A Little Perspective, Please

So I'm in the checkout line at the grocery store yesterday and I am as usual surrounded by magazines dishing the celebrity dirt. One of them is loudly trumpeting its worry (bless them, compassionate creatures that they are) about various starlets' possible eating disorders. They illustrated their "concern" (if by "concern" you understand me to mean "desire to make money no matter whose privacy they invade or how tasteless they may be") with a few photos of young women, some of whom are alarmingly thin. But one photo is a picture of Jessica Alba in a bikini, captioned, "What Happened to Jessica's Curves?" And I'm standing there, a bag of spinach in my hand, thinking, "WHAT?? What curves? When did she have curves?"

Don't get me wrong -- Jessica Alba is a lovely girl. But "curvy" she is not and has never been. To wit:



Pretty, yes. Curvy, no. Seriously, if she's curvy... well, you might as well fill me with helium, hang a basket off my ass, and fly me over the SuperDome flashing LED messages across my chest.

This is a woman with curves:

(Jennifer Hudson, currently blowing everyone out of the water in "Dreamgirls" and looking stunning in, I believe, Donna Karan -- someone tell me if I'm wrong)

And this is a woman with curves:

(Kirstie Alley -- funny, smart, brave and looking gorgeous)

A friend of mine, who is a deliciously curvy girl, told me a story recently that made me deeply happy. She and a gentleman friend of hers who had been an overnight guest were spooning cozily beneath the comforter. Said gentleman at one point sighed deeply, snuggled a little closer, and said, softly & happily, "Mmmmmmmm. No sharp bones."

Yeah, buddy. That's what I'm talkin' about.

I want us all to be happy, I want us all to be healthy, I want us all to be at peace with our bodies. It is hard to do that in the world today. Bear in mind that surrounding the magazine screeching about Jessica being too skinny there were easily eight other titles that had prominent "Lose Weight Now!" or "Easy Dieting Tips!" headlines shouting from their covers. This leads me to conclude that perhaps the safest bet is not to take our life lessons from magazine headlines. Perhaps we should all do something radical like doing what makes us truly happy. Now, that would make for a good headline, huh?