Love Handles by Nannette Croce

Love handles. The little inner-tube of flesh that appeared at my waist on my 50th birthday. I don’t love them;I hate them.

Almost all the pounds I gained in the next few years left with the hot flashes. My body returned to its normal shape, though one size larger, and with those dang handles.

I can’t exercise them away. I can’t diet them away. Anything that fits well enough not to slip from my waist squeezes the little roll of soft flesh out over the top. As someone who has eaten right and exercised all my life, with menopause behind me, I could return to knitted tops and slim-cut jeans, but for that spare tire, that emergency fat, that bagel of flesh around my middle. How often I pine for the sleek profile I maintained well into my forties.

Then I think of that woman I see at the supermarket. You know the one, with the teased up cotton candy hair, the skin tight jeans, the mules she can barely balance on and the wrinkled 75-year-old face she tries to disguise with bronze pancake makeup.

Maybe, like my graying hair, those little handles are nature’s way of telling me it’s time to change my look. Time to opt for dignified over youthful; time to opt for handsome over sexy; time to accept my aging body with grace rather than fight a losing battle and end up looking ridiculous.

Time to learn to love those handles.