Body Image

I only bring this up because my Wild Words from Wild Women quotes calendar has this quote today: "God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptous; why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work, so I'm not going to complain about the way my body is shaped." - Drew Barrymore.

Now, seriously, if you had a body like Drew Barrymore, would your attitude about it be, "Eh, at least my limbs work," or "Yippee kay-o kay-ay! Let's go shopping!" Because mine would be the latter. Ditto if I looked like Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet, or Reese Witherspoon, all of whom have been called very "brave" by VH1 (or possibly E!) for "celebrating" their bodies instead of trying to diet them away. And I'm going, "Reese Witherspoon is now considered Rubenesque? I have definitely fallen down the rabbit hole."

I mean, I guess considering that Hollywood is what it is . . . but are there really producers running around telling women like Angelina Jolie, et al, to lose weight for roles? I don't understand. Do these producers have absolutely no sexual chemicals running around in their bodies at all, thus rendering them incapable of responding to or even recognizing sexy female bodies?

And no one is calling Camryn Mannheim or Kathy Bates brave, by the way. They seem to be pretty comfortable with their bodies. But I guess if you're actually fat and okay with it, that's not "brave," it's just icky.

I don't mean this as a dig at any of these actresses. In fact, I do admire their attitudes, which are usually less, "Look at me being TOTALLY OKAY with my boobies! Look! Look!" and more "What the fuck are you talking about?" And even though the Drew Barrymore quote seems to put her in the former category, it's not really her fault that she gets asked these assinine questions. My beef is with the askers and framers of these categories, this gestalt that finds boobs and upper arms wider than the elbow all scary and then patronizingly congratulates the women with these scary features for seeming not to mind.

People are weird, is all I'm getting at, here.

One other minor point which has nothing to do with anything: have you ever noticed that you can't really say "voluptous"? It always comes out "volumptous," doesn't it?