For all the ladies...

Simply stated, men are entirely too judgmental when it comes to female body type. Somehow, even when we are ourselves outlandishly skinny or the size of a small hippo we manage to make snide comments about female passersby or women we see on television. I'm currently in Miami for vacation, and my brief time here has made me far more body-conscious (as I am regularly around men who look as if they bench-press dinosaur bones before they come to the beach). It's one of the first times that I have thought about body image in a while.

During this transformation, I have thought regularly about just how often women are told through both advertisement and idiotic lovers that their bodies are not good enough, that they themselves are little more than a conglomeration of fleshy parts too imperfect to be attractive (now, I'm tempted here to talk about simulacra and Jean Baudrillard, but I'll save that for another time). What I will say however, is that we must remember how beautiful we all are in ways both too grand and minuscule to be perceived by the naked eye. Sort of like walking abstract paintings, that sometimes are only recognized as masterpieces by those with the experience needed to appreciate our color scheme.

Thus,whatever your shape or weight, have fun this summer. True, exercise is healthy, but far too often folks spend a whole lot of time and money chasing a prototypical body image that is unrealistic; a machinic mannequin engineered by a hypercapitalist culture industry to make us buy more and more to get closer to the fantasy. Stick it to the Man this year; love yourself.

I wanna be sexy like compassion...yeah.