A fat little girl is eight years old, She's got pink cheeks that her grandmother calls chubby. She wants a second cookie but her aunt say, " You'll get huge if you keep on eating." She wants a dress and the woman in the changing room says, " she'll probably need a large in that." She wants to have dessert and her waiter says, " After all that dinner you just had? You must be really hungry!" and her parents laugh.
A fat little girl is eleven and is picked second - to - last in gym class. She watches a cartoon and sees that everyone who is annoying is drawn with a wide big body, all sweaty and panting. At night, she dreams she is swelling like the ocean over seabeds. When she wakes up, she skips school.
A fat little girl is thirteen and her friends are stick-thin ballerinas with valleys between their hipbones. She is instead developing the wide curves of her mother. She says she is thick but her friends argue that she's "muscular" and for some reason this hurts worse than just admitting that she jiggles when she walks and she'll never be a dancer. Eating seconds of anything feels like she breaking some unspoken rule. The word "indulgent" starts to go along with "food."
A fat little girl is fourteen and she has stopped drinking soda and juice because they bloat you. She always takes the stairs. She fidgets when she has to sit still. Whenever she goes for ice cream, she leaves half at the bottom- but someone else always leaves more she feels like she's falling. She pretends to like salad more than she actually does. She feels eyes burrowing through her eyes while she eats lunch. Kate Moss tells her nothing tastes as good as skinny, but she just feels like she is wilting.
A fat little girl is fifteen the first time her father says, "You're getting gaunt." She rolls her eyes. She eats one meal a day but thinks she stays the same size. Every time she picks up a brownie she thinks of the people she sees on T.V. and every time she has cake, she thinks of the one million magazine articles on restricting calories. She used to have no idea a flat stomach was suppose to be beautiful until she saw advice on how to achieve it. She cuts back on everything. She controls. They tell her she's getting too thin but she doesn't believe it.
A fat little girl is sixteen and tearing herself into shreds in order for a thigh gap big enough to hush the screams in her head. She doesn't "indulge" ever. She can't go out with friends, they expect her to eat. She damns her sweet tooth directly to hell. It's coffee for breakfast and tea for lunch and and if there's dance that evening, two cups of water and maybe then an apple. She lies all the time until she thinks the words will rot her teeth. She dreams about food when she sleeps. Her aunt begs her to eat anything, even just a small cookie. They say, " One bite won't make you fat, will it, Daring?"
A fat little girl is seventeen and too sick to go to prom because she can't stand up for very long. She thinks she wouldn't look good in a dress anyway. Her nails are blue and not because they are painted. Her hair is too thin to do anything with. She's tired all the time and always distracted. She once absently mentions the calorie value of grapes to the boy she is with and he looks at her like she's gone insane and in that moment she realizes most people don't have numbers constantly scrolling in their heads. She swallows hard and tries to figure out where it all went wrong, why more than a granola bar for a meal makes her feel sick, why she tastes disease and courts with death. She misses sleep. She misses being able to dream. She misses being herself instead of just being empty.
