I Look Good Naked

Happy New Year everyone! I have one resolution and that is to Be Nice to Myself. This is my resolution because:

(1) Being nice to myself will make my life more pleasurable and gratifying.

(2) Living a more pleasurable and gratifying life will give me more surplus and since

(3) it feels good to give from surplus and feels bad to give beyond surplus

(4) being nice to myself is truly a gift that I give the world and is ultimately the best way to be nicer to others. See how that works? Fun is my goal and Love is the way. I don't think it works the other way around because if love is the goal, let's face it - it isn't always fun.

In my pursuit of being nice to myself I just watched a preview episode of How To Look Good Naked, the new show on Lifetime premiering tonight at 9:00 p.m. I must admit I was a bit worried that I would be seeing a bunch of beautiful women, of all shapes and sizes, wearing ugly clothes and crying about how much they hate their bodies.

In fact, what I saw was Layla, a beautiful, curvy 33 year old woman who was put on her first diet when she was twelve, wearing ugly clothes and crying about how much she hates her body. And then she spent some time with the delightful and charming Carson Kressley who talked to her not only about fashion but about her self esteem, her distorted body image, finding clothes that fit her body and her style, and celebrating the skin she's in.

I gotta tell ya gals, I have a really good feeling about this show. Enjoy what you have, while knowing that you can always have more - has been something that I have discussed here before. At the beginning of the show Layla referred to parts of her body as disgusting and couldn't really talk about her appearance without crying. Her pain about feeling unattractive was palpable and I could empathize on a very personal level.

Why do we women doubt our attractiveness and why is our attractiveness so wrapped up in our self worth? I am sorry but I won't be providing an answer to that question. That is a much larger issue with roots in feminism, capitalism and many other "isms" as well. I do know that you don't kick a tree for being a tree and since we just are the way that we are I say we may as well have some fun.

I am really looking forward to seeing more episodes of How To Look Good Naked. I wonder what they will come up with on this show, and how they will continue to work with individual women, each with her own set of body image issues.

With the increasing fascination with finding our bodies wrong as being unhealthy, ugly, and even a threat to the nation; How To Look Good Naked might be another source of sanity in response to a world gone mad with being thin.