Paging Naomi Wolf!

My vanity is suffering from a multiple personality disorder. On the one hand, I am left with the lowest body image I have ever had. On the other hand, I don't give a fuck.

Let's start with my breasts. (Ooh!) Sorry, pregnant and soon-to-be pregnant girlfriends and their partners, but what they tell you in birth class about how breastfeeding does not de-perkify your boobs is a damned, dirty lie. La Leche propaganda. Don't get me wrong, I would definitely choose to breastfeed again, but if you seriously believe that 3, 6, 12, 18, or 24+ months of your breasts being continuously inflated and deflated like a pair of bellows ain't gonna make your boobs saggy (turning them into what my friend Michelle calls "pancake boobs"), you are living in La La Land. The way I figure it, you have two options: 1. breastfeed your child until he or she goes away to college, thus retaining the biggest, firmest breasts imaginable for the maximum duration; or 2. quit at the right time for you, then fork over some serious cash for a decent brassiere with the power to lift your breasts up to their pre-deflation position. Then never take it off. Except in the dark.

Make sure you leave some time, after getting over the searing pain of engorgement, for a boob funeral. Rest in peace, pre-pregnancy boobs.

On to the stretch marks. I was so smug. I thought I was home free. Then, at 34 weeks, stretch marks started popping up all over my belly and hips like mountains on a relief map. Here I am almost a year later, and they're still there. Sure, they're not a screaming red-purple anymore, but there they are, and the flesh underneath them is just plain weird. Doug calls it my brain stomach (thanks, honey!), and he's right.

Finally: baby weight. Please cursed, cursed baby weight—please go away! I realize that you want to hang around because I don't have time to go to the gym, and I let my membership lapse anyway, and I sometimes have to eat crap because Harrison doesn't always cooperate at dinner preparation time or I am just too too tired, and the kitchen remodeling has consumed our entire house, and it's April already but it just snowed two godamned days ago so how am I supposed to go for walks, but just GO AWAY!

Those are the things that bother me. Those things plus the sanctimonious people that say, "be proud of your stretch marks—those are your battle scars of motherhood and pregnancy." I believe dooce might tell those jerks to "Suck it." So SUCK IT, JERKS!

In contradictory conjunction with all of this beauty-myth obsessing about my body (to the point of even entertaining the idea that plastic surgery maybe isn't the sexist, evil thing I used to think it was…at least the kind that puts things back, not the kind that adds new, weird materials not normally encountered in humans), I have also found that my standards for what is acceptable in terms of grooming, cleanliness, fashion, and sanitation are much, much lower.

On the weekend, I will often leave the house without brushing my teeth or taking a shower. There have been many, many weekends where I only shower once. I know daily showering is not the norm in the majority of the world, but it was always the norm for me. (Can I still come over on Saturday, Ash? I promise to spray some extra perfume on my stinky parts!)

When I go out now, I sometimes wear—gasp!—sweatpants. And, yes, I know that Jerry told George that people who wear sweatpants in public have given up on life, but I swear that I haven't! It's just that Harrison best tolerates the Sunday trip to the grocery store right after he's eaten and well before he's ready for a nap, and to avoid subjecting the rest of the shoppers to a deafening and very irritating whine in the checkout aisle, we need to go NOW, not an hour later when Mommy is all put together. So, I will go out in sweatpants, or with drool, spit-up, or dried up Cheerios (that were previously in Harrison's mouth or sweaty hand) stuck to my shirt or tangled in my hair. Just so you know, they are at least cute sweatpants. They don't have elastic on the ankles or anything. And they don't have words like "HONEY" or "SWEET" on the ass.

My eyebrows haven't been tweezed in a few weeks, and my toenails were unpainted the entire week in Florida even though I wore my flip-flops everyday. This is shocking, I know. I also reckon that my foot pumice hasn't been touched since September 2003.

Everything that requires ironing or dry cleaning has been pushed to the back of my closet (doesn't fit anyway). I bought the same Old Navy long sleeve T-shirt in four different colors, and I take advantage of my workplace's Friday dress-down day every day.

I have more important things to do with my time than remove unsightly body hair on a daily basis or go to Banana Republic to check out their spring line. Still, I wouldn't mind getting a pedicure before sandal season or taking up NIA again. And it might be fun to break away from the T-shirt uniform. And now that I think about it, I really do need to do something about these eyebrows.

For now, how about you don't address me as Sarah. Just call me Sybil.