A friend asked me not a very long time ago: »Did it not help you to hear from your friends and family that you are not fat?« I answered: »No, it did not.« Being a slim beauty, she was curious: »How so?« My explanation was as follows: »You see. It’s pictures that really get to you. You see them everywhere – the professional models. These pictures are very strong messages to our subconscious. Stronger than any words. We are being brain-washed since childhood.« She was appalled: »That’s horrible.« I smiled a most content smile and told her the secret: »But you can beat these...

I would never sell the dish-washer and the laundry-machine, for I am too lazy to do all the washing myself. Yet, there is a thing I discovered: the more machines do for you at home, the more you will have to exercises and pay for it too. When I left my job as a scientific researcher years ago, I started writing my first book. Yet, I did not think very highly of it. In my eyes I became a housewife. And my self-esteem suffered a low blow. Today, five years from the moment I stopped pursuing a career, I am beginning to value the housework. Firstly, it is work that deserves respect as any other honest...

There was an interview with a Chinese lady a few years ago in one of the leading Slovene newspapers that I cannot get out of my head. She said something most peculiar: »I don’t know what European women complain about. In China women have jobs too. When we get home we cook and clean and we don’t have all the electric appliances you European women have here. Still we do not complain.« You will have to excuse me ladies, for I am not painting a too pretty picture of Western culture here. We have machines that do our laundry, subsequently we have more time to watch television and eat. Then we...

When I was a child, my mother never bought me a Barbie doll. Still there have been more than enough images along the way that made me think I was fat. The thought got intensified when doctors told me to lose weight. I wasn’t really fat, only swollen from tranquilizers I was taking. I kept looking at the fatness of my bottom in mirrors for years and I always found myself fat. The subconscious, full of photoshoped images of models, would not accept the fact that in mirrors objects appear larger. I had a ‘panic attack’ every time they would not keep larger sizes of clothes in stores. The...

It’s not always easy to get angry at the right person, even in a civilized way. Examples: -it might be your boss and it is more tactical to stay quiet; – the person may be dead; – politicians are hard to reach on personal level; – etc. What we should not do is get angry at the next non-expecting fellow that happens to run into us. There is another way – you can transform the anger into physical work or exercise. I remember my father cutting wood and swearing. Well, we did need wood to warm up the house, but I think it was also his outlet for anger. Or my mother flattening...