Sigh.

I was going to write a post about how much skinnier the cast of the new "90210" is than the cast of the original; something about how even though I wasn't allowed to watch the original show when it was running (from when I was entering seventh grade to when I was graduating from high school) I wanted so much to look like Kelly and Brenda. I knew I wouldn't ever, but I dieted my booty off (literally) trying to get thin and cute like they were. Today, looking back at pictures of my high school self, I want to holler at that girl: YOU ARE SO FREAKING HOT! LOOK HOW SKINNY YOU ARE! YOU WOULD BE EVEN HOTTER WITH ANOTHER FIVE OR TEN POUNDS ON YOU! EAT SOMETHING! EAT THAT SPAM MUSUBI I KNOW YOU WANT! And while we're chatting, JUST DATE THE DRAMA CLUB/MARCHING BAND/CHESS CLUB/MATH TEAM GEEKS YOU HAVE ALL THOSE CRUSHES ON, AND FUCK WHAT YOUR GIRLFRIENDS WILL THINK!

Anyhoo, it worries me what students today are going to think they need to look like, when I compare the Kelly-and-Brenda bodies I was aspiring to look like back in my literally lean years



with the body of Shenae Grimes, who plays the "new" Brenda character:



Anyways, that was the post I was going to write. But then while looking for those images to use to illustrate my point, I kept finding all these mean blogs that basically reamed out the actors in the original 90210 for getting older and not looking like teenagers anymore--even though any present-day picture I found of the two actress I wanted so much to look like showed that they're totally grownup hotties now. I thought about how hard we can be on ourselves and on our idols; how little I appreciated my face and my body in high school and how I worry about laugh lines now and how I might look back in another fifteen years and wish my thirty-year-old-self thought more highly of her appearance, just as today I wish my fifteen-year-old self did.

And then I just felt sort of bad for picking on Ms. Grimes for being so skinny, because she is after all just a nineteen-year-old--a tough age to be, and in a tough business, and she probably wants to eat whatever the Canadian version of a Spam musubi is, but it might be a career risk for her.

I wish for her that she enjoys being nineteen and lovely, and that it feels like a gift and not like a burden.

And I'm glad I don't have a TV, because things like this clearly get me too worked up. I am off to play in the dirt instead.