Well, everyone can't have "the" Body Beautiful. But everyone really should be able to embrace the beautiful aspects of their own body. My friend Emma is great for this sort of thing - she contributes to several forums and started a thread of discussion asking people what it was about their bodies that they really liked. This is so much more encouraging than the "if you could change one thing about your body what would it be" question.

Me? I like my lush long hair, and I like that I have a cute little nose and long long eyelashes. I also like my smile - and other people seem to as well, because it always gets returned. Well, nearly always. *grin* I like my small wrists and ankles, somehow they make me look a whole lot daintier in general, and I like dainty. It allows me to lull people into a false sense of security before I reveal my inner (and sometimes not so inner) raving harpy. *evil laugh*... ooops, I mean "tee hee!" (chortles wickedly)

So, back to the topic. There are probably no images of people which have not been touched up somehow - altered, stretched out, cut down, airbrushed, whatever. It's just common practice now with digital photography and computer software. Mostly the bodies of models are digitally sculpted into something that, while unattainable and potentially head-fucking to all of us ordinary gels who "want to have a body just like that", looks pretty damn good.

Sometimes, though, it goes way too far, and you end up with something really ugly and freaky-looking. Like the current advertising for a certain brand of knickers that I'm seeing all over Sydney at the moment.



Okay, first of all, these chicks hardly even HAVE hips, but I won't go there. The waists have been adjusted to be smaller, and the hips have also been smoothed out. But the thing that gets me freaked out the most is the fact that a whole section of these women's bodies have been brushed out - especially the one in the middle.

The bottom been adjusted to appear smaller and perkier, and the bit in the middle has been airbrushed out, but what they've not taken into account is that if her butt really looked like that (look closely now) you really should be able to see a lot more of her *ahem* ...other bits. Hello?!!! This woman has no vagina! *screams in horror* And the way they've tried to make her legs look thin just makes it look as though you could drive a truck straight up the middle of them and park it in the open space where her genitalia should be! *shudder*

My poor friend Richard has admonished me big time over this one, saying I've gone and ruined it all for him, since up until now he'd been enjoying a good perv at the poster when it went by (usually on the back of a bus). Ha ha! One step at a time, people need to stop buying into this crap and thinking that everyone can have a thin, cellulite-free, shapely little bod like the non-existent automatons that end up all over billboards. Let the revolution begin!