MEscovery

As I'm on holiday at the moment and lying by the pool (stick around, I'm going somewhere with this) it's only natural to have a look around at all the people surrounding me. Men, women. All different nationalities, ages and body shapes.  I start playing the ranking game. Not very consciously but nevertheless I do it. A woman might be taller and leaner but have a slightly bigger belly. Bigger boobs but chubbier legs. Pretty arms but pasty skin. I think it's a way of confirming my own body shape is not perfect but neither is anyone else's. Would I want to swap one of my flaws for another? I wonder if we were put in a room by ourselves with no one to compare ourselves to or measure against would we be happier to accept who we are? Does the culture to share and compare through magazines, social networking etc. feed into our insecurities or is it a way for us to "like" ourselves by highlighting the areas we like and blurring out those which we don't.  I...

I don't know if it's very vain to think that anything I write on here will be "seen", but I struggle with the thought that whatever I write down here can be read by anyone. What's worse - someone you know reading what you write or someone you don't know reading what you write?  Whenever I write a tweet and I guess now a blog post too, I get a little wave of panic wash over me that someone might actually read it. Ridiculous. Why bother writing something if it's not to be read? It would be so much easier to write a generic blog, something about fashion (if I knew something about that) or rant about parenting children (something I do know about) but I think there are plenty of those about already. Besides, I happen to like reading something true and real best. And if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it for real, my thoughts and perspective on whatever it is I actually care about (one of these days I'll find what that is, stick ...