A Conversation With My Thighs
Dear Thighs,
We’ve been together a very long time. It’s hard for me to tell you this, but I feel I must be truthful with you. I have never loved you. In fact, I have harbored terrible feelings about you as long as my memory serves. Probably since I was a budding adolescent, growing up in the 70s and forced by the fashion of the day (if you can call it that) into short shorts, usually bright blue with white piping. The faded concert tee falling around the shorts’ edges did nothing to curtain your flabby existence and so I suffered, in constant mortification at what I perceived as your oversized appearance, the loose quality of your flesh, the embarrassing jiggle you displayed whenever I took a step.
I realize now, a good 30 years later, that I was being too hard on you (and myself) back then. You probably looked pretty smooth and taut, surely close to Suzanne Somers standards in comparison to what you are now. For now, my friends, you are truly everything I ever feared you were: thick, lumpy, floppy, and unsightly. The onset of spring on the calendar has awakened that spark of terror in my heart that I’m sure many women share … the inevitably swift arrival of swimsuit season. And even the de rigueur black skirt bottoms I procured when I turned 40 are not magical enough to fool the eye of any poolside onlooker.
I don’t blame you, thighs. Truly I don’t. It is I who has failed, year after year, to stick to an exercise routine. It is I who, night after night, reaches for the chocolate so lovingly and carefully hidden from the children. It is I who spends more time resting upon your solid support – reading, eating, writing – than doing anything resembling the activities that might whittle you down, even a little. It is I who failed you. And yet I confess that I catch sight of you in a mirror and am immediately flooded by dark and bitter emotions toward you that I don’t think will ever abate.
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