First, Do No Harm

Last Monday I made some remarks about myself as I looked in the mirror, especially about the way the buttons were straining on the flannel shirt I was wearing, one of my son’s old Extra Smalls. I mentioned this last to my husband, who was just passing through the room at the time. "Get a breast reduction!" he joked, which seemed weird, since he sees me every day looking like Homer Simpson in his underpants; I figured he should know that the problems was further down, at my stomach and hips.

Posting all this prompted a blogger I had never heard from to connect with me. She is committed to discussing anorexia and the damage anorexia does to young women.

I hadn’t read more than one paragraph on her site before I was wincing over my silly and, let me admit, somewhat mendacious whine. Yes my upper arms sport swags on their undersides nowadays – I call them 'window treatments' – but the fact is I’m 5-foot-6 inches tall and I weight 128 pounds so really I’m not anybody’s idea of fat.

I know that.

And isn’t talking as if I were, even for the sake of getting a laugh, could be downright damaging to the world-view of younger women, who are already being bombarded by message about what the one right body size is. Is damaging.

Besides writing about fashion this woman makes it her mission to warn young woman away from blogs that encourage them to essentially starve themselves.

What I know for sure is how faintly aghast I feel every year at this time, when I watch the parade of young women in my town promenade to the buses that will take them to their proms. They are gorgeous in their youthful beauty, every one of them, as are their prom gowns, strapless or off the shoulder or cut away at the midriff to show a smooth wedge of flesh.

But the thin ones are just tooth inn… I practiced massage for six years and studied a lot of Anatomy. I know what a scapula looks like so well I could draw the bony 3-D puzzle of that area wearing a blindfold. I have worked on my share of them. Ye I have never see the shape and edges of female scapulas so luridly protruding as on Prom Night these last few years.

Here are the bones I refer to as the person faces away, back to the 'camera'

You can obviously feel these bones when you work on a person in massage.  You understand their placement and function. But unless you’re working on a cadaver you don’t see them in such a three-dimensional fashion, all notched and knobby.

I can say more about this tomorrow and point us to the blogger’s posts but for now let’s just tale a step back and think about these young women walking around with so little to protect them. Poor things, so undefended! Poor, poor things, and doubtless hungry too!

Can't Be Too Rich or Too Thin? Really?

It always shocks me to see how skinny rich chicks can be; rich older chicks I mean because the young ones still have enough of that collagen padding in their faces to look sort of normal (I point to that Olsen twin at her thinnest. I point to Angelina Jolie who bodywise may look like a little toy kite made of rice paper and bamboo sticks but who gets away with it with those big old puffy lips.No I’m talking about your older gals, like the ones I saw at this very large charity ball  the other night. Sure maybe some of them have had the extra flesh under their necks hacked away by the nip-and-tuck man but really I think they’re just thin - anyway they all had skeleton jaw.And  then there was this really pretty one who looked like Kristen Scott Thomas and was maybe 50 and had a world of pearls filling her chest so you couldn’t SEE how skinny she was there….But when she shrugged off her coat and turned toward the bar? The sight made me gasp: a spine like the tail of a horseshoe crab and two scapula so bladelike you could shave your legs with them.Not that I’m the perfect person of course; I’m thinking of having a little work done myself, especially around the nose area, but hey tell ya one thing: I do enjoy pointing the finger at others!

Skinny Syndrome

7:00 am:Weatherman says snow and wind and end-of the-world rain due today. Been watchin’ the school systems marching past on the crawl line of the local news here and wait: The Pincushion School? What is that, a place devoted to instruction in the dark art of voodoo?Speaking of voodoo how many times have we all wished we could stick pins in gorgeously thin people and hit ‘em where it hurts, like right in those tiny waistlines say? Thinkin’ of thin here and wondering if my Weight Watchers meeting will still be on. (I go to the local Senior Center for my meetings because those cheery older ladies have such a sense of fun and perspective. Everyone laughs the whole time and last week we made fun of our husbands it's great.) And OK yes I've ost only half a pound in since I joined in April but hey: at least’s I haven’t gained. And when I look at the National Enquirer I feel almost glad. Tori Spelling with her long face like a horse’s faces and ribs all down her back? Ahslee Simpson like one of those big-eyed  Keane kids? Courtney Love, who used to be all curves and pouts?  Just look  at her here! Five-ten and 111 lbs.  She looks like a kitchen witch. Worse!I’m five-six. When I got married I weighed 130 but by the time my last baby was born I was down to 115 so I know: once you start losing weight it sort of IS hard to stop and I was eating normally, but maybe they all say that. Maybe Courtney and Ashlee and Tori think they’re eating normally too but you just know they aren’t. Bad as Courtney looks check out these two pictures below. See the breasts this one woman doesn’t have? I mean you can see why they didn't bother to  hide them with black rectangles.  See the hollows in the sides of this other woman’s pelvis?  Those hollows are designed to cradle the great muscles that keep us upright and allow us to lift our legs and bend and move around some. Without them what can you do but lie on the couch? And PS the heart is a muscle too which is why you die. It’s a cautionary tale, guys. Humans are seriously prone to crazy and you and I are no exception. Now go find that shovel but for God's sake eat something first!

This  young woman on the right got lucky; she recovered