"This Is Who I Am"

"Rosanne Olson's collection of photographs and short essays, "This Is Who I Am: Our Beauty in All Shapes and Sizes," is an exploration of how real women relate to their real bodies — in all their freckled, scarred, pudgy and wrinkled glory. It's sometimes funny, sometimes sensual and always heartbreakingly sincere." ....Haley Edwards

Read her entire book review here: "This Is Who I Am"

Looks to be another inspiring read :-)

Magazine Photos

The next time you compare yourself to a beautiful magazine model, remember they had a little help. See for yourself.

PS: The talented Photoshop specialist must have more patience than God :-)

Watch the video: Magazine Photos

Furthermore, the French have written a bill to require disclaimers on retouched photos to prevent misrepresentation!!! Could reality be back in Vogue???

The complete article from the Benjamin Kanarek Blog.

Happy Valentine's Day !!!

On this day of LOVE.....please remember to LOVE YOURSELF FIRST!

Insecurity or Instinct?

This old Carol Burnett skit is just plain funny!!!
Enjoy :)

"Wrong Number"

"Loose Change"

I stumbled across this photographer this morning who has some interesting shots of nude women presented in a book entitled "Loose Change".

"These photographs confidently add what might be called a new wrinkle to the corpus of female nudes that parades through the history of photography."
—Essay by Vicki Goldberg

http://suzanneopton.com/women

True love doesn't see the wrinkles or the drippy nose -- it's the heart that really counts!

OK..... I haven't blogged anything lately, and now I am cheating by relying on the talent of another! Don't be too hard on me. WrinkleQuest is always in my heart. My wish is to hear all of your stories whether I wrinkle you or not.

So, today I share with you the wisdom of Clara Hinton. She is a tribute to the strong and beautiful!

Thank you Clara:)

Originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/photos/sicilianitaliano/

As I watched the owners of animals at our county fair, I realized how much love was showered on each and every animal -- no matter how many flaws or how intense the competition. Every family treated his/her pet as the "Number 1 - Most Special Blue Ribbon Winner" because that's how love is.

Love never sees the flaws, but sees only the heart.

Let's be careful not to get hung up on outward appearances, but rather love someone for the pure beauty and kindness found in the heart! After all, isn't that where true beauty is really found?

My Latest Wrinkle

When I was young I wondered.....

• What if I had never married?
• What if I had married someone else?
• What if I remained free?

Now that I am older I wonder.....

• What if he was gone?

The joy I feel when he smiles at me transcends all that is mortal. It feeds my soul. Honestly if he was gone, I don't think that the sun would ever shine so brightly. I am not certain that I could breathe.

So, when I received the call that his cystology test had shown signs of cancer......disbelief! After all, we had just gone through the yearly cystoscopy. Doc said that everything looked great....See ya next year.

When you have experienced cancer you put it in a little box.....a little box that need only be opened when necessary. For us after these twenty some years, it has become an annual event. We have become quite good at it over the years. The anguish invested in opening and closing the box has grown shorter with each year of benign results. But, this time the box was opened off schedule, without warning and couldn't be closed at our will.

We had to leave it open for the paperwork, the admit exam, the admit tests and the bladder mapping.....and then the wait for the results. Seven weeks of jabs and stabs at our hearts... Seven weeks of wondering will he see his grandchild grow... Seven weeks of wondering how this could change our lives.

I waited alone in the hospital filling my mind with positive thoughts, breathing, praying that all would end well. Then Doc came out. She said that we would have to wait for the results, but everything looked good. She hadn't been able to detect any cancerous tissue visually. The original test could have been skewed. Hooray! A week later the results returned benign!......So, back in the box it went.

I sealed that box as tightly as I could and placed it as far back on the shelf as I could reach. I say to myself, no worries........not to worry unless there is something to worry about.

But, somewhere deep down in the pit of my stomach I feel the haunting emptiness of the question.....What if???