There comes a time in a woman’s life when she just has to learn to make friends with herself. Sounds silly doesn’t it?  Unfortunately, most of us were raised by our culture to believe that our appearances were somehow mistakes of nature, and science and technology was created to make us better. We’re too fat, too old, our pores are too big, we stink, we have too much hair in all the wrong places, and the hair we’re allowed to keep on our skulls is the wrong color, style, texture, etc. If we have boobs, they’re only permissible if they are hiked up to our chins by spandexic feats of engineering that leave such painful marks of the day’s suffering behind, it looks like our bras are secretly made out of sand paper.

Men have their own problems, and it usually revolves around the function of their pee-pees. Beyond that, they don’t seem to worry all that much about their appearance, especially if they are happily ensconced in a committed relationship. Case in point: If I go up a pants size, the world is a horrible place and I should just crawl into a dark hole and die, lest I shame my species with my repugnance. My husband goes up a pants size, shrugs, and observes that he must now buy bigger pants.

Obviously, this is different for men who make their living looking a certain way, or are single and want to attract a mate. That’s because, in my humble opinion, men are motivated by more instinctual, less complicated rules (see this post). Women, on the other hand, are neurotic nightmares of their own making. We never like ourselves, outside, and sometimes in. That’s why we worry. That’s why we don’t sleep. That’s why we have wrinkles. That’s why science invented botox.

Ah, botox. Is something wrong with me, that I think it’s completely insane to voluntarily allow another human being to put a needle just a couple of centimeters from my frontal lobe and inject pig botulism into my scalp to paralyze the nerves in my face for several weeks, and pay him/her exorbitant amounts of cash to do so? It’s about as crazy as letting another human being put hot wax all over one’s coochie and rip out the hair…oh wait, women are doing that too.

I was looking for something in one of my old photo albums, and I came across a picture of myself when I was eighteen. It blew my mind. I had no hips, seriously, I was so skinny looking in that picture, and I remember feeling grotesquely fat. I remember obsessing just as much about my weight SEVENTY POUNDS AGO as I do now. It’s just ridiculous.

Do you know why we don’t have a cure for cancer? Do you know why we haven’t solved the energy crisis, or found world peace, or gone to Mars? It’s because our science is being spent on creating superficial, useless products that only accomplish one stupid thing, perpetuate the war women have with themselves. Stop it. Stop it right now. If that former hottie of me demonstrates nothing else, it’s that I will never win the war with myself. Torturing my body and my brain for the hope of some small molecule of self-satisfaction is a waste of time and money and energy that could go to something so much more useful.

Your body is not the enemy. Your body keeps your brain from being a useless pile of wet sawdust on the floor. Accept it for what it is and appreciate who you are right now, cellulite, zits, hairy moles and all. Of course I have wrinkles. I have a lot on my mind. If you notice that my forehead looks like a 3D road map of Nebraska, that’s OK. It means I’ve been thinking…

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