Star Struck Style

A couple of weeks ago I was at Simons, the fabulous Canadian department store, when I picked up this T-shirt adorned with a vintage decal of some peaches only to discover that it was a crop top. Needless to say, I didn’t buy it.

The reason I’m telling this story is that I had my hernia surgery yesterday morning. I’m feeling pretty good, especially when I’m just sitting around. It feels like I’ve done a hundred-too-many sit-ups. It’s a different story when I have to get up and down, but I’m sure that I’ll be moving around more elegantly in the not-too-distant future.

Anyway, when I waiting for my operation in the pre-op area of the hospital, the anesthesiologist made a comment to me like “well, you’re obviously in great shape.” I was literally laying underneath a blanket at the time.

That the was the second time someone made a comment like that to me this week. A random guy at the gym where I still work part-time made a remark about how good I looked. I was in a pair of Levi’s cords and a fitted t-shirt at the time.

It always catches me off-guard when people say anything like that to me. For someone who has been a fitness trainer for almost forty years, I still have a weird relationship with my own perception of myself. I vacillate in between tremendous self-confidence and crushing self-doubt on a regular basis.

Hopefully, this hernia surgery will make me feel a little better about myself. The bulge in my stomach near my belly button was known only to me, and yet it skewed my self-image in ways I can’t even describe. I don’t know why I’m like this, but I do have my natal Chiron in the fifth house: the part of my chart that is filled with planets this time of year. Over the past couple of weeks, the sun, Mercury and Venus have all made conjunctions with the so-called “wounded healer.” In a couple of weeks from now, Mars will also make a conjunction with the asteroid.

I know that I’m one of the only astrologers who regularly writes about the relationship between the fifth house and the image that an individual presents to the world. My entire catalogue in the discipline of fashion astrology is based upon the sun sign, the rising sign, the Venus placement and the fifth house. Still, this Chiron connection fascinates me because the image we choose to share with others is often crafted to hide our vulnerabilities. It deserves a place in the “big five” of fashion astrology.

I suppose I need to be the one who elevates the heavenly body to a place where other astrologers can start discussing it in this manner — no one else will. So, maybe that’s what I should do. It would be nice to have a project that I could dive into headfirst as I attempt to avoid everything else going on in the world. Perhaps I can start on it while I’m taking time off from leading classes at the gym while I heal.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go look in the mirror while I imagine what my stomach is going to look like once I take these bandages off. Crop top summer is almost here . . .