Beach Body

"You're wrong, Wendy," my friend protested.
"The beach is the BEST place for it."            

In a blog post I said the beach was the worst place to go if you have body image issues. There are hundreds of practically naked people. When I lounge on the shore, I occasionally glance up from my magazine and watch humanity walk by. That's when I am sorely tempted to compare myself to other women.

"Au contraire," said my friend, who writes the blog,
www.fatfemmefatale.com and is a size 28. "At the beach it's obvious that no one has the body the media promotes. It's the great equalizer."

She's right. How often do you see someone with the perfect body? What is perfect? And how many times have you thought, "Well, at least I look better than that woman. Honestly -- someone needs to tell her that heavy women should not wear bikinis."

Who is allowed to wear a bikini? Leaving modesty issues aside for a moment, if we insist that a woman's body must be perfect to don a bikini, aren't we saying that most people are unacceptable? And our standard is a lie preached by our culture.

Now, I wish some people would wear more than the handkerchief-sized suit they strapped on. But my reason for that should be, "modesty is important," and NOT "you're too fat/busty/flat-chested/fill-in-the-blank."

Don't buy the lies sold by the media. And let's hear it for a bit more modesty. It'll save you money on sunscreen.