A Happy Medium??

Had Monday off and, while I was doing some computer stuff, I had the TV on in the background showing "Oprah."

Oprah's show was all about people who used to look, well, say, somewhere between "dumpy" and "not hip," who took a look at themselves in the mirror, got motivated to make a change, and have made changes that have lasted for, like, a decade -- making them NOW look better than they did ten years ago.

And, although some of the guests' plans for health & beauty had their own bizarre little twists (like Preparation H on your face thing), they all had a couple of things in common:

Diet

and

Exercise

And neither in what I'd call "moderation."  I mean, there's this one woman who would do bends balanced between a chair and her kitchen counter whenever she happened to be in the kitchen.  This wasn't just dropping by a gym two or three times a week, this was making exercise a second job.

They all looked fantastic; they did.  But I got more and more depressed as the show went on and we saw more and more women who devoted the last ten years of their lives to looking hot.

Because, I mean, I'd like to look hot, sure.  But I also like doing things other than going to the gym.  And I like eating hot fudge cake with ice cream on it every once in awhile.  And this show seemed to be saying, "Hey, if you want to look hot in your late 40s, make a commitment now to spend the next decade eating healthy, exercising six days a week, wearing makeup every day, and putting all manner of facial (and nonfacial!) goo on your face on a nightly basis."  And I can't help but think that, as much as I'd like to look nice, I wouldn't want to pretty much give up the next ten years of my life in the pursuit of looking hot.  There's too much fun to be had.

Couldn't Oprah instead be celebrating people who take a sane, middle course -- those who eat generally healthy and live generally right, but also aren't afraid to enjoy the pleasures that life throws 'em, and aren't so caught up in appearance?