The Image in the Mirror

I saw a glimmer of sun through the gray skies so I headed to the beach with a book. By the time I reached a lounge chair, the clouds had closed back together. It was windy and raw. I lasted about two pages.

I wasn’t going home from this vacation without a tan. I decided to high-tail it to the mall to get a spray tan. It would be my first fake retail tan. A Mystic Tan® required only forty-five seconds for healthy looking glow.

After a video tape and staff introduction to the spray tanning booth, I was alone with the machine, a towel, and a very large mirror. My northern New England thighs hadn’t seen the sun since September of last year. It was late June.

I remember someone saying if you put your thighs close together, perfect legs would have open spaces above and below the knees. I gave myself the test. There was a sliver of space. A strip of duct tape might improve the situation.

There I was alone and naked with my thighs. The tanning salon staff and patrons were all bronzed, blond, bathing beauties. I, on the other side of the door, was white, dimpled, and fleshy. Indeed, I had the thighs of a 45-year-old mother of two. They weren’t worse than some of the images I’ve seen at the tabloids at the grocery store. But they seemed looser than last year.

I hid my thighs for many years, along with my stomach and upper arms. If you are overweight, certain body parts are off limits--never to be seen or touched. I pity the man that pinches a woman’s triceps or inner thighs. He’ll have an elbow in his ribs before he releases his grasp.

Standing there under the green florescent lights, the blame started. My exercise routine was more intense last year. My knee problems had stopped me from walking as much. I wasn’t doing my physical therapy schedule. It was time to dust off the thigh toner from underneath my bed I told myself.

My thighs didn’t match the image I had of myself. I was a confident, strong, beautiful woman. Whose thighs were these? Weren’t my thighs toned, taunt, and sculpted like the Victoria’s Secret™ models wearing the swimsuit I bought? Given that I am old enough to have given birth to her through these thighs, probably not. Given that she was airbrushed in person and digitally, probably not.

I held my breath and stepped into the Mystic tan booth. They wouldn’t be as white when I came out, but they’d still be mine, a badge of honor, not a source of shame. My legs have carried me up many steep hills in life. They gave me the strength to stand up, put myself first, and take one step at a time toward a healthier, happier life. If I dislike them, I dislike me. I may not show them off, but I have a bust and biceps and other assets to emphasize. But I will not be ashamed or embarrassed. They are real life. Magazines and catalogs are fiction. I am too old to believe in fairy tales or should I say fairy tails.