Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

We're having a sunny day here. I realise that the rest of the country is flooding, but let's focus on the rapidly approaching spring. Days are lighter longer, the sun is shining and birds are tweeting. Soon it will be summer and with that, time to bare all. Bikini anyone?

I have always been pretty confident when it comes to just wearing what I like. You know those people who see themselves as lots bigger than they really are? Not me, I'm probably more on the delusional side where I tend to think it's not that bad. Surely not. Can't be. It's all good.

But then a picture will show up that makes me question my whole theory. It's like a slap in the face seeing yourself in black and white (or colour), on paper or on screen. Especially when the person you are looking at looks nothing like the person you thought you allowed to walk out of the house after a look in the mirror that day.

Usually the person in the photo looks a lot less sleek, pretty and slim than the person I believed to be.

Ever played the game of comparing yourself to others in the street and wondering which one of you is bigger/smaller/more toned than the other? No? Well I have. Plenty of times. Not because I feel bad about my own body but because I seem to have one of those inbuilt funny mirrors that make reality slightly warped. Luckily for me I have adopted the more positive view of myself than the reality, but it does make me wonder how I look "in real life" (as my son would say).

When I walk out of the door for a night out I usually feel good about how I look, after a bit of a spruce up. As long as there is no photographic evidence then that is how I will remember the evening as well. Every so often I do wonder though how others see me. Probably best not to know and live on oblivious and happy.

Anyone remember that film "Steel Magnolias" in which during a wedding party scene an older chubby woman, Clairee, is dancing in a nude coloured dress and someone comments that she looks like there are "two pigs fighting under a blanket"? Sometimes I wonder if she also had walked out of the door feeling great and then... that.

Maybe it is best to be happily deluded. I'll stick with that. Don't tell me otherwise. Besides, what a waste of a perfectly good bikini otherwise.

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