Angelina Jolie and I don't have a lot in common. She's a world-famous celebrity who is adored by millions and married to Brad Pitt; I am a blogger who is adored by tens, maybe dozens (on a good week), and married to an awesome guy that you've never heard of. But there is this: we're both mothers. And we're both in therapy.

Hate your body? Can't bear to look in the mirror? If your answers are yes, stop right where you are and listen to this podcast interview I did last week with Kelly Park.

I don't know about you but I'm on a mission to reclaim my waistline.  Somewhere in the middle of midlife it's all but disappeared -- the booby prize, I suppose, for making it through menopause without losing my mind.  As if the hot flashes weren't bad enough. Along the way to whittle down and lose a stubborn 10 pounds gained during the big "M", I've checked out exercise books, fitness programs, joined the "Y" and more.  But I've had a lot of fits and starts in my exercise strategy.  

Do you hate your body?  Do you avoid looking in the mirror for fear of what you'll see?  Well Kelly Park and Carson Kressley of Lifetime Television's "How To Look Good Naked" may be able to help.  And without liposuction, facelifts, butt lifts or tummy tucks. As part of BlogHer's "Letter To My Body" campaign which tries to help women improve their body image, I'm going to have the pleasure of doing a podcast interview with Kelly Park who starred in the premiere of this season's "How To Look Good Naked."

I've been struggling with a secret, which is this: I'm really, really not in love with my body right now. I have, been keeping it secret for two reasons: 1) it's totally new to me - I've never really struggled with my body image, even after my last pregnancy, which added padding where no padding had hitherto existed, and so it just feels foreign and weird and (obviously) bad, and 2) it also feels so, I don't know, anti-feminist or anti-woman or anti-me (which, really, collapses into a kind of counter-womanism, to be anti-yourself as a woman) and I just so don't want to be that.

"A good nude photograph can be erotic, but certainly not sentimental or pornographic." --Bill Brandt, British photographer (1904-1983)

Last week Whitney Thompson became the first plus-sized model to win "America's Next Top Model." Or as one of her makeup artists said before the final runway competition, she was the "first juicy booty to make it on to the runway."

I will admit when I first started to see the links coming in for the new "book" My Beautiful Mommy, I thought it must be a hoax. Certainly, no one would put something like this out there and be serious. Well, serious it is. It is self published by the vanity publisher Big Tent Books and written by a Florida plastic surgeon and father of four. He says he wrote the book because many of his patients are having "mommy makeovers" to fix saggy breasts and slack tummies a few years after childbirth and they were concerned about what to tell their kids.

In honor of the 10th Anniversary of V-Day and BlogHer's exclusive interview with the writer of "The Vagina Monologues" Eve Ensler, I was asked to focus this week's post on "The Vagina Monologues" on YouTube.

V-Day, the global non profit founded by Eve Ensler in 1998 at the first benefit of her award winning play The Vagina Monologues, will celebrate it's 10th anniversary of working for the end of violence against women. "V To The Tenth" will take place April 11-12 and will reclaim and transform the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans into "Superlove."

The excellent Suzanne Reisman kicked off the Letter to My Body project and now I get to carry the torch forward and invite you to write a letter to your body while reflecting backwards on the letters that have already been written.

There's a new kid on the reality TV show block and it's name is "Bulging Brides."  This pock faced little snot nose is brought to us by the WE Channel and this kid is a bully.  Like most school yard bullies, it makes unreasonable demands and when those demands aren't met, there's punishment. For all you paunchy, plumpish, porcine, blimpy, bulky, broad, butterball brides-to-be, this show brings us personal trainer Tommy Europe---no I'm not making that up---and nutrition coach Nadeen Boman to bully and humiliate you willing charges into those wedding dresses and down the aisle. Each episode starts with an ambush by our Dynamic Dieting Duo at the bride-to-be's dress fitting where she's crying in her beer, for Kim literally, because she ordered the dress two sizes too small hoping to motivate herself into losing weight before the wedding.  Well it's six weeks until the big day and she's running out of options, so Kim agrees to the rigors of the "Bulging Bride" regimen.