Meri's Musings

Your body style, like mine, is something your genes stick you with. You can feed it wisely, keep it toned and flexible, but trust me. . . . if you're programmed for curvy, you're never going to look like Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables unless you're abusing your body every which way. Love your curves. p.s. I'm going to be jumping up and down and screaming today, strictly for  cardiovascular fitness. Go Seahawks!

A community museum somewhere in the outskirts of the local area recently mounted an exhibition called "Suffer for Beauty." I didn't go see it because it just didn't fit into my schedule,  but it got me thinking about the ways that I have suffered  in the quest forbeauty on the outside, the place that seems to be of utmost importance in the American scheme of values. Maybe where you live, too. There are the obvious things, of course, like cramming my feet into high heels and teetering around town with feet that are screaming  and back that's trying to adjust its alignment and ankles threatening to twist just to stop the madness. I've also had abdominoplasty, a "tummy tuck", to pull my muscles back into alignment and cut out excessive skin and stretch what's left back together after repeated C-sections left my abdominal muscles a little lax. Hurt like hell (more than the C-sections) and the compression garments I had t...

I thank Misty Mawn for prodding us all to capture self-portraits on a regular basis. It's a challenging assignment on so many levels - how to accomplish it technically, how to manage issues of body image and self-consciousness, not wanting to open yourself up too much to others, wanting to cast yourself in the best light. I've come to love the "reflected self" self-portraits because they offer a handy dandy way to deal with those issues. Besides, the reflected images have an enigmatic quality and my corporeal self has an air of lightness, at least that's what I think. The truth of it is, however, that every moment of our lives we're creating a self-portrait. how we use our time the choices we make when no option is ideal whether we celebrate or shun our gifts if we demonstrate kindness and compassion consistently whether we're open to new experience or sadly shut down the trail our words leave behind us the images we choose to capture and share in our blog...