The other woman

Recently I had a chance to go to the movies and I have seen a very womanish film "The other woman". Hilarious. Light. And actually quite wise. The plot goes like that. There is a guy, very middle age, who has a mistress, but of course he has a wife too. The mistress doesn't know it, but the moment she discovered the truth she decided to quit the relationship. Than the wife when she has learnt about the affair gets crazy, but after a while the both women became friends against the sly husband and lover. And later there is another girl, next lover, and as you can guess, she also joins the women's gang. All in all everything goes smoothly to a happy end. Yes, sounds maybe quite silly, but I was crying from laughing and had lots of fun. But what I would like to say is not the story itself, not the romance nor the girls friendship. No. There was something different what caught my attention. The women themselves, the actresses and their look. Usually is such light movies we have to watch those perfect women with perfect bodies and faces and age too. Not this time. Those women were beautiful but not models style. They were not ideal. One was middle age with good body shape, but not perfect. The youngest one was definitely not a size 34 or even 36. It was something I liked, because so often we watch movies or ads and we think, OMG, I wish I had this figure. And I am really fed up with this pressure from everywhere to have a perfect body. The body from "before pregnancy" or from "before 30." or from college or whatever, but definitely better than it is now. The pressure goes from outside but also from inside. From us. We think we are imperfect and we have this crazy imperative to change it. Why? I mean, it is good and healthy to be fit, to go to a gym, to run, bike, swim, whatever and to keep the body strength and some reasonable weight. We know obesity is bad for us. But between a model like body and an obese body there is plenty of space we could fit in and feel good. Why we don't? I always thought I don't have this problem, but now I think I actually have it a bit. I am definitely not overweight. I was all my life at the low end of BMI normal weight, like 19 or so. Now maybe I would be around 20, which is still perfectly well. I go to the gym regularly. I do my best to eat healthy. Yes, I do love chocolate and wine and coffee, but who doesn't? And you know what? Since I gained around two, maybe three kilograms, I feel uncomfortable. I wear my skinny jeans and I think I don't look good. I even had those crazy thoughts to start any diet or just to watch what I eat. Crazy? Yes. One day I finally understood, that it is crazy. I was pregnant twice, my belly was stretched  twice to an enormous size and I still would like to have my belly look like the one from when I was 21. Same about my other body parts. Fortunately there are recently so many posts and pictures posted on many different blogs about the women's body image and its natural beauty and how unfair we are about ourselves. Looking at all those pictures showing women different ages and different bodies and different stories behind those bodies I finally got the message. I wonder why are we, women, so judgmental about how we look like? What is wrong with us? Why only a woman size 34 or 36 is beautiful and size 40 or 42 or bigger is fat and ugly? But similar too thin is not OK either. If someone is very skinny by nature she gets the label anorectic. It is again women against women. I don't want to blame anyone. It happens to me to be judgmental too: about myself and also about others. Too bad. But I was always surrounded by those beliefs that we should be beautiful and that means we should be slim, wear a make-up and take care of how we look. Like if the good look, the appearance would be more important than what is inside. Now, I have a daughter and my wish is to give her a different message. The message how wise she is and beautiful from her inside and not beautiful because she wears an expensive dress or make up. There was one blog written by a great woman and mother who was wise enough to know it all already and to show it to her daughters. Now I forgot the web address... But I still remember her message.