I got sucked into watching the Oscars on Sunday night. We were having a birthday party for my eldest son, my son-in-law, and my ex-bro-in-law, so we were all hanging at my ex-wife’s. Given that my ex is a movie critic and a film director, it was either watch the Oscars or go the fuck home.

So we watched, and fun was had by all. We had a great time cheering Meryl Streep’s win, sighing every time The Artist carted home another gold, and either appreciating or enduring this year’s awards presentations. (Chris Rock owned it.) And it was touching watching my ex cry when her colleague and friend T.J. Martin took home the statue for Best Documentary for his film Undefeated; she’s a person of magnanimous soul, and is often more delighted by the success of others than by her own.

And of course, there were the bodies. Star studded bodies. Million dollar bodies sculpted and maintained by people for whom success is 80% image. There were a couple of token nods to Big Beautiful Women (Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer), but by and large the body diversity on the stage ranged from “heroin chic” to “eight hours of daily elliptical training”.

Which, in one sense, is okay. We all have our personal fitness goals, and our our likes and dislikes about our current forms. I prefer being active and somewhat (emphasis on the “somewhat” lately) slim myself. If I had a million bucks, I might spend an hour a day on the treadmill, too.

But this fiction of the superfit becomes a problem when we begin to feel uncomfortable in our own skin. It’s a problem when the definition of “beauty” narrows to a sliver of the populace, as the culture bombards us and our children with physiques that are only possible in that peculiar fictional realm known as Hollywood.

In most Pagan traditions, both the body and the Earth upon which we walk are revered. The Earth is the Goddess, the Mother: She from which all things emerge and unto which all things must return. The body, born of the Earth and of the womb, is blessed. Many religions, both West and East, deny this view. The material realm is gross, filthy, subject to disease and decay. Best we not dwell on it, frankly. Even early Buddhism, while touting itself as a “Middle Way” between hedonism and asceticism, instructed its monks to forsake sex and to meditate on death as a means of achieving enlightenment.

Bollocks to that! The body – my body, your body, every body – is beautiful and holy. (Ha ha, yes, I said “holy” – very funny.) It’s an honor and a joy to be human. This body is a brief blessing from the gods. In this view, normal human activities such as eating and sex are not merely fun, but sacred.

Sadly, many of us are disconnected from our bodies in some shape or form. In my case, I often criticize myself for not being perfectly slim and muscled. (I do loves me some vegan cupcakes.) More often than that, I’m cerebral: I walk around with my presence completely in my head, lost in whatever thoughts happen to be possessing me at the time, blissfully unaware that I even have a body.

There are a lot of spiritual practices that can help us counter this discomfort or lack of awareness with our bodies. We can take some time each day to be aware of them – to feel ourselves as a fully embodied presence, feel the energy coursing through our arms, our chest, our sexual organs, our limbs, hands, feet. We can be aware of areas where we’re holding onto tension. Forehead, perhaps? Shoulders? A tightness in the chest?

We can give thanks for the food we use to sustain our gift. We can pamper our bodies with a simple but self-indulgent luxury – a long shower, perhaps, or a hot bubble bath. We can enjoy our sexual natures alone, or have sex with our partner, being fully in tune with and appreciative of his or her body while also being fully present in our own.

But perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to accept our bodies just as they are, right at this moment. To love them unconditionally – whether lean, thin, muscled, average, curvy, or full-bodied. It’s a gift we can freely give to others, too: to love them just as they are, for who they are – not for whom we believe they ought to become.

Our culture, as demonstrated by the Oscars, purports to celebrate the body. What it celebrates is a stereotype. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if we truly celebrated this precious human form?