The pride of putting on a new bikini in the summer. The thrill of breaking out your summer shorts and crop tops. The satisfaction after working out and knowing that you'd burned all of the excess calories from that brownie you ate. I'd never felt any of that.
That's not to say that I was the fattest person, but at 160 pounds and 5'2", I was bound to be unhappy with my body. "Put her into some sports," the Doctor had said to my mother.
"What do you like to do?" He asked, turning to me. Uh, sit on the couch and eat chips, I thought to myself disdainfully.
Aloud though I politely suggested, "I like basketball." No, I don't. I'd just thought back to our most recent gym unit and used that. In reality, I hated basketball. The chance of being whacked in the head at any moment by a large orange ball somehow didn't appeal to me. However, I was a bad thinker under pressure, so basketball it was.
"Basketball, great!" He rubbed his hands together as if he'd just found the cure to cancer rather than a way to get a fat child active. "My daughters play basketball you know, on a travel team, and they absolutely adore it. It's a lot of fun, and if you find the right coach, it's not very expensive either," he spoke quickly, directing his sentences more towards my mom than me.
"You're coming back in a month for flu shots, correct? I'd also like to check up on her weight then too. I'm obviously not expecting any drastic changes, I just want to make sure her weight doesn't rise, and with a proper diet and the exercise from a basketball team, she should be able to lose a pound or two within a month." Mom nodded her head enthusiastically, tapping out notes on her phone.
"Now just come around to the front, Ms. West, and one of my secretaries will schedule your next appointment for you." Shaking my hand, he winked and said to me, "Don't worry, you'll lose the last of that baby fat by this time next year." He laughed to himself and my mother let out a small snort as well. I scowled. There was no 'baby fat' for me to lose at fifteen years old. Just regular old fat.
When we were in the car, mom tried to strike up a reassuring conversation. "Don't worry sweetie, like Dr. Rubin said, you'll lose all of that extra weight in no time. Now, I didn't know you liked basketball, if you'd told me this earlier I could've put you into a league ages ago! Instead, I have to go around searching for a team that'll take a fifteen year old girl who's never in her life played competitively in the middle of July, you don't think that'll be a bit of a problem for me?" I let her keep talking and slid in my earphones, bobbing my head yes every once in a while when she looked in the rearview mirror at me.
"Virginia! Take out those damned earphones and listen to me!" She yelled suddenly over my blasting music.
"I'm absolutely sick and tired of you ignoring me, I'm doing this for you, not me! Am I looking for my own basketball team? No, I'm doing this because my daughter doesn't know how to stop herself from eating the last cookie on a plate and taking the largest slice of cake!" Now she was pissed. She went on with her rant, not pausing for a reaction.
"I swear that the next time I see you playing music when I'm trying to have a conversation with you, I'm going to break your iPod. Do you understand?!" I stared out the window, not responding.
"ANSWER ME!" she screamed. "Put your phone away, right now. You need to learn to hold a conversation with your family, not ignore me! Do you hear me?" I nodded my head ever so slightly, but slid my phone back into my pocket. The rest of the car ride was awkwardly silent. While she was talking, my mother had decided to leave the radio off, and she hadn't given any indication that she would be turning it back on for the rest of the hour long car ride.
I was sitting in the very back of the car, and I shifted uncomfortably, squirming against my seat belt. I hated seatbelts because they always felt uncomfortable with my stomach pressing against them. I sucked in my belly and looked down at the small gap where my fat usually would be. I sighed and stayed like that for the rest of the ride. Maybe if I just keep sucking in my stomach, I can pretend that I don't look like a beached whale, I thought to myself.
The second the car stopped in our driveway I raced out of the car and into the house. I slipped up the stairs and into my room before my mom could go back to another lecture about having to find a basketball team for me and closed my door, looking into the full length mirror in front of me.
Tugging my sweatshirt over my stomach, I sucked as much of my fat in as I could and wrapped my hands around my pudgy tummy. I looked at a picture on the cover of a magazine I'd gotten last week. A skinny model in a bikini stared back at me, her collar bones clearly visible and her stomach as flat as the paper it was printed on. I looked back at my own frumpy reflection. A single tear escaped my eye as I looked at the body I'd have to live in my entire life. Soon after, more tears began slipping down my face, and before I knew it I was on the floor sobbing.
I hate myself. I hate myself. Those three words were the only thing racing through my brain in that moment. I just want to be pretty. Is that too much to ask for? In my mind, pretty and skinny were synonymous. How couldn't they be? Slowly, my eyes dried, and I just sat there, silent and glassy eyed on the cold wood floor. About an hour later, a knock was at my door.
"The mail came, there's a magazine for you," mom flat and curt voice said, sliding it under the door, not bothering to open it and hand the magazine to me. I stretched my hand out, and slowly began flipping through the magazine. About halfway through, an article jumped out at me, it's bold letters practically screaming.
"GET THIN FAST!" The large sprint shouted. "LOSE 20 POUNDS IN LESS THAN A MONTH! GUARANTEED SUCCESS!" All of my attention zoomed in on the article. Quickly I read through it.
"Simply follow this strict twenty day diet and the weight will practically melt away," I read aloud. Dubiously, I looked through the twenty different meals. If you could call them meals at all, that is. Day One consisted of two eggs and a strawberry kiwi smoothie with egg whites and spinach blended in. No, that wasn't just the breakfast plan, that was the whole day's meal. I saw the small asterisk next to Day One and I scanned the bottom of the page, hoping for an extremely late April Fool's Day prank.
"If you are unable to sustain each day on the provided meal, a bottle of water and two handfuls of unsalted nuts may be added, but may alter the diet's desired results" the bottom of the page read. Looking at the before and after pictures of overweight adults transformed to fit and skinny people, I felt a pang of longing go through me.
I started to reach down to rip out the page, when my stomach suddenly growled and I smelled pasta sauce wafting up the stairs. A voice in my head spoke up, nearly sneering at me. Don't be ridiculous, you couldn't resist a single donut that you passed. Remember what your mother said, 'you can never pass up the largest slice of cake or the last cookie on the plate'," the voice hissed, taunting me. I slumped dejectedly. It was true, I didn't have the willpower. I tossed the magazine into the trash angrily, and headed downstairs, away from the jeering article.
Walking into the kitchen, I saw a blur of fur and my puppy, Chestnut, raced up the stairs at top speed.
"Did you shut your bedroom door?" Mom asked me, placing a small plate of pasta in front of me.
"No," I answered, shoving a forkful into my mouth quickly so she wouldn't tell me to go and bring him back down.
"Fine, whatever he ruins of yours, I don't want to hear it," she said, shrugging. I frowned at her tone and reached for more pasta. One, two, three scoops more.
"Don't you think you've eaten enough?"
I looked down at my plate, feeling ashamed as a drop of sauce slid down from my fork.
"It's a small plate," I tried to reason with myself and her. "It looks like I'm taking a lot but it's just because I can't fit as much onto it."
"Darling, I don't think I could even eat half as much as you are. It's not the plate's fault." She scraped off the uneaten remains of her single serving of pasta into the garbage. I glared at her angrily, hiding how hurt I felt.
"I'm only saying it because I love you and I don't want you to walk around like an overinflated beach ball." She took my plate away from me as I was in the middle of scooping up another bite.
"You're done, honey. Go upstairs and wash your face, you've got sauce all over you." I slammed my chair back and stomped up the stairs.
"And bring that stupid dog down!" She called up to me.
After quickly washing my face, I went back to my room and saw, who else, Chestnut rummaging through my garbage can. I looked at the used tissues littering my floor and then saw what he currently was gnawing on. The new magazine I'd just thrown out. I snatched it up and lightly whacked him with it. "Get out of here, look at the mess you made," I scorned him, and he whimpered but left, racing back down the stairs.
I looked at the teeth marks all over the magazine cover, and then, against better judgement, scanned quickly through the pages until I got to page fifty six. The 2o Day Challenge. I stared down at the page.
What harm could it do? I thought to myself. I might as well just try it out. I carefully tore out the page and hid it underneath one of the pillows on my bed. I looked at the thin model on the magazine cover across my room one more time, and let my watering eyes spill over once more. One day, I'll look like that, I thought silently, resolved. One day, that will be me. I will be beautiful.
