And yet so far to go…

I am timing myself on this one.  Because I could go on way too long if I allowed myself.  The hope I felt when I came across the Newsweek article earlier has been dampened a bit by coming across this other “news”.  To briefly summarize, Keely Shaye Smith, the wife of Pierce Brosnan and a former actress and television correspondent, was photographed last week wearing a bikini that some people feel she should not have been wearing.  Why, why, why do we care about how someone else looks in a bathing suit (why, really, do we care about how we look in a bathing suit but that’s a tangent)?  Why does it matter if that someone is married to someone who was once People’s Most Beautiful person?  Why do we rate and judge and jeer with such glee when someone else’s life isn’t what we expect of it?  Why do we think that body is a domain that is up for grabs?  Why do we reach out to touch the bellies of pregnant women, even if we don’t know them, even without asking?  Why do we think that observations (or insults) about someone being “fat” are appropriate or helpful (I was with someone I love recently when that person was told by someone else that he/she had a fat ass.  Was that supposed to be helpful?)?  Not one of us is up for grabs.  Not by a friend who says “are you really going to eat that?”  Not by a grandfather who says “You’ve gained weight.”  Not by a mother who says “you would be beautiful if you just lost weight” or a co-worker who says ”you have such a pretty face.”  Not by anyone.   And because that’s the case, it means the flipside as well.  Not one of us has the right to sit in judgment.  We can have our preferences; we can have our desires; we can make our choices about our own lives.  But we do not really know what it is like to be– in the very core of things– anyone but ourselves.  And we should never assume that the preferences, thoughts, desires, wishes, choices that make up our selves are the only ones that the world can use to create her magic.