by Alexis Randall

Created on: July 20, 2009   Last Updated: July 21, 2009

Monica Lewinsky told her biographer that she sometimes felt like her biggest crime in the American public's eye was being overweight. Women today face incredibly high personal expectations for physical perfection. These expectations are fueled by the public exhalation of Hollywood hardbods and wafer thin fashion models, then reinforced when stars like Jennifer Love Hewitt are called fat at a size 2, and Cheryl Burke from "Dancing With the Stars" is criticized for going from a size 2 to a size 4 during her off season time. On the flip side women who are considered to be too thin, such as Kiera Knightley and Calista Flockheart are accused of having eating disorders and encouraging young girls to develop them by not gaining more weight.

With the debate over proper body type and size waging in the public eye, it's no wonder that majority of women struggle with loving and accepting their bodies. Women are taught to value form over function when it comes to their body, rather than appreciate their body's abilities and positive attributes they are conditioned to focus on each and every perceived flaw and encouraged to go to extreme lengths to correct them.

So in a world where physical perfection is defined by pop culture's impossible standards how does a woman learn to love her body at any size? First, throw out the popular images of beauty and perfection and redefine your standards based on what you know to beautiful about yourself. Your thick thighs can be considered powerful, full, and curvy. That belly isn't disgusting, it's soft, round, womanly. Wrinkles aren't the sign of the end, they are the evidence that we have lived.

Mary, a yoga instructor, is five foot seven and weighs about 170 lbs. She wears a size fourteen, has a small chest and a large bottom, and though a bikini may not fit her the way it fits a woman half her size and with more equal proportions she has never wanted for romantic attention, nor does she waste any of her time despairing over the shape she was born with. Watching this curvy woman in motion as she leads a class through their yoga exercise, it is her body's strength, flexibility and grace that catches the eye and holds it. Her absolute love of her body and its unique abilities is potently attractive to behold.

The most rewarding thing you can do is, choose to accept yourself, choose to focus on what your body can do, choose to find more to love about yourself than to critique. Self-improvement is a wonderful thing, something we should never cease striving for, but as with all things on needs to exercise a modicum of moderation. The need to perfect yourself run riot will only lead to misery, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Find something about your body every day that you like and focus on it. When you walk past a mirror and instantly focus on what you believe is a glaring flaw stop yourself and focus on something you do like about your body. The sexiest thing a woman can possess is self-confidence and self-acceptance.

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