Caught between every rib.

When I was young, perhaps around nine or ten, Oprah (yes, that's the one) long ago changed her show's theme from something upbeat and fabulous to a more solemn celebration of "spirit." This was still long before Dr. Phil came along, though here she was already largely focusing her shows on miraculous stories and self-improvement. She did still have those episodes where she gave away cars like pieces of gum. But there was one day where with a guest she proclaimed that every person should look at themselves naked in the mirror every day. She does it and this, she said, was the best way to get to know oneself, and the truest way to see one's own beauty. To see one's body without any form of clothing is, I think, a nice point of advice. Clothing, material or metaphorical, can hide a person from even their own face.

There is a further element that I have been thinking of. A mirror shows us ourselves, it shows me my furrowed brow, my shoulders freckled like paint flecks thrown from fingers, but what it is doing best is showing us that we are not a flat reflection of a world we can stare at. But that we have bodies--that it is because of them that our lives must move, bodies with which we can taste food, hold puppies, and see the spectrums of the bright grey sky. Bodies through which (or in which, or with which, or as which) our souls can grow in goodness or whatever other direction. And the only way to do those things and to understand them best is by looking at oneself in the mirror without clothes on. Thanks, Oprah.