Make Love Work

You’d never know it from looking at fashion magazines, but more than half of American women wear size 14 or larger clothes. Yet even though we big beautiful gals are in the majority, we still starve ourselves trying to look like something we’re not.

Our family genotype – that means the way our genes make us out to be – runs toward larger-than-average sizes. Both the men and women in our family tend to be tall and large in stature. We think it comes from all those farmers in our family tree!

The whole thing came to a head when our cousin got engaged to her high school sweetheart. We’re a close family, so she wanted as many people as possible to be in her wedding. We were beginning to think there’d be nobody left in the pews on the bride’s side. Our laughter turned sour, however, when our cousin got hold of some bridal magazines. It wasn’t long before we were fighting over how to lose fat instead of getting ready for a joyous wedding.

Finally, our aunt had had enough of her daughter turning into Bridezilla over this issue of body size. Auntie is one smart cookie, and it wasn’t long before she figured out a strategy that saved the day – and the family.

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.

Marge, who is a fabulous seamstress anyway, got out her tape measure and measured everyone of us right then and there! We each wrote down our measurements and decided on what body shape we each have. We haven’t had so much girlie fun in ages!

The end result was that we all got to choose a gorgeous dress for Celia and Frank’s wedding. Celia herself was one of the most beautiful brides any of us have ever seen, wearing a gown that fitted her perfectly and made her look like a queen. And it all came about because we decided to love ourselves and our bodies for the big, beautiful, fabulous women we are!

Tags: self-esteem, wedding, Weight Loss

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 11:10 am and is filed under make love work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.