Girly Issues Alert!

A couple days ago, I was feeling pretty good. I was back in the skinny pants, I was strutting around mostly unlike a drunk person in my heels, I felt pretty sassy. Even yesterday I felt mostly okay. I was going much faster on the elliptical machine at the gym (mad thanks to the 323 steps I climbed in Rome to the top of St. Peter's) and my arms looked jacked as I did the weight machine.

Then I see a picture of me from the party. Unlike the one I posted, it was not flattering. Granted, I was scrunched up with my knee nearly to my elbow, but it was horrific. There's a visible stomach paunch. And not in a cute way, but in an ugly, too-many-carbs kind of way.

How is it possible that I can feel so bipolar about my own body? I perceive it about three different ways every day, and it drives me crazy that the endless marketing ploys to shame women into buying products and bras and sausage-casings for their stomachs have permeated my psyche this deeply. Just yesterday I walked by the mirror in the locker room on my way to take a shower with just my sports bra and pants on, and I thought I looked pretty good in the gutular region. I've never had a slender stomach-- even as a skinny kid I had a little puffy belly. My Mom says I get it from my Dad, who was 5'11 and thin, but he had a little paunch in the gut, especially after a meal. And as my coworker reminded me, if we've learned anything from America's Next Top Model it's that a bad angle on a picture can make even the scrawny bitches on that show look like cows.

I have strong muscles. I'm a healthy weight. I work out four or five times a week. I watch what I eat fairly carefully. I'm aware that the only way I could completely lose the paunch would be to never eat a refined carbohydrate again in my life and set up a pup tent at the gym. I also know that I would not make those sacrifices. Life is too short to always pass up the beer or waffles for skim milk or dry wheat toast. I just wait for the day when I can be completely okay with the fact that I will have a roll when I scrunch up and that Madison Avenue can suck it.