We've all got it...

My first topic of the day, is cellulite. I have a perfectly good reason for this, and it only vaguely has anything to do with Kim Kardashian. As most of you know, I have recently started ballet and tap lessons again. (I will spare you all the gushing details at this time.) A couple of weeks ago, we had a substitute teacher. The new teacher was probably 18 at the very oldest, very thin, and an amazing true ballerina. For the first part of the class, she had on some cropped sweatpants over her dance shorts, but removed the pants to better teach us leg and hip placement. That's when I saw it - cellulite! On this wasp of a gorgeous trained dancer!! I was overjoyed and wanted to run shout it from the hills! Not because I was spitefully thrilled for this girl to have it, but because I wanted to say "See! All the magazines are airbrushed!! We have ridiculous expectations of ourselves!! Be free!"

I was immediately reminded of one of my next door neighbors in the dorm my sophomore year of college. She was one of the most beautiful people I'd ever seen in person. She was a pageant queen and professional model that is now married to a rather successful country singer and appears in his videos. I remember how her modeling contract stated that she had to exercise for at least an hour a day and she was constantly in our little gym. She was even proposed to by the leader of some nation while on a missions trip. Making her level of beauty seem even more unattainable - she actually slept in cute and frilly matching pajama sets and slips. In college! While the rest of us were in mis-matched t-shirts and clearance flannel bottoms! However, being her dorm neighbor allowed me to learn something about her - she too had cellulite! My realization of that changed my life. I try to remember this on my rough self-talk days when she's prancing around on CMT - Even she has cellulite!

My third and final example does not include back-leg fat, but is close enough to the analogy. I had the privelege of seeing and/or meeting a fascinating collection of people while living in DC. I was there the first day that Brad and Angelina went to the Hill together. That place was turned upside down and people were out of control! I knew that at one point she was meeting with my boss, and a co-worker kept trying to come up with reasons for us to purposefully and non-chalantly walk down the hall in hopes of catching a glimpse (like security didn't realize that). Finally, we did. I looked at her, but not for long - because, you know, I was doing something important in the hallway other than that. What I saw was a woman. Had I not been told by so many that she was there, I may not have even known it was her. Granted, she was very pretty - but in a simple professional dress with her hair pulled back the same as the rest of us. With regular highlights and the beginnings of roots - just like the rest of us. Her expression was one of concern yet fear - because there were all of these people in her face trying to tell her important things and expecting something of her. Basically, she was every other woman on the Hill, just with bodyguards. It was yet another moment where I wanted to run out and tell everyone "Angelina is just a normal woman!! She's not some magical force from space that we must constantly be compared to!"

I think all women and all men need to know this. Our expectations of ourselves are so unattainable!

I try to think of this from the perspective of my childhood illness and my mother's disabilities. At one point in my life - my body did not work as it should. Now, my mother's does not always. Our bodies are amazingly wonderful gifts! You could think of all of the miracles in our creation for days on end and not list them all. Yet, we focus on some dimples on our thighs most of all, and run around comparing them to the size and number of the dimples on all of the other women's legs, and let this obsess our brains.

I've rambled quite a bit now, and am unsure of the final point other than this: You are a gift, your body is a gift, speak blessings to yourself.