Blind Beauty Spots

Why is it that so many women find themselves so unattractive? Each of my beautiful friends -- all of them, truly, beautiful, inside and out -- have blind spots about their own beauty. One told me the other day that her husband was "out of her league" -- at least, back when they met in college. Let me just say, I know both of them, and that cannot possibly be true. Luckily, that same gal knows that her butt is to die for. Another of my friends focusses on her personal impression that she is frumpy, and not enough on her gorgeous, sparkly eyes, scrumptious coloring or enviable dimples. Another, thin and tall with more enviable dimples, talks about her "pooch," a sort of are-you-kidding-me kind of reference to the tiny bulge in her abdomen which is where I assume one stores vital internal organs. And yet another beloved gal cannot stop talking about how fat she is, probably apologizing for it 12 times a day, when (a) she is not fat and (b) she has the prettiest face, the most beautiful, graceful hands, and the most flattering hairstyle of any of us.

I decry this behavior with humility, because I also hate the way I look, especially since I now have a mommy body and am forced to wear flat shoes instead of my beloved slingback heels. I feel like Judi Dench's body with a face that is a cross between Frances McDormand and Molly Ringwald (and not a flattering hybrid, at that). I have hated my thick legs ever since the muscles developed when I was a young gymnast, and now that I've got a baby girl with perfect skin I hate myself for having allowed a UVA or UVB ray to touch mine. I have always disliked my elbows, and I live in fear that my triceps are starting to look like my Grandma Mitchell's. So, although I'm fierce in my opposition to my friends' self-deprecation, I have my own in spades.

When is my 6-year-old S going to start thinking of herself this way? What can I do to stop her? Right now, she calls herself a "Skinny Minnie," apparently a lovely moniker bestowed by her stepfather, whom I am beginning to suspect of being a jackass. How do I stop my friends? How do I stop myself? How do I stop my daughters?