Zaftig...I like that!

By Jamie Hill

The twenty-first century is in an information glut, and with technology improving all the time, I'm not sure we're going to get out of it.

"Too much information, dear," I'm always telling my husband. Some things, I don't need detailed descriptions of. (I'll stop there, you can use your imagination.) I feel the same way about celebrities and the octo-mom. Last week I saw a picture of one of the octuplets, taken with an eerie, green, night vision camera. Excuse me? Why do we need to see the baby sleeping, and who's creeping around outside his window with a freaking night vision camera?

The blossoming of the internet over the past few years has exposed us to twenty-four hour information. Now, with TV, internet news and bloggers scrambling to fill their time slots and pages, the simplest stuff has become 'news'. Brangelina goes to the grocery store. Jen and John were seen at Bob's Big Boy. So what? I can't imagine how the celebrities feel, and while I realize the mere fact of being a celebrity means they've given up a certain measure of privacy, I still don't want to hear about it when Brad Pitt picks his nose. I was saddened by the death of Natasha Richardson, but I don't want to see the first pictures from her funeral. (I saw that preview- where- Entertainment Tonight, I believe?) Leave her poor family alone.

When I was a kid I enjoyed watching award shows for a glimpse of my favorite stars on the red carpet. What's he or she wearing? Who's he with? That type of stuff. It was once or twice a year. That was interesting. That was enough. Now that it's an everyday occurrence, I couldn't care less.

Some things do catch my eye. When Jessica Simpson was blasted for putting on a few pounds, I was disgusted. I didn't think it rated nightly news and front page Yahoo spots for two weeks, but no one asked me. Now one of my actress faves from years ago has put herself on display. Valerie Bertinelli is on the cover of People magazine this week, wearing a bikini.


You can't feel sorry for a star who puts herself out there. She lost some weight and feels good about it. If I could wear a bikini again, I'd feel great, too. I suspect Valerie has a little of that post-divorce-I-want-to-look-fabulous-to-find-a-new-guy-and-make-my-ex-jealous thing going on. I've seen it in my friends who were divorced. They always lost weight and started looking their best. Personally, I think I'll keep the husband and the few extra pounds.

I don't think thin is sexy. People with flat, washboard bodies are not 'all that'. For the media to hype it up so much that our daughters/nieces/granddaughters are on diets and worried about what clothes make them look fat is absurd. I believe the majority of adults feel the same way. (Teenagers and early twenty-somethings are in another world of their own, I won't go there.)

Give me a body with some meat on the bones, a few curves in all the right places, now that's sexy. And someone with a little more weight, who's healthy and feels good about herself, that's sexy, too. It's all in the attitude, and in the perception.

I also know it's subjective. Thank goodness, or we'd all be fighting over the same ten guys! Lisabet used a word yesterday that I really liked-- Zaftig. It's Yiddish for having a full, rounded figure, or pleasingly plump. I like that! Sure, there are some days I'd rather look like Valerie Bertinelli in her bikini, but mostly I'm happy being me, and I hope she's happy being her. Me, I'll probably be zaftig for the rest of my life. And that's okay. My hubby thinks I'm sexy, and that makes me feel great.