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Learn To Love Your Body The Way It Is |
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Written by Nanette
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 17:04 |
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How many times have we all been tempted to rip out the pictures of ultrathin models from fashion magazine? Yet more than half the women in America wear plus-size clothes size 14 or larger. Still, it took a family crisis for us to realize how to love the bodies we were born with. The thing is, our family's physical heritage tends to run large. We're descended from sturdy peasant farmer stock - tall men with broad shoulders and tall women with big hips. This is great when you're plowing fields and having lots of babies to be farm hands, but it can be a disadvantage in our time of highly processed foods and much less physical labor. It all started when our cousin and her sweetheart decided to get married. Since we live close to one another, she asked almost everyone to be in her wedding party (and we're big in numbers as well as in body size). This joyous prospect started to sour, though, when our cousin became a bridezilla over the issue of how to lose fat to get ready for the wedding. Our family fights over losing weight finally reached such a point that Celia and her fiance Frank (who's no beanpole guy, either) thought they might have to elope because nobody was talking to anybody else. That's when Celia's mother, Aunt Marge, got into the act in a great way. One of Auntie's friends sells bridal dresses and evening gowns in town. She told our aunt that the question of body size often comes when choosing bridal gowns. Instead of trying to argue anymore, though, Auntie's friend loaned her a couple of catalogs that she uses to order dresses for her shop. These catalogs were full of beautiful, full-color photos that showed how a plus size wedding dress could fit well and look stunning at the same time. The shop owned loaned our aunt some catalogs from manufacturers that specialize in plus size bridal attire. Our aunt knew the rest of us wouldn't show up if it looked like we were going to go another round in the great wedding diet match, so she tricked us. She got us all over to her house by staging a show for party jewelry. While we were drooling over those beautiful sparklers, she sprang the catalogs on us. Before long, the bride-to-be and her now-reconciled bridesmaids were squealing with delightover the pictures of gorgeous dresses. We got so excited that our aunt had to get out her measuring tape so we could measure each other for one of those fabulous dresses. The great wedding dress battle had a happy ending, just like a good romance should. The bride and her attendants walked proudly down the church aisle in wedding gowns that fitted us perfectly and made us all look like fairy tale princesses (large economy size, of course). Our aunt's scheme really saved the wedding day.
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