"On good days, I feel heartened by what is happening in the teen magazines and in the Lane Bryant and “Just My Size” ads. Perhaps advertisers are discovering that making people feel bad about themselves, then offering products which promise to make it all better, is not the only way to make a buck. As racial representations have shown, diversity is marketable. Perhaps, as Lane Bryant and others are hoping, encouraging people to feel okay about their bodies can sell products too. Sometimes, surveying the plastic, digitalized world of bodies that are the norm now, I am convinced that our present slate of enchantment is just a moment away from revulsion, or perhaps simply boredom. I see twenty-something woman dancing at a local outdoor swing party, her tummy softly protruding over the thick leather belt of her low-rider jeans. Not taut, not toned, not artfully camoflauged like some unsightly deformity, but proudly, sensuously displayed, reminding me of Madonna in the days before she became the sinewy dominatrix. It is possible that we are beginning to rebel against the manufactured look of celebrity bodies, beginning to be repelled by their armored “perfection”? These hopeful moments, I have to admit, are fleeting. Usually, I feel horrified-and afraid for my daughter. I am sharply aware that expressing this horror openly nowadays is to run the risk of being thought a preachy prude, relic of an outmoded feminism. At talks to young audiences, I try to lighten my touch, celebrate the positive, make sure that my criticisms of our culture are not confused with being anti-beauty, anti-fitness, or anti-sex. But I also know that when parents and teachers become fully one with the culture, children are abandoned to it. I don’t tell them to love their bodies or turn off the television-useless admonitions today, and one I cannot obey myself. But I do try to provide disruption, if only temporary, of their everyday immersion in the culture. For just an hour or so, I won’t let it pass itself off simply as “normalcy.”"