It's raining here today - the first cool, grey day for a long time in a summer when we've equalled the highest Auckland temp ever recorded, back in 1872 or therabouts. Who knew there was anyone recording temperatures on this colonial shore that long ago? When it's over 32 deg C and humid as well, it feels like Singapore.
So today (when I've even had to put on socks for warmth!) there's no-one on the beach, not even any dogged dog walkers. And certainly no skinny gals in teensie bikinis. Welcome then to the kind of girl I'm happy to see on the beach any old time. She's my cheerleader for cellulite.
Someone this big is usually called obese. But let's hear it for women who are not those angular glowering colts who canter the runways at the world's fashion shows. Let us praise women who are full-bodied, rounded, laughing exemplars of beauty.
I've long despised the mantra, invented by the beauty industry, that insists women must do all in their power to get rid of cellulite or 'orange peel' thighs.
It seems we've forgotten that every society in history has admired young women who are slim of waist AND broad of hip - sure indicators (as they thought in ancient times) of a woman's ability to bear children.
Today's girls are filled with woe if they fail to possess lean and boyish thighs that, preferably, don't touch at the top. Once 'feminine' meant curvy. Now it means that most nebulous of terms, toned. Today's female body is now required to be thin, hard and sculpted. How bullied we are by the arbiters of style. Nothing wrong, I say, with flesh that's allowed to jiggle. Not a lot. But a little. Cellulite and all.
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