O.K. So sometime in December I was minding my own business and I get this email that I missed because I was very busy minding my own business but actually the email was directly related to my business and so I guess, since I missed it, that means I wasn't minding my own business as well as I thought. (Inhale, exhale, I'm breathing. I'm breathing.)

Here’s my revelation about pregnancy and your body image: it’s the same as when you’re not pregnant. If you obsess over your weight when you’re not pregnant, you’re probably going to do the same thing when you’re up the duff. You will obsess. You may just not care enough to curb your eating, and of course you’re encouraged to eat, which for most of us is a revelation unto itself and the most delicious feeling in the world!

Yeah, I know, Thanksgiving is over.  And boy, we all ate too much.  I'm not going to pick on you and your winter weight, loves. I get it myself.  That five pounds starts now and tips the scales at its high end around early February, my birthday, when I look in horror at my dunlap (as in my gut dunlapped over my belt) and think oh, God, it's celery time again.

Beauty benchmarks seem to be measured in what size pants you fit into and what designer hand bag you have draped over your rail-thin arm. This is the biggest bunch of crap I have ever heard. In my life.

It's Love Your Body Day. That's a good thing, and, also, a very, very sad thing.

Angelina Jolie and I don't have a lot in common. She's a world-famous celebrity who is adored by millions and married to Brad Pitt; I am a blogger who is adored by tens, maybe dozens (on a good week), and married to an awesome guy that you've never heard of. But there is this: we're both mothers. And we're both in therapy.

Hate your body? Can't bear to look in the mirror? If your answers are yes, stop right where you are and listen to this podcast interview I did last week with Kelly Park.

I don't know about you but I'm on a mission to reclaim my waistline.  Somewhere in the middle of midlife it's all but disappeared -- the booby prize, I suppose, for making it through menopause without losing my mind.  As if the hot flashes weren't bad enough. Along the way to whittle down and lose a stubborn 10 pounds gained during the big "M", I've checked out exercise books, fitness programs, joined the "Y" and more.  But I've had a lot of fits and starts in my exercise strategy.  

Do you hate your body?  Do you avoid looking in the mirror for fear of what you'll see?  Well Kelly Park and Carson Kressley of Lifetime Television's "How To Look Good Naked" may be able to help.  And without liposuction, facelifts, butt lifts or tummy tucks. As part of BlogHer's "Letter To My Body" campaign which tries to help women improve their body image, I'm going to have the pleasure of doing a podcast interview with Kelly Park who starred in the premiere of this season's "How To Look Good Naked."

I've been struggling with a secret, which is this: I'm really, really not in love with my body right now. I have, been keeping it secret for two reasons: 1) it's totally new to me - I've never really struggled with my body image, even after my last pregnancy, which added padding where no padding had hitherto existed, and so it just feels foreign and weird and (obviously) bad, and 2) it also feels so, I don't know, anti-feminist or anti-woman or anti-me (which, really, collapses into a kind of counter-womanism, to be anti-yourself as a woman) and I just so don't want to be that.

"A good nude photograph can be erotic, but certainly not sentimental or pornographic." --Bill Brandt, British photographer (1904-1983)

Last week Whitney Thompson became the first plus-sized model to win "America's Next Top Model." Or as one of her makeup artists said before the final runway competition, she was the "first juicy booty to make it on to the runway."