size matters

You probably think Ariadne's crying because Theseus left her high and dry on the island of Naxos.

You'd be wrong.

She's actually upset because she can't fit into her size 2 toga anymore.

You will never see her on the cover of a magazine or strutting down a catwalk in Milan. She won't be appearing in the Victoria's Secret catalog and she is not the new face of Revlon.

Because she's average, right?

I saw a painting similar to this over the weekend at the art museum. And I laughed because she reminds me of myself on a self-proclaimed chubby day, naked and languishing glumly on the bed in front of my closet, repeating the oft-heard mantra that strikes fear in the hearts of husbands everywhere -"I'm.So.Fat!" followed up by its equally bewildering companion "I.Have.Nothing.To.Wear!"

Where, oh where are the Marilyn Monroes, Sophia Lorens, and Ava Gardners? Where is Jessica Rabbit? The collective pressure that millions of women feel -- that is, To Be Skinny - has squashed those curvaceous and feminine images and replaced them with a svelte, stick-thin, straight-up-and-down impossible model of perfection.

On days when I'm acutely aware of my curves, when I feel, real or imagined, the thickness of my thighs and the heaviness of my bosom, I wonder why I am programmed to hate the way I look. Sometime between my girlish adolescence and my current state of womanhood, I went from longing for breasts to figuring out ways to downplay their prominence.

Screw it. Voluptuous women of the world, unite!