Cellulite, wherefore art thou? And by “wherefore” I definitely mean “why,” not the commonly mistaken “where,” especially because no one has trouble locating this enemy of our ass, ever.
So tell me, cellulite, why? We eat right, we exercise, we have decent genes, yet there you are, the dreaded “surface of the moon” quivering into view in the dressing room mirror. Vanity lighting, my very pun-intended ass.
While we’re not here to talk about Olympians and other athletic super-humans with hard coconut shells for butt cheeks, even though men carry less fat than women, many men aren’t off the hook either. Given exactly the wrong kind of lighting, fat rears its many lumpy little heads beneath what previously appeared to be smooth skin, and the ass is nothing if not two pillows of fat inflated to varying degrees on men and women alike.
Sometimes we get lucky. In a certain light, the ripply enemy seems to lurk deep enough under the surface so that as long as we stand perfectly still like a popsicle in the freezer, we have sleek, unmarred outlines. Be sure not to let this fleeting miracle go to our head, because as we know, even in the same lighting, as soon as we lean against something that spreads our pillowy parts, or dare enjoy a leg massage, the orange-peel horror squeezes to the top.
There’s a long line of ineffective torture devices to eradicate this human outline-ruining foe, from spiky skin brushes to electric pulses. This frivolous cruelty must stop because it gives us false hope that the spongy little marbles in our saddlebags are destructible. They are not. If cockroaches and cellulite went head to head as the stubbornest mofos to survive, cockroaches would run cockroach-screaming at the sight of pits and bumps taking shape under changing sources of light.
You know what else gives us false hope? Babies. First, their ass dimples and thigh rolls are gush-over cute, and we might momentarily forget that ours are not. Second, baby body dimples go away. Ours do not. We are not babies. We are doomed.
This is why our only option is to become experts at lighting principles. Depending on the factors of source, direction and intensity, lighting is either our bestie, or cellulite’s bestie. A course in color theory might not be a bad idea either. You know, learning about shadow and highlight and what color cancels out what other color — basically real-life Photoshop manipulation with our own skin pigment.
For example, we already know we can hide many a flaw under a tan. Not some damaging sunburn, but a gradual, protective, layer-by-layer pigment-build that starts off beige and ends up the color of a fine cigar. This puts us slightly ahead in the cellulite game because we’ve lowered contrast and the cellulite shadows have a harder time standing out against skin that isn’t pale.
Next, we need to understand the inverse-square law, which states, quantity or strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. That’s right. Basically, the farther you move from a lamp, the less light falls on your bare bum, but even less than you might think, because the amount of the decrease, em, increases. Counter-intuitively, this is NOT a good thing (unless you’ve disappeared into pitch black). If that’s not helpful, blame cellulite because cellulite is anything but helpful.
The important part is, the lowest lighting is often the unkindest. It goes back to those sneaky shadows. Shining bright, direct light onto an object eliminates shadows, which in turn eliminates the outline of pesky bumps, therefore creating the appearance of a popsicle-smooth surface.
Take a sandy beach with footprints. During high noon when the sun is closest to the earth and directly above, the footprints look shallow and barely noticeable, whereas under the late day sun, they cast long shadows and look like ominous black pits. Our bottoms in bikinis pretty much work the same way on the beach.
Where lighting fails, many of us have perfected the Dance of the Seven Butts after intimate situations. That’s when we “playfully” back away naked from our partner, and don’t turn around until the last possible second, then use a couple of pillows to alternate like the feathers of a Can Can girl over our afflicted parts.
We should probably also make sure everyone who sees us in our underwear has poor vision, and then hide their contact lenses — blurred vision is kind and softens unsightly details.
Finally, if you are of that elusive breed who is impervious to this inner-body barnacle invasion, bless you, prance those peach-like buttocks of yours around bare and free, and we’ll try not to hate you.
For more by Gunmetal Geisha on Long Awkward Pause, click here.
What are your ingenious methods of displaying your body?
Tell Gunmetal Geisha below and follow her on Twitter. You can also find her at gunmetalgeisha.com where she suffers from chronic dichotomy.
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