Jason Statham

Team Jacob

Men Have Body Image Issues Too

Just like you can't go to a Melissa Etheridge concert without seeing an abundance of pit hair, these days you can't go to an indie rock concert without seeing... emaciated men? This season, anorexic is the new black for the skinny jeans and eyeliner-for-men set. In a profession where rock stars have typically looked drug-emaciated a la Steven Tyler and David Bowie, this new trend hasn't garnered a lot of attention. The difference now however is that rather than all the bony rib cages being a result of popping oxycontin like tic tacs, thinness is sought after as a goal in its own right. Blame American Apparel or Pete Wentz, but men in this particular hipster subculture are now being held up to the impossibly skinny standard - and realizing firsthand how difficult it is to reach and how painful it is to always come up short.

Recently Caleb Followill of Kings of Leon admitted that he struggles with anorexia. In an interview with Q magazine he says, "I always thought I wasn't good enough. I'd do anything to keep my hands and mouth busy without eating." Adds Priya Elan of The Guardian, "He lived on black coffee and would go running in hot weather wearing a heavy tracksuit to sweat off as many pounds as possible in order to stay skinny. It isn't a huge surprise that the singer of one of indie rock's biggest bands was anorexic. What is surprising is that he's admitted it."

Followill might be the most honest of the group but he certainly isn't the only indie boy in this band. Other indie stars known for their bony frames and body issues include Kurt Cobain, Pete Wentz, Kaiser Chief's Ricky Wilson and Amos Lee. Seeing as I love all of their music (yeah, I just admitted to digging Fall Out Boy. I'm 12, I know.), it would be a shame to see any of them go the Karen Carpenter route - barring Cobain as he's already playing his coffeehouse gig in the sky.

Kurt Cobain, still dead, now schills shoes for the living

Pete Wentz, belching the alphabet

Ricky Wilson gives new meaning to Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man

Amos Lee looks over his shoulder in an alley. Which I would be too if I were sitting on such a nice leather "free" chair.

Slowly but surely it's been percolating to the surface of our media-addled public consciousness that men struggle with body issues too, whether it be looking good in bike shorts at the gym or measuring up to David Beckham's, ahem, standard (is that what the kids are calling it these days?). Worse, it is filtering down to all levels of society as evidenced by my literal tug of war with a pair of teenaged boys over a thrift-store pair of women's Chip and Pepper skinny cut jeans. (I won. You do NOT mess with me in a thrift store!)

Reader Andrew (AJH) pointed this out in his comment on my Finding Your Best Weight post:

Don't think these thoughts are just in women's heads, I was just the same when I was "losing" and am still to a degree. I started at 110kg with a goal weight of 90kg. Each time I reached a goal weight, another 5 kgs seemed like a good idea. I got down to about 68kg and my wife started saying I was looking sick, I couldn't see it, but did find I was finding I had less energy when exercising. I went back up to 70kg, and even then it didn't feel right, I decided less than 75kg seemed a good target and have been there for more than 5 years, feeling good. However, I have been around 72kg the last few months, and there is definitely a thought of that "safe buffer" you mentioned. I think if you're eating sensibly, feeling good and can do the things you want with the energy level you want, you're probably at the right weight.

It's also been shown that young gay men are particularly susceptible to body image woes and eating disorders. As a mother to three wonderful sons and one adorable daughter, I often worry about how society in general and my own struggles in particular will affect my daughter's sense of self and vulnerability to eating disorders. But now I am also worried about the messages my boys are getting. Even as young as they are (my eldest is 8), they are still bombarded daily with messages about what it means to be attractive and how to achieve that standard.

Body image issues in men may not be as prevalent or as pernicious as among women but give 'em twenty years to catch up; we had a head start. What do you think? Have you seen this in any of the men or boys in your life? How do I talk to my sons about this issue? Are eating disorders viewed differently in men than in women? Anyone else a thrift-store addict like I am?? (Today was 50% off day! I so totally scored!!)

Fitness 101: What To Do With Body Hair

There are many healthy activities that I wish I could do but for various reasons can't get away with. Take running at night - it feels like flying but there are myriad safety issues. And now that I'm a responsible mom-person, I can't risk a twisted ankle or, worse, a mom-napping. I'd also love to wear a sweat band - They are the epitome of functional! Plus they look like Muppet eyebrows! - but I still haven't found one that my fashion sense will permit. It'd feel really good to hawk a loogie into the spittoons at the gym (I'm not sure what they're called - bidets for your mouth? Oral urinals?? - but they're right next to the drinking fountains at my Y and their express purpose is to be spit in.) and yet it just seems the height of impropriety to spit in public, indoors. And so I don't. I don't run at night, I don't wear sweat bands and I don't spit (unless it's on my fingers and I'm using it to wipe the muck off my baby's face, in the grand tradition of mothers everywhere).

But there is one healthy "don't" that I'd really really like to do.

It all started with CrossFit a few months ago. Like Jen Sinkler pointed out on her blog, the stronger your shoulders get, the harder it is to shave your pits. But I used the "star method" and while it took a bit longer, it worked. This would have just stopped at entertaining over-share fodder at dinner parties except that during last month's Great Running Until I Barf Experiment (if I ever get the privilege of writing another GFE book, that's gonna make an awesome chapter, which is my only consolation for putting myself through that idiocy) my pit hair tried to kill me.

Thanks to a tank top and a lack of bodyglide, my pit hair stubble - it's like a 5 o'clock shadow except I get it at 11 a.m. - chafed so badly that I ended up with two open sores under my right arm. And as everyone knows, the gym is the last place you want to have an open sore thanks to MRSA, impetigo and other scary bacteria. See? Nearly killed - or at least maimed - by my prickly hair. Thank goodness my immune system is still on my side and rallied.

So many questions: Do I just have sharper hair than other people? Or does this happen to other people and they just don't talk about it? Why was it just my right armpit that was afflicted? Would this have been fixed by running in a t-shirt instead of a tank, as suggested by Gym Buddy Megan? And why has this never happened to me before, despite the fact that I've been in possession of said hair ever since puberty? I don't know the answers but there is a solution: stop shaving. Legions of men will attest to the fact that unshaven underarm hair doesn't chafe, nor does it give you razor nicks which then burn like crazy when you put your deodorant on. Why should men get to be the only ones with non-stinging soft braid-able pits?

Then there's leg hair. While I have never been attacked (yet) by razor sharp leg stubble, it can also be a problem. When you are as pale-skinned and dark-tressed as I am, even clean-shaven my legs still look, as one of my sons put it, "all polka dotty." (Poor boy was so disappointed when I told him he couldn't have polka dot legs like mommy.) Anytime men complain about having to shave their faces, I like to point out that for sheer acreage needing harvesting we women have got them beat by a mile. Besides the worst hair-removal damage I have ever done to myself was a lip waxing gone horribly horribly wrong. And we won't even discuss the many many issues with maintaining the hair that is between the pits and the legs.

Before you start mailing me daisy chains and fringed vests, there is a precedent for this. Behold the beautiful yet unshaven:

The most recent example of this is the gorgeous Russian supermodel, Natalia Vodianova, who stepped out in a gown accessorized by some serious fur on her million-dollar gams. (Click through the link to see the close-up if you don't believe me.) And does she look ashamed? Not even a little! As Lauri Apple on Jezebel posits "Hm, maybe she saw herself in the mirror and thought, 'I look awesome,' instead of, 'my legs will displease the gossip press'."

And who can forget the awesome Drew Barrymore sporting her pit hair loud and proud on the red carpet?

One website even put up a poll about which is worse: M'onique's shaggy leg hair or Julia Roberts fluffy pit hair. (Click on picture to enlarge... you know you want to.)

All this shaving business is a fairly new phenomenon. While women have had body hair since the dawn of time, we've only been routinely shaving it off since 1915 when safety razors were invented. (Although it should be noted that many Muslims shave their body hair as part of their religion and have been doing it ever since Islam was founded.) That said, I've never grown out any of my body hair. I've been shaving, waxing and plucking things since the fifth grade when I stole my mom's pink plastic bic and butchered myself in the shower. (I still shudder remembering that early lesson: never slide the razor sideways. Owowowowow.) And honestly, Even though I wish hirsuteness would come back into fashion, I'm probably not going to quit shaving now. I can't even go to the gym in unflattering workout pants much less sport a full arm bush, slave to society that I am.

As to the myth that shaving hair makes it "grow back thicker", wikipedia debunks that - although it notes that pit hair grows faster than other body hair and may require multiple daily shavings to reduce stubble. That's just great. I can barely get one shower a day in and I'm certainly not going to dry-shave under there. I've also tried those deodorants that claim to thin and soften pit hair over time and they so totally do not.

What about you - do you shave, wax or otherwise pillage your body hair? Have you ever grown out your body hair? Have you ever been mauled by your pit stubble? Does it gross you out to see lady pit or leg hair?? Lastly - do you feel weird spitting in those loogie-catchers too?

The Problem With "Thinspiration"

Portia De Rossi was my thinspo crush. For those of you unacquainted with the '90s, before she was Ellen Degeneres' wife she was on a little show called Ally McBeal where she starred as a blond super skinny lawyer who liked to sleep around. No, not the main blond super skinny chick - that was Calista Flockhart. No, not the other blond super skinny chick - that was Courtney Thorne-Smith. Noooo, not the other blond super skinny chick - that was Jane Krakowski. The other other other other one, ok? Right, now I'm starting to remember why I hated that show. But while I hated the insipid plot lines and abundance of Barbie locks (seriously, was there even one female brunette on the whole show?), I loved Portia. I wanted to be her. Most importantly, I wanted to look like her. Which is where this came in:

Technically this isn't the exact pic in my journal - I couldn't find that one on the Internet, alas Google failed me - but it's close enough.

Thinspo is a term used mostly by girls with disordered eating - although it is becoming more mainstream these days - to describe a picture, usually of an actress or other super skinny woman, that shows the kind of body you covet. The kind of body you are working for. The kind of body worth starving yourself for. Back in the early hysterical days of the Internet, thinspo sites were everywhere, encouraging readers to pin up the pictures on their refrigerator or in their closet to remind them why they should like that feeling of their stomach turning in on itself and linking to each other in one long daisy chain of jutting hip bones and popping clavicles. You could click from link to link for hours staring at endless pictures of women with unattainable stick figures. And I did.

Being the obedient little disordered eater that I was, I took this thin ideal to heart and tacked up pictures of gorgeous models, actresses and singers and surrounded them with admonitions like "nothing tastes as good as thin feels!!" (so creative, I) and "Do 200 crunches every night before bed! No matter how tired you think you are!!" As the years went on and I imitated Portia's casual-yet-confident pose in the mirror only to be horrified how my stomach buckled and bulged and the bend where hers lay flat with the only crinkles being from her shirt, I added things like "I hate you!" and "You are ugly and fat and no one will ever love you!" I saw my stomach as failure.

This "thinspiration" journal - heavy on the thin, light on any actual inspiration - stayed with me far longer than I want to admit. But I know I am not alone in this exercise in self-loathing. It isn't just the eating disordered who tout thinspo as a great get-thin trick. Popular trainers, TV shows and women's magazines across the board parrot this. These tips run the gamut from telling you to tape a photo of you at your fattest to your refrigerator, to eating naked in front of a mirror, to posting pics of celebs you admire, to hanging the skinny jeans you're dying to fit into on your closet door, to having pictures of yourself digitally altered to give you a thinner you ideal to strive for. Heck, the entire premise of The Biggest Loser is based on this one concept. All of these things are supposed to inspire you to be better, to stick to your diet, to hone your willpower and perhaps they do work for some people. But all they ever taught me was how I don't measure up, how I'm not beautiful and why I should hate myself. Even if they did help me put down the candy, it was never out of a feeling of caring or loving for myself but out of punishment and denial. Every time I looked at those pictures I felt worse about myself.

Portia pre-Ally McBeal and post-Ally McBeal

My poster girl Portia was recently on Oprah talking about her new book, Unbearable Lightness, that just came out in which she discusses her long battle with anorexia and bulimia stemming from her days on Ally McBeal. While she'd long been rumored to be anorexic - all the girls on that show were - hearing the words from her own mouth ended up being more wrenching than I had expected. My first reaction was to want to scream at her, "How could you do this to me?! All those years! Wasted! Because I wanted to look like you! Like eating-disordered you! How could you let me think all this time that your standard of beauty was an achievable one?" I wanted to go find her picture (I still have that journal somewhere) and rip it into tiny pieces. I was so so angry at her.

And then I calmed down. Of course my eating disorders were not her fault. They were mine, built choice by choice and honed over many years. And honestly I should have known better; it's not like Hollywood is known for its meticulous honesty. But the feeling of betrayal is still there. It isn't that I want her to be silent and unhealthily skinny again. Nor do I want her to be naturally super skinny. I just wanted her to be honest then, when I was so vulnerable and really needed to hear it. But she couldn't do it then. She lost as much (more, probably) to her eating disorder as I did. So I'm grateful that she can do it now and I applaud her speaking out about it. But it still leaves the issue of thinspo in general.

What do you think about "thinspiration"? Does it motivate you in a positive way to live a healthier life or is it one more way to beat yourself up? Who was your thinspo? Anyone else love to hate the show Ally McBeal??

Marie Claire Says TV Show about "Fatties" is Socially Irresponsible

This Dr. Phil poster may be a joke but many people are serious about their cruel comments.

Marie Claire has done it again! After the article that rocked the food-blogging world (which was nasty, sneaky and unfair... and also made some very valid points that I am still thinking about) last month, the lady mag is back in fine foot-in-mouth form with a new article titled "Should Fatties Get a Room (Even on TV)?" that claims to explore whether programming starring happy fat people is "disturbing" and "implicitly promoting obesity." Their unsurprising fashion-mag answer: yes and yes. (Which I find hilariously ironic considering their main complaint about the food bloggers is that they promote unhealthy ideals with their obsessive food restriction and exercise. Apparently you can't win unless you spring forth from the womb perfectly formed.)

I don't watch TV. If you didn't know that explicitly you have probably guessed it from how culturally clueless I am. And yet I do remember one thing from hazy college TV-show obsessed days (Holla Felicity and America's Next Top Model!) and that is this: You don't mess with Sookie. Gilmore Girls was brilliant and not just because I couldn't decide who I wanted to be more - Alexis Bledel or her "mom" Lauren Graham as they were both so witty and adorable. All of the characters on the show were funny, relatable and entertaining. One of the standouts on the show Sookie, played by Melissa McCarthy, who was a chef, a spitfire of a best friend and a comedienne in her own right. Oh and did I mention she was a bit chubby?

Well the (un-Kirstie Alley) fat actress has a new show out called "Mike & Molly" about an overweight couple who meets at Overeaters Anonymous and falls in love. Typical schlocky sitcom hijinks ensue and the show would probably have barely shown up on the radar if it were not for Marie Claire blogger Maura Kelly's post on how a show featuring two obese people in love is disgusting. In her own words, "So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room - just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair."

Wow, did she really just say that out loud? Yep. And she continues with the tired I-have-a-fat/gay/black/grinder monkey for a friend trope, "Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk. And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down. (For instance, the overweight maintenance guy at my gym has talked to me a little bit about how it seems worthless for him to even try working out, because he's been heavy for as long as he can remember.)"

Oh well if you know a fat janitor then it's totally okay! She goes on to tell obese people that if they just try hard enough they can lose the weight writing, "But ... I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It's something they can change, if only they put their minds to it." and then giving overly simplistic, albeit true tips like "eat more fresh and unprocessed foods" and "visit your local YMCA." Yes, it really is that bad.

But now that I've pointed out the egregious error - and it is as easy as falling of the curb to jump on Kelly, heck half the Internet is (the other half is too busy arguing over whether Christine O'Donnell is a moronic constitutional illiterate or a nuanced legal genius) - I feel inclined to point out that she's really not the problem. Many, many people feel this way. Remember Anna Wintour being horrified at the Mall of America not by the fact that Forever 21 sits right next to Prada but because she thinks all Midwesterners look like "little houses"? Most people just don't say it out loud. Kelly is the whipping girl because she wrote it in black and white (and doesn't have the entire fashion world at her back).

Jezebel points out that, to her credit, Kelly tries to atone in the comments by saying her remarks are lingering effects of her previous history of anorexia. "Though I don't think of myself as anorexic any more, being freaked out by obesity to the insensitive, even cruel, point that I was is certainly a vestige of the anorexic mindset; maybe so was being righteous about how easy it is to lose weight. (Because once I lost an extreme amount of weight, of course—about half my body weight—etc.)." I can personally attest to the mental havoc that eating disorders wreak. Not only do you have no concept of what you as a person look like, you really don't see other people accurately either. And the crazy doesn't go away just because you start eating again.

So I don't fault her for thinking these thoughts - she is just parroting the cultural zeitgeist of body-hate - but I think we should focus on the larger issue of challenging the validity of these thoughts. For me I don't care whether or not obese people are "gross" to watch kiss or more expensive to insure or are taking up two airplane seats or are riding zebras in Kenya whilst singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts." The point for me is that they are people before they are anything else. And all people, whether they be obese or elderly or handicapped or colicky infants or felons or rogue inflatable-slide-riding flight attendants, deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.

How do you feel about a TV show starring two happy obese people? What do you think of Kelly's take on it? Is her history of an eating disorder a valid mea culpa?

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?

In Search of a Cape: This Year's Most Ridiculous Halloween Costumes

What are you going to be for Halloween this year? I know, I know we're still more than a month out but I've got the annual Turboween coming up! It may possibly be my most favorite Turbo workout of the year. This year the theme is "Superheroes" and while my house is replete with capes they all kind of smell like pee or have peanut butter stuck to them. Or both. So I'm on the hunt for the perfect Superhero-ine costume* (that will still let me crescent kick and smash heads into my knee.) In addition, the Gym Buddies and I are running in this year's Monster Dash and of course we are dressing up for that too which means we need costumes we can run 10 miles in without chafing.

Beginning my search today, I immediately ran up against the first problem of female costumes: The Slut Factor. The Slut-o-ween phenomenon - the one night of the year when all good girls (and nurses and maids and cops and even feminine hygiene products) go bad - has been well documented. And yet I was still surprised by this year's crop of ever more ridiculous costumes. So here are my Top Ten Halloween Costumes That Should Not Exist:

1. Elmo: This little cutie lives on Sesame Street, is voiced by a man, and whose sole talent consists of playing Jingle Bells over and over on a PlaySkool piano. What part of that screams sex pot?

2. Ditto for Big Bird here. I actually saw this one in the flesh (feathers?) at Target and it is twice as horrifying in real life. And why is this woman so insanely happy when Big Bird is apparently eating her head?

Image Source: Buzzfeed

3. While we're cannabalizing children's shows, how about this Peanuts costume that skipped right over Uncanny Valley to fall straight into Creepy Caldera. But hey, at least they didn't try and sex her up.

Image source: Spirit halloween

4. Ask yourself: What is the least sexy animal out there? A cold fish. Although I am left wondering why the model has no googley eyes on her anywhere.

Image Source: Buzzfeed

5. Mrs. Potato head takes care of that dilemma by placing the eyes right where they should be: on a woman's breasts. Totally removes the age-old male quandary of where to look when addressing females. Win!

Image Source: Buzzfeed

6. This one, creatively titled "Club skirt and top" loses on two counts: First, you can't call it a skirt if you can see crotch and second, the only girls who would be interested in wearing this would be girls who go to clubs and reason would say they wouldn't need to shell out 39.99$ when they already own this in 3 different colors. Also as lame: "lingerie model."

Image Source: Zoogster

7. Back to children's items that have no business being sexy: the blue crayon! (Also available in pink!) What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting. "Well team, you know what really gets me turned on? A nice stick of colored wax... yeah." Probably the same kid who sniffed the dry erase markers during recess.

Image source: Spirit halloween

8. This costume wouldn't be entirely ridiculous if it weren't for one fatal flaw: it doesn't come with roller skates. So basically if you wear this, you're just a chick in seasonally inappropriate beach wear. Also, don't real "Sexy Roller Derby Girl"s have much better costumes than this? Juliette Lewis would muscle this girl into a locker and leave her there. I've seen Whip It.

Image Source: Zoogster

9. Optimus Prime is a) A dude b) A robot and c) Transforms into a plane (or a car or something - haven't seen that movie). The only thing this costume transforms is her shin guards... into metal knee highs. Two adolescent male fantasies colliding rarely turns out well.

Image source: Spirit halloween

10. The most ridiculous Halloween costume of 2010 has tobe this "Girl in Skintight Dress" costume. Come on, you're not even trying now! Aren't you at least supposed to put on some mouse ears or something? Slap Franklin D. Roosevelt's visage over your navel and call yourself a dime? At least put on an ankle monitoring bracelet and go as Lindsey Lohan!

Image Source: Zoogster

This is nothing super nor heroic in any permutation of hooker (is it crazy that I'm pretty sure someone's going to challenge that assertion?) so what's a cape-tastic babe to do? Any suggestions for me? Have you ever ran a race in costume? What's the most ridiculous Halloween costume you've seen?

*I am a total Grinch when it comes to Halloween. I hate being scared and I hate gore. So that rules out 90% of adult All Hallow's Eve activities. That leaves me dressing myself up and dressing little kids up. And I love it!

"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?

Adderall Makes You Crazy (The Lindsay Lohan Cautionary Tale)

Normal. It's not a word I'm used to using in regards to Lindsay Lohan. From the very beginning she has been many things - oh how I adored her as the red-haired imp on The Parent Trap, Culottes Edition - but she has never been normal. Currently, for those of you keeping tabs on the fallen princess, she just finished serving jail time for missing her alcohol classes and went directly to rehab (do not pass Hollywood & Vine, do not snort $200). She was supposed to spend 90 days in rehab but doctors at the UCLA center have decided that she might not be an addict after all, despite all the photographic and textual evidence of her looking inebriated and/or high as she gets DUIs and has raging public fights with her exes on Twitter. (Not that I'm judging - had Twitter been around during my break-up/make-up years I have no doubt I would have leveraged it to it's maximum cringe-inducing potential. I love me a good public scene.) No, it appears her problems with manic behavior, impulsivity, sleep disturbances and even alcoholism, are all symptoms of a psychosis brought on by addiction to the AD/HD drug Adderall. And in this, Lindsay may be more normal than we'd like her to be.

It is estimated that about 25% of college students take Adderall or Ritalin for non-medical purposes. No one really knows for sure because students are understandably reluctant to 'fess up to their amphetamine use although ask any college student you know and they'll likely tell you it's easier to get an Adderall than a beer. Prescriptions of the drug are up 3100% over the past several years which only increases the black-market viability. Even in my un-hip over-30 demographic, I run out of hands to count on before I run out of people I know who have used it.

A while ago, I wrote about an experience where a friend at the gym approached me about taking Adderall to lose weight. She called it "the perfect life in a pill" and was so persuasive in her efforts (and descriptive in her how-to's) that I was sorely tempted to give it a try myself. Although it's not mentioned in any of my pregnancy manuals, being that I'm a nursing mom and we're not even allowed to eat unpasteurized cheese I'm pretty sure that recreational prescription drug abuse is a no-no. I wrote the post in an effort to cleanse myself of thoughts of magically fitting skinny jeans and brilliant articles that write themselves. But it was all the comments you guys left me detailing your horrific experiences with it and the many detrimental (and potentially life threatening) side effects that really sealed it for me. I never tried it. Seriously, anyone contemplating non-medical Adderall use should go read through that comment thread.

For those people truly afflicted with AD/HD, the drug can be a lifesaver but for people wrongly diagnosed, the fallout can be severe. According to doctors, Lindsay is not AD/HD and should never have been prescribed the drug - small comfort, I'm sure, as she roasts on the spit of public condemnation. But in a world where achievement is everything and our public figures are only as good as their last interview, it doesn't take much imagination to figure out how she would end up with her very own golden ticket on a Rx pad.

What happens to Lindsay Lohan now that she's been taken off the meds is anyone's guess. Perhaps she'll metamorphose overnight back into the moppet we all loved and start being a reliable actress again. Or maybe she'll go on a coke bender and all our speculation about whether her symptoms were "cocaine-like" or just "cocaine" will be ended. For the record, I hope it's the former. As much as I love a good train wreck, I prefer the ones where everyone walks out alive.

Either way though we now have conclusive proof, walking around in padded-knee "Presidential" leggings, that Adderall can make you crazy. To this end, Lindsay may end up being a more powerful cautionary tale about the risks of abusing prescription stimulants than any D.A.R.E. campaign college boards could imagine. At the very least I suppose I owe her a thank-you card.

Have you ever used Adderall or another stimulant for an off-label purpose? Do you really think Lindsay's problems are all the result of a bad ADHD diagnosis?

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?

Models Falling From the Sky: Thin is Not the New Black

Suicide is in the air. Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova dove to her death from her New York balcony. Canadian model Hayley Kohle leapt to a similar fate from a balcony in Milan. On the same day as Kohle, model Randy Johnston died of a drug overdose. Columbian model Lina Marulinda also chose a free fall from a balcony. But there are other ways to die in the air besides jumping. Models Lucy Gordon, Daul Kim and Ambrose Olsen all recently hanged themselves, Olsen just last month. And of course, the inimitable designer Alexander McQueen ended his fashion juggernaut along with himself by hanging last February. Death is not yet in the ground. Just a few days ago model Noemie Lenoir was found in a forest, nearly succumbed to an intentional drug overdose. Mercifully she is recovering. [Source]

These deaths should not have happened.

By all accounts each of these young models and McQueen were at the height of their careers. Not only were they young and impossibly beautiful in a world that values nothing more but they had also achieved a degree of success in a highly competitive, fickle field. Why they would want to end their lives is a personal and, most likely, unanswerable question. And yet if anyone would have a reason to live, you'd think it would be these who were living the very definition of the dream.

Tragically many people every year choose to end their own lives and so I am not sure if this recent spate of model suicides (that looks funny every time I type that, as if they are modelling the proper way to die - setting the fashion to the very end) is disproportionate to that of the general population. But I do know this: if you ever needed proof that being thin and beautiful is not the secret to happiness than this is it.

Most of us can say when confronted with such an obvious example that of course being skinny, young and hot doesn't automatically make you happy- Pamela Anderson alone should be cautionary tale enough - and yet we are sold this exact message in hundreds of insidious ways every day. Many of us buy into it. I buy into it. It's so pervasive that I'm amazed whenever I run into a woman who doesn't believe it. I want to grab her buy the shoulders and ask her where she gets her incredible self confidence, why she hasn't been been beaten down by the relentless message that she isn't enough, but she could be if she just lost weight/erased wrinkles/got bigger boobs/lightened her hair/got a better wardrobe/colored her eyes/toned her tummy (in 10 days! See page 54!)

There isn't anything wrong with trying to be beautiful, to be healthy, to be your best self. And yet this drive to improve - or "addiction to fixing" oneself as one astute e-mailer put it - is a problem when it engenders self hatred. How is anything beautiful supposed to come out of hate? Ironically this tactic of self-hate is often one of the first weapons we employ, turning self improvement into self warfare. It does work. Sort of. You can hate yourself thin. I've done it before. But then you are just thin and unhappy, like so many falling models.

We live in an era where a diet - a diet! - is unironically called "Live Your Best Life." (You can even buy your "Best Life" at your local grocery store, just look for the little green labels on your favorite brands! It doesn't say but I'm assuming if you collect enough of the Best Label boxtops and mail them to Oprah then your Best Life will arrive by mail 4-6 weeks later.) Where losing weight is the fastest way to gain instant celebrity, or if you are already a celebrity to get a magazine cover. Where despite the highest unemployment rate in recent history, cosmetic sales and plastic surgery are increasing at an unprecedented rate. An era where models rain from the sky.

It's sheer craziness. It's jumping-off-a-balcony madness. I know all this and yet, deep down, I still believe if I could just lose these last 10 pounds I'd be happy. But thanks in no small part to you all, I think I'm finally willing to give that belief up. It feels scary to me. For one, I've believed this as long as I can remember. I may have outgrown Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy but I still cling with child-like devotion to the Beauty Bunny. And also, I'm convinced that this perpetual war with myself, this intense hatred, is the only thing between me and weighing 1,000 pounds and being housebound for the rest of my life. I'm afraid that if I give up fighting then I'll lose everything. But I think that too is a myth. By fighting myself how can I do anything but lose? The key to my freedom is to give up the fight. Can I trust my body that it wants to be healthy? I hope I can. Because nobody should be falling; we should be flying.

Anyone else buy into the myth that thinness equates to happiness? Anyone else addicted to fixing themselves? Anybody else convinced that fighting yourself is the only thing keeping you from oblivion? Anybody totally sick of reading about this still?? (Anyone? Bueller? Bueller??)

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.