most beautiful people

okay. . . i'll keep it short and sweet - cuz i'm tired, but i had to say something about this 'beauty' issue.

People magazine - as most of you know- comes out with its yearly "50 Most Beautiful People" issue (don't forget the "Sexiest Man Alive" and "Sexiest Woman Alive" issues too!! geesh. . .)

So, I just read through it and from the beaming, gleaming Julia Roberts on the cover to the model on the back cover it was chock full of perfection -- zoom-whitened teeth, bright eyes with no trace of blood shotedness or wrinkles, fab abs, toned glutes, poppin' pecs, lush lips, overflowing bras, impossibly shiny, almost alien hair, cellulite-free appendages -- the following words were used in abundance: "hot", "super sexy", "radiant", "goddess", "gorgeous", "sex symbol", "hot guys", "super hot couple". By the time I had finished "reading" all this superficial fluff (i don't buy this mag - my husband does - but i must confess to reading it) i felt:
a. too chunky b. imperfect c. mad that this mag contained nothing else but 'best body part polls' and 'beauty time lines' d. hopelessly unattractive e. sad that every advertisement page had models even more beautiful than the beauteous celebrities, promoting everything from french undies to vodka to chanel no 5 cologne.

A cover to cover homage to beauty - artificial or good genes - its all celebrated and advertised and talked about and chart and graphed and compared and polled - yeah, that's just the thing for this woman's self esteem!!! no wonder most women feel like crap. . . real people don't look that way! they have frizzy hair! they have breakouts, their collar bone 'hollows' can't act as extra storage space for small objects, say a roll of breath mints or car keys. . . real people - they have laugh lines - for God's sake, even the people who are depicted in 'coenzyme Q10' commercials don't even have friggin' wrinkles!!! WHAT'S UP WITH THAT???!!! real pregnant and non pregnant women sometimes gain too much weight, real men might have too much body hair! and their muscles might be more 'subtle' but they're still there! real people sometimes eat too much and exercise too little, they don't use $100 a bottle moisturizer, their hair might not always look great, sometimes they wear the wrong colour or the wrong style. . they talk about more than their exercise routines, they think about more than food combining and portioning-- they do more than look in the mirror. . ahhhh. . . real people -- well at least real people are allowed to look bad! we don't have paparazzi and thank God for it.

". . people are like the grass that dies away. Their beauty fades as quickly as the beauty of flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. .. and so it is with people . . .but the word of our God stands forever." Isaiah 40:6 Now there's the reality check. . . hmmmm

Anyway. . . i could say more but you know what i mean, eh? i'm sure you have your thoughts on this subject!

Do you know what i did with that magazine when i finished perusing it? I placed it on the rec room coffee table, saw Julia impossibly flawless Roberts staring back at me through smoky eyes . .i took the nearby TV remote and put it over her face and went upstairs. childish? you bet! . . .but i felt better.