Roses are red,
You look nearly due,
Good golly, you're big,
Enormously gorgeous, too!
Valentine's Day seems like an appropriate time to set the record straight from the heart about a pet peeve of mine, and while some of you may think I'm blatantly pandering to female readers, the truth is that women are never more beautiful than when they are pregnant.
Allow me to repeat: Women are never more beautiful than when they are pregnant.
Of course, not all pregnant women suffer all of the time from a distorted sense of body image, but I've heard plenty of them complain, "I look horrible," and "I'm so huge." And I've firsthand tried to counter these types of disparaging comments from my own twice pregnant wife.
From my limited view of pregnancy across the gender line, I understand that your ankles swell, you're ravenous and full at the same time, you have to sleep on the sofa for back support, and you're looking for a bathroom every ten minutes. But I'm here to say, you are also truly, breathtakingly beautiful.
Pregnant women glow vibrantly with nature's life-enhancing hormones. Bursting with vitality, naturally content within their unique state, they exude an attractive optimistic happiness. And they are sexy. Yes, sexy.
Pregnant women fill out in the most voluptuous ways. Natural feminine curves are appealingly accentuated, ripened, rounded with an irresistible Rubenesque softening and shaping. Speaking from the heart and from the men's locker room, I loved the transformation nature performed on my pregnant lady. It aroused deep affection ... and more basic instincts.
But I think the real trick of this powerful attraction is all about the dramatic difference. In magnetism, opposites attract. The poets say the same is true for love. To men and women who are sexually attracted to one another because they are different, pregnancy is, of course, the ultimate state of male/female contrast.
Okay, skeptical readers and you guys who desire only anorexic super models, go ahead and guffaw, shake your heads, inspect, dissect and reject my psyche. But if you live in the real world of flesh and blood and love and desire, I hope you'll open your eyes and minds to savor the marvelous metamorphosis of the pregnant woman. She is dazzling. "Vive la difference!" And Happy Valentine's Day, Lucy.