chasing the ghost of a good thing

I just watched, on and off, VH1's Most Wanted Bodies on TMF. Here's Miss Number One.

Oh my gosh. I never want to eat again.

Or alternatively I want to only eat 35 egg whites a week and drink 4 litres of silicone-rich Fuji water a day. I want to become an expert in a little-known martial arts discipline that provides a full cardiac work out while toning every muscle in my body, giving my bum and arms great shape AND definition.

My self-body-image-whatever changes a lot. I sometimes think I've got backwards body dismorphia. (Is that what it's called?) In that I look at myself in the mirror and think "Actually, that looks ok." I'm pretty sure that can't be what other people are thinking. When my sister's teasing me for being a fattie, and I get all envious cos she's uber-tanned and wearing the teaniest shorts known to man (she's such a fittie at the moment), I normally think that I'd rather keep my body than swap with her. I'm quite happy with it. Not that I could actually swap with her, but you know.

Then sometimes I'm thinking that I'm looking OK, but then accidently see myself in a mirror somewhere (like I did with my well-loved Pocahontas shoes) and think "ARG! That's ME!" That's today. My hair's a mess, I tied it up and put it under a baseball cap while it was still pretty much damp, it's now flatter than flat and looking even more than usual like the hair dye has gone a little bit wrong. My skin's really bad, in both the spotty and pasty-looking departments. My feet are big and clumpy, the red nail varnish not really detracting from the million-plus mosquito bite scars speckled around my ankles. My arms seem geneticly programmed to adopt the "clenched-fist gorilla-arm-hang" pose that is so often modelled by my mum. My thighs are not, however much I want them to be, "Beyonce thighs". They are just large. I have love handles. I have back fat. I am not a vision of loveliness.

My boyfriend thinks I'm sexy. But then, he has only seen me with my clothes on. That's part of the beauty of keeping them on til we're married; by then it'll be too late and he'll be stuck with me regardless. And if I don't look like Elisha Cuthbert, sorry, but if you don't believe in sex before marriage, I'm guessing you don't like divorce either.