Have you flipped through In Style's April issue, starring Tina Fey? If not, I apologize for what you are about to see. And if so, I'm sorry to make you see this again.
Maybe it's because I'm a 30 Rock fan and am used to seeing Tina Fey in all her no-fuss, normal-and-lovely glory that I hardly recognized her on the cover... Her hair looks wiggish, her arms a fraction of their normal size, and her awesome facial scar is barely visible. This is certainly not the Tina I know and love.
Re-touching/scuplting models for print is pretty standard these days, but seeing an actress/writer {who is clearly proud of her body as-is} altered almost beyond recognition was a bit strange... The article focused on her new memoir, Bossypants, but by the looks of the photos, it doesn't seem like they'd even read it!
Alex surprised me with her book yesterday, and I've had so much fun already. In one of the first chapters Tina discusses when she found out that "there are an infinite number of things that can be 'incorrect' on a woman's body". After listing a hilarious amount of deficiencies and expectations, she explains how to survive this: leading by example.
Instead of trying to fit an impossible ideal, I took a personal inventory of all my healthy body parts for which I am grateful:
1. Straight Greek eyebrows. They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked, will grow straight across my face and onto yours.
2. A heart-shaped ass. Unfortunately, it's a right-side-up heart; the point is at the bottom.
3. Droopy brown eyes designed to confuse predators into thinking I'm just on the verge of sleep and they should come back tomorrow to eat me.
4. Permanently rounded shoulders from years of working at a computer
5. A rounded belly that is pushed out by my rounded posture no matter how many sit-ups I do. Which is mostly none.
6. A small, high waist.
7. A wad of lower-back fat that never went away after I lost my "baby weight". One day in the next ten years, this back roll will meet up with my front pouch, forever obscuring my small high waist, and I will officially be my mother.
8. Wide-set knockers that aren't so big but can be hoisted up once or twice a year for parades.
9. Good strong legs with by gym teacher calves that I got from walking pigeon-toed my whole life.
10. Wide German hips that look like somebody wrapped a Pillsbury dough around a case of soda.
11. My father's feet. Flat. Bony. Pale. I don't know how he even gets around, because his feet are in my shoes.
I would not trade any of these features for anybody else's. I wouldn't trade the small thin-lipped mouth that makes me resemble my nephew. I wouldn't even trade the acne scar on my right cheek, because that recurring zit spent more time with me in college than any boy ever did.
At the end of the day, I'm happy to have my father's feet and my mother's eyes with me at all times. If I ever go to a beach, I want my daughter to be able to find me in a crowd by spotting my soda-case hips. I want her to be able to pick me out of a sea of highlighted-blond women with fake tans because I'm the one with the thick ponytail and the greenish undertones to my skin.
I love this woman, and I highly recommend her gut-busting, heart-warming memoir, now for sale everywhere.
PS- What healthy body parts are you grateful for? I'm grateful for my large hands that are bigger than most grown men's, my long legs that graceful-ize most pants, and the fact that my pectoral muscles are almost larger than my breasts.
