I have been obsessed with my weight since the day, when I was 15, that my father looked at me and said, "You're getting kind of a fat ass, aren't you?" I don't hold it against him -- he is an abject failure in the emotional arts -- but that sort of shit sticks with you, make no mistake.

Despite my improbable development into a well-adjusted adult, I, like so many other women, have spent my entire life focusing on what is wrong with my body rather than finding reasons to like it. And I, like many women, am always 10 to 15 pounds away from my "ideal" weight -- which is still a good 20 pounds away from the weight of any supermodel or actress of my height currently getting steady work in this country. So, although I'm hard on myself, I'm not that hard on myself. But when I see Nicole Kidman strutting her five-foot-11, 115-pound self down the catwalk, or Gisele Bundchen's clavicles sticking out of her shoulders like a wire hanger, I cannot help but feel like André the Giantess. Big boobs, rock-hard abs and biceps, tomboy hips, and long, stick-thin legs topped off with cellulite-free thighs: this, women believe, is the perfect body.

My fiancé, God bless him, professes undying adoration of my current form, and insists that men don't like those model types. "Men like women with some curves and flesh," he insists. "If we wanted to sleep with something with rock-hard muscles and no body fat, we'd sleep with men." And I, like so many women, did not believe a word of it, but chalked it up to the sweet talk of an Olympic-class nice guy who wanted me to feel better about myself.

Then we went to Las Vegas. After only one day there, I finally believed him.

On our first night in town, we attended a show at the MGM Grand titled La Femme. I had never been to Vegas, or a nude review, and I was intrigued. This one involved 15 almost completely naked showgirls, all from the original Crazy Horse club in Paris, all classically trained dancers. The point of the show was to turn their nakedness into a form of art . . . which happened magnificently with color, lights, and fantastic choreography. Aside from the excellence of the performance, what amazed me most were their bodies: they all had smallish, natural breasts (the founder of the Crazy Horse forbids his dancers to get implants), and they were very rounded -- in terrific, dancer shape, of course, but curvy and soft-looking. And they were incredibly beautiful.

All except one. This dancer was supermodel-skinny, with her ribcage showing and her hipbones sticking out. Her thighs looked to be about the size of my biceps. She was a lovely woman, but standing next to the round, curvy dancers, she looked ill, as if she might collapse at any moment. The other women looked strong and healthy, but skinny girl looked as though she might snap like a twig. I left the show with a newfound appreciation of my own curves and the curves of the women around me. I finally believed what my fiancé had been saying all along, because, for the first time, I got to see the difference firsthand.

That's what it took for me -- a person who perhaps has an overly empirical approach to life -- to fully understand why curvy really is more beautiful than skinny. I'd never gotten such a long, hard look at the naked body of a woman before -- and that made all the difference. I think if most heterosexual women thought about it, they'd realize they've never inspected, in its entirety, the body of another naked woman. (And we certainly don't know what we ourselves look like naked.) Women check each other out furtively in locker rooms, at the beach, or in magazines as a way to benchmark ourselves. But hetero women rarely get such a view of what our own gender looks like in real life -- it's no wonder we have such screwed-up body images (and maybe it's why lesbians seem more appreciative of all types of female bodies). After getting bombarded by Gisele and Nicole all day, with precious few alternatives in the popular media, it's no wonder we start thinking that's how we're supposed to look.

Movies like Real Women Have Curves and the recent surge of "curvy girl" movie stars, like Kate Winslet and Beyoncé Knowles, have been trumpeted as the beginning of a trend toward more "normal-size" women in Hollywood -- and it's a long overdue prediction. But thanks to Vegas, I -- finally -- don't need psychobabble or trend-spotters to convince me to accept my body type for what it is. I just needed to see the proof with my own eyes. I've seen the future . . . and she's got kind of a fat ass.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at k.frieswick@verizon.net.

Issue Date: February 21 - 27, 2003