Cross Examination

The valiance post was a description of a friend I know who is maybe an English size fourteen, or size sixteen tops, who I think is beautiful. Her beauty is not an ideal I would attempt to conform to; it is not my own ideal, nor is it hers. She would like to be thinner, I would like to be thinner. As such I do not wish to conform to the ideal of Valiance. I could not; I know that whatever I do I will not be a soft proportioned person, and my face is unlike hers anyway. There is something blunt about my face and tough about my limbs. I am of an athletic build; euphemistically. This means, otherwise, that I am broad shouldered and as such carry excess weight well but have a tendency to look masculine as opposed to feminine. I can handle this. If I was describing myself, what would I say? Well, I too am pale. Masculinity is no bad thing. I am as strong as a piece of steel, flexible and coiled like a spring. Tensile strength is one of my best attributes. Yes, then. I am a sheet of steel that repells the sun, that glints as it shimmers softly over water, that can bend and stretch and do.

I watched TV the other day and four women with normal bodies swam the channel. That they could do that, that their bodies, though aged, were capable of that gave me enormous respect for what my body can do, what its potential is and why I should be neither over nor under loading it with food or subjecting it to constant criticism because it is a useful tool, nothing more and nothing less.