What are we thinking?

I had the wonderful pleasure to go to the theatre this week. It isn't a trek we make once a year or even once every two years. As a matter of fact we hadn't been to the city for such a purpose for eight years. But when I heard White Christmas was coming to town I suggested we make the trek, sans les enfants, (another fact of life that we don't experience too often).

As we waited to enter the theatre I couldn't help but admire the rich artwork that adorned the foyer. I love gilded and ivory Rubenesque art. Where the smiling women and child are healthy, and beautifully curved. Their bodies are full and warm, eyes round with contentment, lips pleasingly wishful. They are relaxed, reclining on clouds, or draped in silks. Just looking at them I couldn't help but relax myself as I anticipated seeing the play.

And then I started to think about what is beauty? Let's just for the sake of argument foolishly say that beauty is skin deep. (After all we all know this is not true.) If you look in the usual woman's magazines, or watch any of the usual tv shows, beauty is blatantly defined as something between needing to rent a shadow and dead. No matter where we turn we are bombarded by images of women that are unheathily thin. And this time of year, everyone is willing to show us and help us, for a fee, to lose weight so we too can be a fashion doll clone. We are told, in no uncertain terms, that if we have a two digit size, if there is a curve across our backside or thigh, we are not acceptable. And God forbid we have what I call a ripe midsection, a waist that is comfortably embraceable -- we're second class citizens.

Think about it. Visualize it. What if this plush theatre were decorated images of hipless and breastless wonders? Women and children gaunt and angular. Ribs showing, hips, collar bones and sternums straining against tight skin. Personally I would find it disturbing. And instead of enjoying the art around me, I would be wondering which charitable organization I could send money to, to help these poor unfortunate souls.

Think about it.