It truly amazes me how widespread doublethink is in our society, and more troublingly, in my brain. I mean, I know that not everyone can look like a model, yet I measure myself against an impossible standard. I would like to be a more consciencious recycler, a more assiduous birthday card sender, a reliable presence at all family functions, but I can't, dammit! When you start looking at all that is expected of you - get a good job that you actually like, do what it takes to get the job done, eat healthy (OK, so I mostly do that one), exercise regularly, be in a happy relationship, lessen your impact on the environment, drive a flashy car, have children, take a course, call you mother regularly, buy a house, go south every summer, and the list is absolutely endless. But we all know that we can't be perfect, that the model set out before us in Gap ads and on the covers of magazines is a sham, little more than a clever marketing ploy to get people to buy things they don't need.

But to get back to what really got me on this rant: body image. I know, in the most lucid and rational part of my brain, that I have a nice figure. I work out, I eat well. Then I find myself scoping out every other woman I see to see if she has a nicer body than me! This, of course, is a losing proposition. Until the day that I look exactly like Angeline Jolie, lips and all, which will be never, I'm just wasting my energy. Why do I, like so many other perfectly normal-looking women, torture myself this way? I can accept, and have long accepted, that there will always be someone richer, smarter, more clever, more successful, more sexy, more worldly, etc., so why wonder at every female I see why I don't look as good as her? And then there's the question of whether or not there's any basis to my judgement. Is beauty not a matter of taste? Is it not in the eye of the beholder? Does it matter that that goth girl I saw on the subway has nicer legs than me? Maybe she...

It truly amazes me how widespread doublethink is in our society, and more troublingly, in my brain. I mean, I know that not everyone can look like a model, yet I measure myself against an impossible standard. I would like to be a more consciencious recycler, a more assiduous birthday card sender, a reliable presence at all family functions, but I can't, dammit! When you start looking at all that is expected of you - get a good job that you actually like, do what it takes to get the job done, eat healthy (OK, so I mostly do that one), exercise regularly, be in a happy relationship, lessen your impact on the environment, drive a flashy car, have children, take a course, call you mother regularly, buy a house, go south every summer, and the list is absolutely endless. But we all know that we can't be perfect, that the model set out before us in Gap ads and on the covers of magazines is a sham, little more than a clever marketing ploy to get people to buy things they don't need.

But to get back to what really got me on this rant: body image. I know, in the most lucid and rational part of my brain, that I have a nice figure. I work out, I eat well. Then I find myself scoping out every other woman I see to see if she has a nicer body than me! This, of course, is a losing proposition. Until the day that I look exactly like Angeline Jolie, lips and all, which will be never, I'm just wasting my energy. Why do I, like so many other perfectly normal-looking women, torture myself this way? I can accept, and have long accepted, that there will always be someone richer, smarter, more clever, more successful, more sexy, more worldly, etc., so why wonder at every female I see why I don't look as good as her? And then there's the question of whether or not there's any basis to my judgement. Is beauty not a matter of taste? Is it not in the eye of the beholder? Does it matter that that goth girl I saw on the subway has nicer legs than me? Maybe she doesn't have a spectacular lover, like I do, maybe she doesn't have a career she really enjoys, like I do, maybe she doesn't have her health, or a few close friends she can call in the middle of the night, or a useful post-graduate education, like I do. Why do I fucking care?

And yet I do. But I'm working on it, I really am. I mean, I could just blame my mother, since she always beat into us how one should always try to look just a little bit better than the average, just because, but that would be somewhat of a cop-out. Sort of. If there's one thing I've learned in my thirty-odd years of life it's that the things that rear their ugly heads in your psyche are, quite often, rooted in things that were said or done to you as a child by your parents. Scary.