Norman Mailer said of Marilyn Monroe:



"Her stomach, untrammeled by girdles or sheaths, popped forward in a full woman's belly, inelegant as hell, an avowal of a womb fairly salivating in seed - that belly which was never to have a child - and her breasts popped buds and burgeons of flesh over many a questing sweating moviegoer's face. She was a cornucopia. She excited dreams of honey for the horn."

And Elizabeth Hurley’s opinion:

"I'd kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe."

When I came across Normal Mailer's words in his biography of Marilyn it reminded me of the famous Hurley quote and I thought the comparison between the two views of this iconic beauty was quite poignant and sad.

Hatred of a womanly body seems to be a common situation in our culture. Women are brainwashed into thinking they need to be as skinny as possible. We diet, workout, starve ourselves, judge each other harshly, and spend our lives in deprivation and desperation.

Meanwhile, men naturally adore the lush, sexual, curvy female body. They desire the soft, voluptuous bodies we women are born into.

Our natural bodies don't require stringent dieting or starvation or plastic surgery or sculpting. We are each a perfect, unique creation and the more we accept and love our womanliness, the more wonderful life feels.

The Hurley quote used to make me angry. Now it just makes me sad that we have learned to be so shallow and so mean to one another, and to ourselves, with the thoughts we have about the female body.