Thinking Lines and Chocolate Dimples

Last week I was attempting to show my daughter the scar that I got when I was her age after running into the corner of a wall. “Can you see the line on my forehead?” I said. She responded by pointing in between my eyes. “This one?” She replied as she touched the wrinkles made by years of worry and squinting. “No, those are my thinking lines” I said.  What if we re-named all of our wrinkles and rolls and cellulite with positive names? Would we still want to get rid of them?  I know it isn’t as simple as that. After all, people attempt to erase their laugh lines all the time. Think about that. Who the hell wants to get rid of something called laugh lines? Crow’s feet, on the other hand, you can take.  The word cellulite was made popular by Vogue in the 60’s. Before that women lived their everyday lives completely free of the knowledge that they were walking around with an incurable disease on their asses. Who would have thought that for centuries Cellulite had camouflaged itself as completely harmless and healthy “skin”. Thank god Vogue gave it a name and found products that could help us cure it! Sarcasm aside, what if Vogue would have named cellulite something adorable like “chocolate dimples”. Who, in their right mind is going to want to scrub those away? Let’s try a few other ones. Armpit fat turns into “hug purse”. Back fat is “nap support”. Cankles are “walking sticks” Maybe if we change the language we can change the perception. Maybe if we thought less about what we wanted to erase about our ourselves and more about what we should be adding to our lives we would all be a little bit happier.   -Suzanne