Highway Humor
HIGHWAYHUMOR
by Alisa Singer
ave you ever noticed that all the good female shapes, for example, the inverted triangle and that feminine ideal, the hour glass, are not to be found anywhere in nature? The natural, organic ones are the least desirable female forms, like the bottom-heavy pear, the round apple and the shapeless banana. Many an hour of my youth was spent poring over magazines that preached acceptance and self-love while devoting most of their pages to glossy images of unnaturally shaped models, with tips about how to look more like them (more-or-less inanimate objects) and less like ourselves (more-or-less fruit). It took me all of my childhood and adolescence and a good portion of my adult years to adjust to my own pear silhouette and to finally acknowledge the pluses as well as the minuses of this particular design. And while I never ceased to lament the thighs that stretched outwards towards each coast, eventually I became proud of my relatively narrow waist and flat stomach. By “eventually” I mean right about the time my waist started to widen and my stomach began to protrude and I evolved into a new shape altogether, part apple and part pear, a bulbous freak of nature which for lack of imagination I’ll call
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