I'm Having A Fat Day

Whether the porkiness be the result of a few too many greedy dinners, summertime rosé bloat or just a figment of one's imagination, it creeps up when one is least expecting it. It could of course be much worse -- imagine being a celebrity and having every tabloid proclaiming your worst fears and your body image hang-ups on the front of every weekly rag. It would be enough to drive me to cake. (I'd probably close the curtains, unplug the phone and sit home with Ben & Jerry's wearing my pajamas watching daytime television)

There are legendary stories flying around about us stylists cutting labels out of dresses for our clients because they won't wear a dress that is bigger than a size zero. This, by the way, I have not and will not do -- I maintain that sizing is entirely arbitrary and just to be used as a guide, rather like navigating by the North Star instead of satellite-guided GPS. What always perplexes me is getting a starlet's measurements and then arriving for the fitting or shoot and realizing that the only place the zero will fit is on somebody else. It's astonishing that a young lady lauded for her beauty and envious figure would feel the need to tell fibs about her dimensions, and yet we all do it. It's a number, a category, something to judge ourselves with, a box to confine us. We are all sums of many parts, not easily compartmentalized by adjectives or numbers. I've been called many things -- voluptuous, chesty, zaftig, robust and healthy. The truth of it is that I've never felt like any of these words, and it is vastly uncomfortable to have a label.

Bearing this in mind, the best diet is a little mental re-alignment rather than resorting to a juice fast or two pairs of Spanx, to embrace one's self as a divine feminine curvy vixen rather than a pig in a wig. Witness the creamy volupté of Elizabeth Taylor, possibly the ultimate poster-girl for how gorgeous a little padding really can look. She ate, she drank, she got married frequently and wore divine jewelry. In short, she really enjoyed her life and her appearance reflected that. If one thinks about some of the other icons of gorgeousness such as Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson, Lara Stone, Brigitte Bardot or Beyoncé and realize that that velvet coating of squidge that we all do daily battle with is the very essence of what it is to be feminine.