Feeling: enlightened
Listening to: Finale - Rent
Reading/Watching: just finished In Her Shoes... I highly recommend it

Today I read something Jennifer Weiner said and it made a huge impression on me. In the "Questions For the Author" section after In Her Shoes, she said that a character became happier when she realized that a body is to be used, not looked at.

And I fricking love that. I love that. Because just imagine how our lives could change, if we considered each other in that light. A body is not an aesthetic object, a shrine to beauty products. It is created to perform functions. Every part of you is designed to do something. I never quite got why I hate those little knicknacks that sit on a coffee table, like a bamboo platter filled with beaded, mirror spherical things. It's a big bowl of balls. Yay. I hate it because it just sits there. It doesn't do anything. Even a candle burns, creates light, and nowadays, makes a happy little smell.

So, looking back on a life where I wasted a lot of time hating myself, hating what I looked like because my body was shaped wrong, I wish I'd heard that phrase long ago. "A body is meant to be used."

Okay, so my shoulders are too wide, but they can carry a hell of a lot of books. My feet are too big, my legs are long and weirdly lumpy with these bigass calves, but I can cross a long room in a string of gigantic strides. I can't run very fast, but I found out today that apparently, even when it's just for a theater audition, I can deliver a scary-looking roundhouse kick (whether the actual impact is scary or not is still up for debate, since we were air-kicking).

My hips are too big, my butt is all global and J-Lo-ish, but I can balance a large box, a small child, and possibly a ten-ton cannon on that hip, with its fleshy pad over solid German bones. As for the butt... well, at least it's capable of levering my top-heavy self up from a right angle to 180-degrees. Plus, it's nice to sit on.

I am not perfectly or beautifully or even symmetrically shaped, but I am built to do the things I want to do in life. I don't want to run fast, but I do want to be able to beat the crap out of anyone who chooses to chase me (and perhaps the big shoulders, wide hips, and Amazonian height are the reason I was never hassled while walking alone at night). My body is for doing the things in life that I need to, like walking long distances, reaching high shelves, lifting things, cleaning, and possibly surviving a six-month famine (I'd last a lot longer than any of the supermodels, that's for sure).

Everything else, the "how it looks" part, is just window-dressing. My stomach may not be flat, but it can support my breath through the final phrase of "No Good Deed" from Wicked, right along with Idina. It can make a high C-6 ring for about six measures. My eyes may be small, but they can read people just as easily as words. My fingers may be all big and ham-ish, but they play piano pretty well, and type around 80 words per minute. My lips aren't the most gorgeous, coral-colored Angelina-Jolie nightcrawlers on earth, but they express my thoughts rather well, and I'm told they're good for kissing.

So I guess I'll keep me. It's not like I get a trade-in, anyway. I just am reminded of how very sad I felt when I saw a woman at the checkout counter of the bookstore with bruises all over her face and neck, and I thought, "Oh God, did someone beat her?!" until I realized it was the aftereffects of a facelift. And I pitied her even more for that.

My body is useful for the life I want. It's the insides that need to become more useful.

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