Beautiful

"I gained 10 pounds this week," says Justin.

It's been a slow week for TKD with the test last Saturday. No class Monday or Wednesday (even the belt ceremony was cancelled because of bad weather. I feel out of it, TKD-wise, and I guess Justin's been taking a break to eat.

"Ten pounds?" I look at him, incredulously. "That's a lot of pounds. Where'd you put it?"

"Yeah, where'd you gain ten pounds?" adds Brian A. "In your ears?"

We go around and share our weights. "I'm NOT a 98 pound weakling," I tell them (Shawn, Justin, Brian A.) "I weigh much more than that."

Brian tells me that in high school, he used to wrestle at 105 pounds (my actual weight, wringing wet). Shawn is over 200 pounds (he is probably over 6' tall and carries it well) and Brian and Justin are in the mid 100s.

That's the cool thing about TKD--people of all sizes can do it, and do it well. Today, we had sparring matches, most of which were well-matched, but a few pitted smaller folks with larger. Jason's long legs were almost too much for John, but John got in some good points, too. Dylan sparred with Matt, who also has long legs. Both did very well.

In the uniforms, we all look pretty much the same--blocky.

In the women's changing room afterwards, uniforms came off and talk came around to bodies again. There was the usual womens' changing room talk about "I'm too fat," etc. etc. Let me tell you: I was there and there was no one in there who was too fat!

As a veteran of many many changing rooms over the years, one thing I've noticed is that there are lots of different shapes and sizes of fit bodies. And they are ALL beautiful. Those of us who are skinny sometimes wish for luscious padding. Those who are tall sometimes wish to be petite. Those with strong, bulky legs want thinner ones. Etc., etc. But it seems to me that all this unchangeable diversity we've been given should be telling us something: there are many many ways to be beautiful.

Strong is beautiful! Fit is beautiful! No matter what shape or size, all you women out there. And that's just talking about outer beauty. If you want to get into inner beauty, that's a whole 'nother story!