Body Image

Before I started my weight-loss journey, I didn't give much thought to how my body looked. I took the time to look presentable in public, but I never lamented my thunder thighs or jiggly butt. I suppose I became accustomed to being a "voluptuous curvy girl" and accepted myself as a size 16. However, when I finally decided to live healthy and incorporate exercise and good food in my life on a regular basis, things started to change.

During the month of March, all these emotions start percolating up to the surface. It's birthday month.

Eight looks down at his legs, made pale and shimmery by the bath water.  He frowns.  "See my legs, here?" he asks.  And he points to his thighs, squeezes a bit of flesh.  "I do see them," I say."They are fat," he pronounces, certain as a policeman who stands, arms crossed, at your car door and demands your license.I protest.  "They are NOT.  At the doctor's you're always in the fiftieth percentile for weight -- just where you should be."

Every once in a while, something causes me to take a deep breath and turn down the heat on my boiling cauldron of seething cynicism. The latest campaign by The White House Project, who work to advance women in leadership with the project mission "add women, change everything," is causing me to step back and think. The organization is teaming up with Barbie to inspire girls to aim high - as high as the Oval Office if that interests them.

Today, my son, 19, returned home from classes at the University of New Orleans, bounded into my bedroom where I was working and said, "So, tomorrow, you'll be over the hill." I said, "What do you mean? I'm already over the hill." And I laughed. He said, "Mom, haven't you heard that 50 is the new 40? Everybody knows that the half-way point makes you over the hill."