Why? So she could text it to several of her friends. Sure her customer's meal was appalling - One of every appetizer? Yes, please - but even more so was the realization that now, more than ever, eating is a spectator sport. People feel they not only have a right to see what other people are eating but also to pass judgment on it.

I blame the media for this. Or at least for beginning the trend with shows like the Biggest Loser that have cameras recording participants' every bite and advertising that relies on monitoring a person's food intake to sell their product a la Jared the Subway Guy. Speaking of The Biggest Loser and Jared, have you seen what's happened to them lately? Many of the finalists and winners of the former and Jared of the latter have been in the news lately for doing what most people having lost weight on a diet do: they regained it. Ryan Benson, Kai Hibbard (this link is one of the most heart breaking weight loss/gain stories I've ever read - man I just want to meet her and hug her and then throw her scale off the nearest building) and, most famously, Erik Chopin have all regained most, if not all, of the weight they lost on the world's most famous diet show. Jared The Subway Guy has also recently regained some his famously lost weight. We won't even talk about the media hoopla surrounding Marie Osmond, Kirstie Alley, and the grand dame of weight loss struggles, Oprah.

I know all this because every weight blip is broadcast to an eager audience, one I am apparently a part of despite the fact that I have never seen even one episode of The Biggest Loser (culturally irrelevant, that's me!) and the last time I ate in a Subway was Homecoming dance my junior year of high school when I got food poisoning from old ham and spent the rest of the night upchucking in the E.R. Recently pics were snapped of Jared TSG looking a bit meatier and immediately the Examiner exclaimed, "We're sure Jared will lose the extra weight in no time. After all, his career as a Subway spokesperson depends on it." highlighting the fact that we have entered the era where losing weight is an official career choice. And a lucrative one.

So I suppose it isn't surprising that all this has filtered down to the common folk. The weird twist, however, is that while we feel (too?) comfortable commenting on a stranger's weight whether it be on TV or texting their menu choices to friends, many of us don't dare broach the subject with our friends. Perhaps we are afraid of offending people or losing a friendship but my personal theory is that people are already keenly aware of what they weigh and whether or not that is healthy for them and therefore do not need me to tell them about it.

And yet.

The other day I came home from the gym and noticed during my post-shower grooming ritual that mostly involves random tweezing and lotioning my brillo-bad kneecaps (they have actually ran my nylons - back in the days when I wore nylons. Which I don't now, but I digress.) a realllly long, dark hair on my jawline. It was so bad I should have been getting better radio reception everywhere I went. It was clearly visible and so embarrassing. My first thought was: why didn't the Gym Buddies tell me I was rocking a chin-stache??

My chin-stache gave me an A-Ha moment (paging Oprah!): I wish my weight weren't an issue at all - that nobody would notice it one way or the other - but since that is not the case (not for me, not for anyone) I would rather my friends talk to me about it than a stranger.

Which would you prefer - strangers commenting on your weight or a good friend? (Sadly, "nobody" is not an option.) Do you feel comfortable commenting on a strangers weight? Would you talk to a friend about hers or his? Is anyone else's worst nightmare having a waitress text pics of your cheat meal to all her friends???

Gain Weight, Lose Your Date

Beautiful people have so many problems. Not only do they have to worry about getting mobbed at parties and being given more free swag than they can carry home in a taxi but now they have to worry that their friends are spying on them on the Internet. No, this is not the usual Big Brother hysteria over being outed for one's political views, cross-dressing fetish or secret collection of Marie Osmond porcelain dolls. It turns out that if you are beautiful you have a lot more to be worried about than your drunk-face pictures going viral on Facebook. Like, say, your friends tattling on you for gaining weight.


Beautifulpeople.com, the dating site notorious for requiring people to pass a hotness panel before joining (death panels are so passe!), has recently made news again for kicking off over 5,000 members after other members ratted them out for getting fat. The newly unbeautiful were pushed off their sanctimonious pedestals after posting pictures of themselves enjoying holiday goodies and having the audacity to not barf them up immediately afterward. And as everyone knows, fat = ugly.

Site founder Robert Hintze explains the move saying, "As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld. Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded." While Hintze does not explain how calling customers "fatties" is good for potential business, he does say that if the ex-members whip themselves back into acceptable condition they can reapply and, if they pass the hotness panel, rejoin.

Why would people want to rejoin a group that found them so abhorrent they couldn't even tolerate looking at their pictures? Because, of course, it is an exclusive club and people like being special. It's easy to pick apart BeautifulPeople.com - after all their homepage is littered with superficial gems like "Do you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful? No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites!" - but they are merely continuing a long-held human tradition: the middle school clique. Even the fossil record shows evidence of prehistoric pelt-wedgies.

BeautifulPeople.com certainly isn't the first social group to self select based entirely on one characteristic. While an IQ exam is slightly less subjective than a hotness rating, Mensa is equally exclusive in their membership. So I vote that rather than vilify the pretty people for wanting to keep their ranks pure, we make our own dating site. We may not be cool but we're a lot closer to cold fusion! Imagine the Mensa dating site: "Tired of meeting stupid people? Bored with dinner conversation that revolves solely around the unironic discussion of reality TV? No more sifting through people that don't get why prehistoric pelt wedgies are funny!"

The truth is that people have long allowed beauty to blind them to other more important issues, like aspirations of global domination. Just ask Mark Antony. (No, not Mark Anthony although J.Lo. may very well being trying to take over the world -one perfume at a time!) I actually feel for the dethroned beauties. If you have based your whole self image around one thing, especially when that thing is as ephemeral as "beauty", then it must be quite the blow to informed that you are one of the hoi polloi after all. I'd be interested to know what happens to the 5,000 ousted uglies. Will they move on to other things, eventually realizing their immense good luck in escaping such inanity? Or will they spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to reclaim what they lost? And, most importantly, will anyone realize that weight is not the defining characteristic of beauty?

Paris Hilton, always available for comment, spoke for all the beleaguered hawt people chiding, "Like I've always said - if you're not a hottie then you're a nottie!"*

*Paris Hilton did not actually say this. Despite my maiden name being Hilton, I hail from the side of the clan with the "panties on" gene and am therefore ostracized at all family functions. Still, I bet she was thinking it!

Anyone else kinda feel sorry for the not-hotties? Or did you crack a little smile and envision slapping a sticker on their rear that says "spanked by karma"??

Newsflash: Madonna Isn't Ageless. Also, People Aren't Perfect

In the immortal words of, well, someone I can't remember, "It's hard out there for a girl!" So you'd think we'd all be a bit nicer to each other, right? And we are - unless that girl is rich, famous and beautiful. Then it's a socially sanctioned free for all.

Celebrity body snarking has long been the bread and butter of the weekly rags, not to mention all the websites devoted to Brittney's waistline and Uma's cellulite. I'm not saying I'm above it all - I've already 'fessed up to an evil fascination with Miley Cyrus' muffin top - but I am saying it's starting to come full circle. It used to be that celebs had powers we mere mortals could never hope to attain and they used them to aggrandize themselves even more. Super powers such as Photoshop, Botox, and lipodissolve assured that the playing field would always be tilted in the favor of those who could afford them. But recently these super powers have been unmasked for the trickery they are. In the immortal words of someone I can remember but wish I didn't, "The stars: they ARE just like us!"

And being "like us" means that despite what they and their PR machines would have us believe, they are not immune to the effects of aging. First it was the Faith Hill debacle where she got a bit of a tummy tuck and some wrinkles and eye bags erased via computer. Then it was the recent Demi Moore for W photoshoot where her hip was chopped (or wasn't - who cares?) and the perfume ad where the tweeted before pictures proved that her skin really wasn't waxen and monotone like it appeared in print (no, really?!). And now we have Madonna, queen of the ageless sylphs.


This week several pre-production pictures were leaked (or "leaked") of the grand dame of pop music looking, er, her age. That one should look older as one increases in years ought to be a given but Madonna has been able to control every aspect of her image for so long that they surprised a lot of people. Newsflash: Madonna has gotten older. And she looks it.

For me I think the shock came from the incongruity of a woman of mature age dressed like an extra from the Halloween scene of Mean Girls - a movie about high schoolers, in case you have forgotten. (It also included a sober Lindsey Lohan, in case you have forgotten that too.) The pictures from a Louis Vuitton ad campaign that ran last year joined others of a similar nature already leaked from her Hard Candy album.


But while it is always fun - and reassuring - to see celebs without the veil of computer enhancement, much of the glee seems to be directed at the fact that the Material Girl is starting to look a little threadbare. Jezebel writer Irin says, "mocking what these women actually look like is not the point." I'm not sure how I feel about a school of thought that makes Madonna and I both victims of the same crime against women and yet this kind of reporting seems to be taking a serious toll even on those whom you'd think would be immune to it. While Madonna hasn't said anything, other women are speaking out. Lily Allen recently claimed to have Body Dysmorphic Disorder saying she thinks she she looks "'considerably more overweight' than she is." and "compared herself to Michelle McManus, who won [Britain's] Pop Idol in 2003 and then claimed she was dropped by her record label because of her weight. Anne Hathaway confessed in an interview this month with In Style, "I think I’ve got really weird features. I have very large features on a very small head. But, you know, I’m not going to beat myself up. It’s my face. I’m not very pretty."

This obsession with flaws creates a vicious cycle that tears up everyone it its path: We hate on celebrities which makes them hate on themselves which in turn makes us hate ourselves. Because we feel bad about ourselves, we take satisfaction on making fun of celebrities and it all starts over again. Frankly, I don't know if I want to live in a world where Madonna is an old hag, Lily Allen is fat and Anne Hathaway is ugly.

What do you think? Is it fair to complain about celebs being airbrushed and then make fun of them when they aren't? And yet, anyone else find it nearly impossible to look away?

Does Breast Feeding Help You Lose Weight?

Salma Hayek has an amazing rack - and I'm not talking about her ability to fill a sweater, er, movie role. They're amazing because of their ability to feed a baby. It's the real secret in Victoria's Secret - breasts are not just fun bags. They also squirt milk. Which I suppose could also be considered fun in some circles. Hey, I don't know what you do with your Friday nights.

But why am I talking about breastfeeding here on a health and fitness blog? (Besides the fact that it's midnight and that always makes me random?) Because of the old adage that breastfeeding will help you lose weight.

Answering Other People's Mail: Round Two
Dear Healthlink,
I had a baby 4 months ago. I 'm breastfeeding, but I really need to lose weight. I need to return to work in about two months and if I don't lose the weight I won't have anything to wear and I can't afford to but a new wardrobe. What can I do?

Healthlink gives a mostly appropriate answer despite being interspersed with little gems like "reduce your intake of all fats" (do they not know what breast milk is made out of??) and "Limit intake of breads" (how about starting with the ice cream or double fudge brownies?) but ends with "women who breastfeed will actually lose weight faster than those who don't."

Lactating = Lean?
Super-skinny celebs like Naomi Watts and Heidi Klum swear that breastfeeding was their key to losing their baby weight in like 0.3 seconds. Salma Hayek begs to differ:

“Yes, and I’m still working on it. I gained a lot of weight, I had gestational diabetes. The pregnancy was really difficult for me. I thought, as soon as this baby is out, I’m just going to lose the weight super fast, because I’m going to breast feed, and everybody tells you that if you breastfeed it’s going to come out like this, it’s a lie! It’s not true.”

“Except for a couple of exceptions, the only reason people lose weight like that when they’re breastfeeding, it’s because they’re not eating and they’re breastfeeding, and this is not good for the baby. You know how they tell you it takes nine months to get it, nine months to lose it? There are shortcuts, but it’s not good for the baby. So I’m taking my time. I’ve lost a lot, most of the weight, and I’m very proud of it because it’s been really hard work studying what kind of food to eat that’s healthy for me, healthy for the baby. But I’m still losing even if it’s slow, and I’ve been working out… and the rest is going to go when it’s time to go.”

Lactating = Ravenous
Mad props to Salma for telling it like it is. The only weight I ever lost breastfeeding was the 8 ounces of milk the little sucker ingested. And that always came back. In fact, my body seems to like to keep about 10 extra pounds of reserve stores while I'm nursing.* Have I mentioned that I give birth to 10-pound babies? That double their weight before 6 months? Apparently my body likes to play it safe with the little butterballs. Or maybe I drank too much hormone-laced (cow) milk while pregnant. Anyhow.

This particular little gem always made me so mad. It's hard enough that people expect you to lose the baby weight the way Paris Hilton loses chihuahuas but it really drives the stake in when people expect it to be easy for you. I know that some women lose weight while breast feeding. I also know that some women have eyelashes that touch their brows without mascara and cellulite-impervious butts.

How about you? Did breast feeding help you lose weight? Or did it just help you lose your breasts when you finished? (Now there's a fun post for another day!) For those of you who don't produce a whole food group out of thin air, what are your feelings about breastfeeding in public? Be honest - does it make you uncomfortable?

*A fact it would be good for me to remember these days in all my freaking out about my Last Ten Pounds.

This post sound familiar? Today is Greatest Hits day here at GFE. This originally ran in March 2008.

The Haitian Earthquake, Kourtney Kardashian's Baby Weight and Me

The little Haitian boy who greeted rescuers [after being trapped for 8 days] with a beaming grin as they freed him from a huge pile of rubble said yesterday, "I smiled because I was free -- I smiled because I was alive." Source.

There was an earthquake in Minnesota this morning. It was pretty small - I don't think it even registered on the Richter scale - in fact, I think it was localized just around our house. I was upstairs giving Jelly Bean her bath, despite her protestations that she is saving all that curdled milk in her neck folds for later, when two of her older brothers decided to start World War III over a solitary piece of K'nex (sadly, I suppose wars have been started over lesser things). There was a huge bang, the house shook and immediately I decided we were having an earthquake, never mind that Minnesota is the least earthquake prone place on the planet. What, don't you all immediately assume a natural disaster is occurring when anything is amiss? No??

For a brief second, my mind raced trying to decide which child I would save first and if I would be able to find my cellphone in the rubble. Of course it wasn't an earthquake, just my spawn. (In relating the incident later to my husband I said, "I think they're evil." To which he replied, "No dear, just malevolent.") And then I paused and wondered if there was a mother in Haiti bathing her newborn when their earthquake hit. Five minutes prior I had been blissfully admiring my baby's dimpled bum and writing today's post in my head. (Have you seen what OK magazine did to Kourtney Kardashian?! They stuck her on the cover holding her brand-new son with the title "My diet secrets: lose 10 pounds in 10 days!" On wee problem: They photoshopped her head onto someone else's skinny body and claimed she'd lost all her baby weight. For the love of new moms everywhere Kourtney set the record straight on Twitter both showing what she really looks like now - glowing and beautiful but not flat-tummied - and saying she has not lost all her weight yet. This is what we've come to: celeb rags now making up stories out of whole cloth! Who does this story make feel good? Not the readers who all immediately feel bad about not losing 10 pounds in 10 days regardless of the occupancy status of their womb. Certainly not Kourtney. Oh yes, it would be the people getting rich off of our insecurities. There, now you got the abbreviated version!)

And then suddenly I was hugging a soaking Jelly Bean to my chest and saying a prayer for every mother in Haiti.

That feeling was still fresh in my heart when I got an e-mail from a longtime reader turned dear friend, Dr. Jon. You may remember him as the doctor who personally vetted Dara Torres during the Olympic doping scandals. Or perhaps as the only person I've ever known to eat fugu, the fish that has a one in one thousand chance of killing you. When he's not writing eloquent letters that I then selfishly purloin for use in my posts, he's volunteering as a doctor doing humanitarian aid work. He has saved lives in almost every hotspot around the globe so even though he was supposed to be on vacation, when I first heard of the Haitian earthquake I had a feeling he'd find his way there. Sure enough, yesterday this arrived in my inbox:

[...] When you are amputating a leg, deep in the rubble of a collapsed building, having crawled and wormed your way in, dragging your medical kit with you, and an aftershock comes, you can't help but duck in case the pile collapses - pretty pointless, but a normal reaction, I'm told - and traps you along with the casualty . It gnaws at you and saps energy and strength in a very different way to working in war zones, but the patient comes first and that's just how it is . I'll admit I'm very, very tired, but the job HAS to be done and we have the skill set to do it .

Kourtney Kardashian's head on another woman's body takes on a whole new meaning in this light doesn't it? I have no words. God bless you in your mission Dr. Jon. Stay safe out there, ok? And write me when you get home.

For those of us who aren't doctors, MSNBC has compiled a list of ways to help the earthquake victims and those providing on-the-ground support. And surprisingly donating money probably isn't the best way to help at this time.

May all of you hold your loved ones a little tighter! Or at the very least, hold your celebrities a little farther away.

Changing a Negative Self Image [Aplogies All Around]

It is not often I feel genuinely sorry for celebrities and yet - have you seen the video of Giuliana Rancic pestering women on the red carpet at the Golden Globes about their diet secrets?! Jezebel provides a helpful mash-up:

Click thru to see the vid - it doesn't allow for embedding. Sorry!

It's a veritable body-image gauntlet. How is it that the most important question a reporter can think of to ask an actress is what her diet and exercise routine really REALLY is? Especially when said reporter is so waifish herself. Just watching it was like being sandblasted with body snark, jealousy, insecurity and shallowness. I can't imagine what it must have felt like in person. Made me love Christina Hendricks though with her, "Maybe you should eat more food and lay off the booze" admonition!

Actually, watching this vid made me think of how things have been around here at GFE lately: a hail storm of body image woes. A sweet reader recently e-mailed me saying, "I wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself. Because when you're hard on yourself, it makes me hard on myself." Unless it's from joy, I don't often cry reading your e-mails (usually I snort liquids and make embarrassing noises trying to stifle my laughter) but this time I did.

I forget sometimes that I walk a fine line here by sharing all my deep-seated crazy - and there's been a serious uptick in insanity since the Jelly Bean has been born, I'm not going to lie to you - and holding all of you hostage on the crazy train with me. You should know that for every weight-loss thought that I write, I think 100 (1,000?) in my head. It's an illness, this self hatred.

The scale, the calories, the inches, the percentages: for years these numbers ruled my life and I don't want to go back there. Truly, I don't. But you should also know that every recent resurgence of my disordered eating has been after the birth of one of my children. Hormones, sleep deprivation and baby weight combine into this trifecta of evil that makes me so very hard on myself. Plus this time around my therapist, whom I loved dearly, is now working for the prison system and alas I am not a criminal.

And so I blog about all this trying to keep it transparent, thinking that if I'm accountable to all of you then perhaps I can avoid repeating past mistakes. But I forget that some of you are fragile too. And some of you are just sick of hearing about this. In retrospect, I don't know that it is helping me much to indulge in the negative self talk. Making excuses for my bad behavior just allows me to wallow in it instead of making the necessary changes.

I asked my sister today if it is possible to change one's entire personality. To let go of my Type A insanity and embrace a more mellow me. She said she believed I could with a lot of work. I hope so. I'm going to try. I'm not exactly sure how to go about it yet but I hope to be gentle in the process.

My sincerest apologies to those of you I have made sad, mad, crazy or just otherwise irritated. I'm going to cut the negative self talk in the future. I won't be perfect but I'm going to try. I love you guys too much not to. Hopefully I'll learn to love myself that much as well.

Thanks for your patience with me. We're all in this together, right? Where do you draw the line between a healthy dialogue and pointless obsessing? Anyone else want to smack Guiliana??

Trend Watch: Soft Porn Fitness

"If you've got it, flaunt it!" so the saying goes and fitness people certainly subscribe to this mantra. Seen a health or fitness mag lately? Unless it is Experience Life, I'd bet you a trailer of tuna steaks with whole wheat couscous and arugula ('cause everyone has those on hand right?) that the cover model is in some state of undress. The bikini-clad-standing-thigh-deep-in-generic-water pose is so popular that I don't think Shape has done a cover in the last 5 years without it!

Fitness TV shows, DVDs and podcasts are no better with female trainers sporting tiny booty shorts and sports bras. All the better to show off your hard-won physique right? Why else do we work out if not to get a body worth publicly baring? Ahem. Heck, even CrossFit's been porni-fied. And if you've ever tried CrossFit you will understand how very weird that is.

But is the trend going past flat abs and cut biceps towards something more... porno?

Reader Katie recently wrote me about a fitness site she feels very conflicted about:

The website is www.bodyrock.tv . [...] This website has really started to transform the way I approach workouts. They are short, intense workouts--from as little as 9 minutes to 45 minutes-tops. It's all bodyweight based and just requires a floor mat and the ability to do pull-ups someplace. The woman on the site is very fit and is not shy about sharing that these workouts are ALL she does and that a lot of her battle is also in the kitchen.

It all sounds great. Until you look at the site. I'm embarrassed to look at the site around other people because of the way her videos are shot, and the photos taken to show the individual movements. I feel like I'm looking at a soft-porn fitness site! When I've showed people where I've been getting several of my workouts from, they react with this same mixture of raised eyebrows, but then respect for her solid routines (and body). On the one hand, she sends such a positive message about being physically fit, nourishing your body with healthy food, and to a degree to not be ashamed to show off your hard work. On the other hand, she totally exploits her body and this razzes my feminist sensibilities. Therefore, the message gets a little muddled between the obvious display of silicone and play toward sex appeal and lack of modesty. This site combines so many of my vices---fitness, sex appeal, my love/hate relationship with this site's goals, and finding the real reason I work out--how much is for my own fitness and how much for outward appearance?

Here's a screen shot of one of the videos Katie is referring to: (to see the whole video, click the picture to go to her site. Her videos aren't enabled for external embedding - sorry!)

And here's a shot of Zuzana from her home page demonstrating a lunge:
I have to admit that while I am very used to seeing how sexified most fitness women are, this site seemed a little extreme. It wasn't the clothing per se but more the poses, expressions and mannerisms - ones our society normally associates with porn rather than fitness. Hawt TV trainers may dress like the sexy gym teacher or co-ed cheerleader every man dreams about but - here's the difference - they don't usually act like it. Zuzana calls our bluff and refuses to allow us to pretend that we're not looking at her boobs.

Celebrities on magazine covers and mad-hot Czech women on the Internet are one thing but what about real life? I remember the last time a girl showed up at my gym with night-club makeup, teased hair and sporting cleavage on both ends. People, both men and women, made negative comments about her look and the attitude they assumed she had. Jealousy rearing its ugly head? Or indignation about the breach of the implied moral code? Both?

On one hand, sex sells. Duh. Who wouldn't want to look like Zuzana? I do! And I tried a couple of her workouts - they're solid. (I also wrote down that apple cake recipe because even though I was rolling my eyes at her Daisy Duke getup the cake still sounded really really good.) But on the other hand, is it necessary to go all Jenna Jameson to pimp your fitness routine? Fitness is often a weird place where, like acting and modeling, your body is your product. Is there a line between showing off what you worked so hard to create and being sexy? Is there a point where overt sexiness in fitness ads actually turns you off the product?

And be honest - how much of your motivation to workout is for your health and how much is based on how you want to look?

PS> Anyone else really irritated by the banner on her homepage advertising her auction for her workout pants because her size 4s are now too big and she needs money to buy smaller ones? We get it: you are tiny and adorable.