I was 12 the first time I heard I was fat.
My mother bought me a new bathing suit from the mall in the town we were visiting. I stood in my dad’s apartment, in the hallway between the home office and his bedroom, showing the suit to my parents and my brother. Then someone mentioned that it was too snug, or it didn’t fit, or you’re too big for that, aren’t you? We can’t have you looking that way when we visit the country club for the first time, you know.
In 9th grade I wanted to wear Levi jeans and short shorts. My thighs, however, were too large and so instead I got Lee jeans. Everyone knows Lee jeans are for LOSERS. But they fit the curvy girl whose normal-if-not-small ass isn’t plank enough for Levis. Instead of short denim cut-offs like the rest of the girls had, I got to choose my outfits based on khaki, black, navy or white Bermudas. Those, see, covered up the thighs.
In 10th grade my mother bought me a beautiful black dress, my first cocktail dress, with pearl buttons down the front and a scalloped sweetheart neckline. I got my first pair of black cocktail heels and I wore my hair in curls. I looked beautiful. But not long after that night with the boy I liked, a neighborhood kid pointed at my calves and asked me why they were so floppy.
And of course, the very last summer I was a camp counselor, two hometown girls were campers that same year. They were about 7 or 8 and I passed by them one day on the way to the dining hall, where they were pointing and giggling in my general direction. I knew these girls and babysat them at home for years, so I walked up and ask them what they were up to. They looked frightened and then one pointed at her friend and said, “She wants to know why your legs blew up.” Horrified, I asked them exactly what they meant by that and then sent them on their merry, sobbing, ashamed little way. I will never forget that moment and I feel sure that they won’t, either.
That same year, a friend called me on summer vacation. My brother answered the phone and yelled to me, “Gallon-size thighs! Somebody’s on the phone for you!” My friend heard it and reminded me of it years later.
Those are my formative memories of body image. Of course, my mother sat me down far earlier than all of this to explain to me that, despite the fact that my teenage acne was normal – if not mild – we would still be going to extraction appointments at the dermatologist. She didn’t want my childhood to be marred by the memories of a bad complexion. She wanted my childhood to be perfect.
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Now when I talk about my shape or figure or giant ass or rolls and rolls of stomach, I turn it into everyone’s favorite joke. Don’t mind the hippo over here! Or, and this is my personal go-to: y’all, am I as big as THAT LADY over there? My friends, bless them, always roll their eyes and say, “Elizabeth. Of course not. Don’t be silly.”
We all know how my reality TV addiction can be, so it’s no surprise that these two combined moments that have just come back to haunt the teenager I was.
Stacy London from What Not to Wear always figures out the really insecure girls and what their deal is before even they do. Did they just break up, or are they a haggard mom with too much on their plates? Sometimes she’ll stand in the 360° mirror and look at a woman and say, “Do you think you’re beautiful?” Oh, c’mon, Stacy. Isn’t the obvious answer always no?
On Celebrity Rehab this week, the horse trainer brought in to do a little equine therapy with the addicts talks about seeing something in a horse’s face that should resemble a feeling we already know. After several wrong answers, he finally tells everyone that what they should be seeing in those huge brown watery eyes is devotion and nurturing. All the addicts are like, “Do whaaa?” and then there’s a commercial.
But in those two television BREAKTHROUGH MOMENTS OMG I realized that no, I don’t think I’m beautiful. I try not to think about my size and physical appearance until it relates to my health. (Which is also why I don’t go to doctors, incidentally.) I try to be conscious of negative self-talk, which I learned in therapy is so very hateful to do to yourself. So I don’t talk shit to me, but I think shit about me. And also, no one – I mean NO ONE – tells me I’m beautiful. Not beautiful inside or outside or upsidedown or backwards. I don’t want to hear if it isn’t true, but if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that I might have something – albeit small and remote – beautiful about me, I wish I had the courage to ask them to share that with me. When I think of my soul, and whether or not it’s beautiful, I qualify that thought with “…yeah, that part would be okay until you remember this OTHER part, which is really bad.”
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How much of this shapes who we are now? I don’t mean like, okay, Susie is shy because people called her fat, I mean like HEY. DO YOU GAIN WEIGHT BECAUSE THEY TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULDN’T? Or something equally horrible?
Are you beautiful because you think so, or because you’ve been told you are, or because it actually is the truth that you wish you’d hear from someone else other than yourself?
I love myself, I really do. But I don’t think I’m beautiful, and I’m damn sure no one else thinks I am, either. Finally, I do not know what devotion and nurturing look like, but if I had that or practiced that or whatever, would I know if it knocked on my door?
