The Shimmy Diet

This is the time of year when weight-loss advertisements--many of them targeted to women--run rampant. Do you make resolutions for the New Year? Is one of the resolutions to drop a few pounds?

I don't make such resolutions anymore. Since I quit smoking nine years ago, I've gained and lost the same thirty pounds about five times until I just resigned myself to a certain easy-to-maintain size, on the advice of my doctor. She said, "If you have to change your whole life to be a size 2, what's the point? Gaining and losing is just as bad for your health as an 'extra' ten or twenty pounds.' "

Then one of my friends gave me an ice cream maker for Yule. I've made olive oil ice cream, which was fabulous, and today I'm going to try peanut butter chocolate caramel ice cream.

All of this adds up to what I'm calling the shimmy diet. Because, seriously? I'm attracted to women with tummies, whose generous curves bespeak a love of the table and all its sensuous promise. It's why I got into bellydance to begin with, to see delicious women shake, rattle, and roll. This is not to say that sylph-like dancers are not beautiful. They are. I simply prefer watching voluptuous women bellydance.

My shimmies are a lot easier during the wintertime, when carbohydrate-rich food ensures you can see my shimmies from space. And that's the way I like it.

If you're going to make a resolution for this new year, make it about health and not about perpetuating the beauty myth that is breaking the back of women's happiness and sexuality. Make this the year of the shimmy!