I was trying on clothes at Nordstrom yesterday. I looked over my shoulder into the mirror at the panty line wildly distorting the seat of the slacks, when I noticed an ad taped to the dressing room wall.

Does trying on bathing suits make you anxious and depressed?  (What a question!) Do you feel all bathing suits are designed for preteens?  After trying on bathing suits do you feel you need to go to the gym and work out for hours? If you answered, “yes,” to any of these questions, (the ad continued) you need to come in on May 15 to meet Jeanette, our bathing suit fitting expert.” I thought, if you answered, “No,” to any of those questions, you are a man and you’re in the wrong dressing room.

I dread buying a bathing suit, it is the worst part of summer or a vacation.  For most of us over twenty-two, our thighs are dimpling somewhere between nervous anticipation and abject terror.  We are among the world’s most educated and emancipated women, yet bathing suits bring us to our knees.  This isn’t good.

What can we do about this?  Not much actually.  Society won’t let us rest.  The standards serve as constant reminders that our bodies are unattractive.  We feel ashamed and unappealing.  The question is how to handle those feelings?  Here’s some ideas for dealing with the ever-present nagging comparisons and negative self-evaluations.

First and foremost, tell yourself you have better things to do.  Tell yourself your body works.
Then tell yourself I’m too smart and self-aware to be shackled by body image.
Let’s cut our anxiety and lead with our strengths.  Think of the power you would feel if you, the burden lifted if you could look at your thighs and say, Hello girls!  You serve me well. You’re sturdy.  You take me where I want to go.  I no longer want you to take me down the runway to be crowned Miss America.  I no longer want you to give me the credentials to be a movie star or a super model.  You are not the lead line on my resume.

Next point: beautiful thighs don’t make you happy.  Ask any person with beautiful thighs.  “Hello, I notice you have killer thighs.  What do you talk to your therapist about?” Hollywood is filled with beautiful thighs and miserable people with their pain splashed across tabloids and People magazine.

As a young psychologist, I remember seeing a very beautiful woman patient.  I was confused.  Here she was the standard against which all women measure themselves and she was unhappy.  It violated all my beliefs about beauty making you happy.  Then there are all those rich unhappy people, but that’s another story.
What is the goal?  What should we make time for?  What do I have to offer as a human being, as a woman?  Well, for one thing I can make people laugh.  I can help heal people’s emotional wounds. I can share laughter with my friends. I can make my home beautiful.  I make my husband happy. I take good care of my children.  The list goes on.
My thighs are neither an asset nor a detriment in any of these endeavors.  What makes me feel worthwhile are my skills and my compassion.  What make me happy are my health and the health of the people I love.  When I sit in my garden with my dog reading a good novel, my thighs are irrelevant to the peace I experience.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I wouldn’t want to have the standard of beauty our culture exults.  It’s just that chasing it forever doesn’t really give anyone what is really of value. What a waste of my wisdom to keep trying to achieve what I think it will give me, which it probably won’t.  Let’s refocus.  Let’s reach for something else.  Let’s stop reading “Seven Ways to Shape Up for Summer.”  Life is way too short for that.