Junk in the Trunk = Healthy!!

(from Doris)

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/749639--junk-in-the-trunk-could-be-good-for-the-heart

I started playing competitive tennis when I was 12 years old. Ever since then, I have always felt like my butt was bigger than other girls' in my grade, but I told myself it was my imagination and that I had the normal teenage body insecurities. (Now I know and I should've figured it out a while ago, that tennis is a lot of squatting in the "ready stance," sprinting, stopping suddenly and changing directions and this HAD to build up some quad/hamstring/butt muscles.)

I remember sleeping in on some Sunday mornings in high school and my mom would wake me up by stripping the covers and saying "Rise and shine!" and then added, "Your butt is like rising bread! So poofy!" (or something to that effect, all in Mandarin, of course). Way to make me even more self-conscious about my butt, Mom. =P

In college all of my Asian female friends had no butts. Seriously, I didn't mean to stare or anything, but I was looking at their lack of curves and thinking, "How could nothing be there?! That's just anatomically not possible!" I had female friends of other ethnicities and my butt was more shaped like theirs, so I just thought I was built differently. =P

It wasn't under I started grad school and joined sMITe, and met Doris, Smeri, and Catherine, to name a few, that I learned that having a big butt was actually a good thing! And even when we were recruiting at campus preview weekend or the athletics fair, we joked that we were looking for girls with "a high butt to boob ratio." (i.e. large butt, small boobs). Catherine and Doris would often complain in the early spring season (after we'd done the majority of the track workouts... stupid 400s) that their pants didn't fit anymore. And Darlene would brag that we had become "too fast for our shorts." :)

So it's through sMITe that I've finally come to terms with my body. I learned to embrace and even be proud of my big butt.

When I told my dad about the article relating big butts to healthy hearts, my dad replied, "Big butt also sit more steadily and balanced than small ones. No kidding."