Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The scale is my friend; Em, no.

I've put off getting ready for Christmas this year, because we have a three year old in the house. A tree with lights and shiny things? This is good for mach 3, minimum.

Wrapped presents beneath it? Jack it up a notch or two. Squeal! Santa is coming!

Everything is ready and an Advent calendar with nummy chocolates is holding the three year old in the lower atmosphere.  Me? well, I seem to be the excited one.  I kept looking for things to do today. More cookies? Nope, don't need them. Think of the scale, yeah that's the ticket. Fudge? No, we have enough. My motto is usually, 'There's no such thing as too much chocolate."  Think scale Sherilyn, think scale.

I'm determined not to add any extra padding this holiday. Okay so not so much.

This time of year it seems highly unfair, all of these goodies and I can't eat what I want anymore without consequence. Pounds are consequence. Bouncing blood sugar isn't nice either.  Once it was no worry.  No more.

My characters never have to worry about their weight. Or balancing sugar with protein and carbohydrates.  Of course my characters aren't my age. The age when everything gets stored in case of starvation. As if.

The women of the world have enough pressures on them without the characters they read about pushing them into depression over weight issues. Then of course there are the young ones, hopefully not too young if they're reading my books, who seem to think it's the way of the world to have bones poking out everywhere.  Okay. What man do you know would want to cuddle up with bones?  I've not met one.

They tell me they like to look at thin girls. On the women they date? Some padding is okay. Apparently we're supposed to have curves and soft spots. Who knew?

So while I'm thinking scale and blood sugar, at the end of the day I'm not a woman who's going to do anything drastic about my weight. In raising a daughter and now having a granddaughter I think about theses things when I write. What is a healthy view of the female form?  As romance writers do we play to the media view or a more realistic view?