Ke$ha told TMZ, “I’m a crusader for being yourself and loving yourself, but I’ve found it hard to practice.  I’ll be unavailable for the next 30 days, seeking treatment for my eating disorder … to learn to love myself again, exactly as I am.”

And then there’s the ongoing controversy about photoshopping stars and models on magazine covers to make them look like something they are not.  Vogue and Jezebel are having that fight right now.  Lady Gaga said a recent photo-shoot was not how she looks when she gets out of bed.

And then there is Girls, the breakthrough HBO series where star Lena Dunham appears just as God built her even in intimate nude scenes.

Not being happy with how we look is not new.  But there is hope that a new generation will make some needed advances.

• Retrain the way our brains work to accept ourselves the way we are.  Is the runner up in a beauty pageant really a loser?  Technically they lost to number one.  Aren’t there more important things than trying to be what we are not?
• You would never call anyone else fat or scrawny so do as Leslie Goldman, body image expert and author of Locker Room Diaries suggests:  “Treat yourself as you would treat others, and you’ll find negative thoughts will lessen over time”.
• Compare yourself to you – always a good policy.  Are you more fit, healthier, happier today than you were?  Now that’s a comparison you can live with.

One size doesn’t fit all in personality, passion, intelligence, compassion and, yes, body image.

And I love this from Tom Stoppard, “I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.”

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