I'm teaching a course in writing the memoir this spring, and last week we dipped our oars into the murky waters of truth telling and what it means to us. I have a simple standard when it comes to writing nonfiction. My compass points to true north because I like the challenge of wrestling truth into art, by which I mean finding the shape that reveals meaning. It's not easy, but the challenge simply appeals to me. My version of the Rubik's cube: writing nonfiction without knowingly blurring any line to make the story more clear, artful or powerful. That's well and good, but when there are sixteen active consciousnesses in the room, nothing is obvious or simple.

Azir Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Teheran, a 2004 memoir centered in her experience teaching American literature in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, spurred our discussion last week. After being fired from the University of Teheran for refusing to wear the veil, she formed a book club in her home for students to continue to talk about literature. To protect their identities, Nafisi scrambled the traits and personalities of the young women to the point that, she writes, even they might not recognize themselves. Toward the end of the book, she opens a door for speculation about a key character: "I ask myself: Was he ever real? Did I invent him? Did he invent me?"

There is no answer to the questions these line-blurring declarations raise, and my students' responses reflected that ambiguity. Some students were unable to connect to the book once they mistrusted its authenticity. Others felt that these deviations from truth did not matter in the slightest. If the story is powerful, the writing compelling, and the book essentially true, what does it matter if some aspects are invented, exaggerated, or altered to create a more satisfying end product?

Good question. I officially open our class discussion to anyone reading this post for your thoughts!

But as I drove home from class, I connected our discussion to a set of photographs recently sent my way by a faithful correspondent. "Keeping Up With the Kardashian's" is a cable "reality" show I've never watched, so I didn't know that Kim Kardashian is a "celebutante," as well as a beautiful woman with a fitness video series. When un-retouched photos of Kim, later airbrushed for the cover of Complex magazine, found their way to cyberspace, they told an unaltered truth.

In response to the resulting chatter about her real legs not looking like a mannequin's, Kim wrote: "So what: I have a little cellulite. What curvy girl doesn't!? I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect." (The upcoming release of her new fitness DVD may have prompted her to add, "This all motivates me to stay in the gym because my goal this year has been to get in better shape and tone up!")

These photographs cheered me, reminding me of how much I like the truth. The reality rarely found on reality shows like Keeping Up really does matter to me. It matters that this woman known for her beauty, particularly for what is celebrated as a beautiful body, has the complicated beauty all of us embrace in our real lives.

It matters to me because I have nieces who study the culture like Nafisi's young women studied American novels. They want to know whether their bodies and faces and beautiful selves are beautiful. Are beautiful enough. When they are only given an altered truth, a half-lie, to study, the truth can't set them free. It matters because my midlife friends and I are living post-hormonal lives in new bodies that have a beauty more complicated than what photographs can ever show. It's a mind/body/spirit collaboration that hasn't really found its way into art or popular culture, though Eileen Fisher ads and gospel singers have made a start. Looking at Kim Kardashian's true beauty, I realize that I want to see the word voluptuous returned to the vocabulary of womanly beauty, right alongside toned, fit, flexible, and healthy. Being voluptuous is complicated. Sometimes it involves invasive surgery, and sometimes it involves cellulite, and sometimes it's all about remembering my grandmother's sheltering arms.