Every see a picture of yourself or catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think "Woah. That's what I look like?" No? Just me? You get this idea in your head about how you look, eventhough you (I) look in the mirror every day to make sure my clothes are on right and look somewhat decent together. But somehow you still don't see yourself clearly.

2 examples. 1) I was watching What Not To Wear a few years ago and there was woman on it who had lost something like 50 pounds and couldn't figure out what size to try on. Stacy and Clinton had this giant piece of paper and made her draw an outline of herself. When she was done they stepped back and she's added about 6 inches to her width. 2) I had a good friend in college with a serious eating disorder. So serious she got kicked out of school and forced into rehab because she was, literally, killing herself. At the time she left she had 3% body fat (women shouldn't have below 12%). Her bones stuck out- you could see every rib, every vertabrae, you could even see the outline of her pelvis. And yet she still thought she was fat and needed to lose more weight. Studies routinely show that people with eating disorders look in the mirror and see someone bigger than they really are, which feeds into the needing to loose weight thoughts, which spurs on the eating disorders.

Without going on, I think that shows we don't really see ourselves the way we really are and that we are harder on ourselves than need be. But why is that? Can't we all just be happy with the body that we have? Thankful that it (usually) gets us where we are going and lets us (usually) do what we want/need to do? Why, as women, can't we stop striving for the impossible and unattainable and be satisfied with how we are? Think of all the money we'd save on gyms, clothes, diet food, etc. That alone might get us out of the recession.