I looked her straight in the eye, set my chin, and hoped that the words forming in my mind would tumble out coherently—that they would pierce that doubt, firm on her face, and she would see herself as she truly was, and not through the impossible worldly lens.
"You are gorgeous. Every bit of you. Your outsides and your insides. You are beautiful. I want you to believe that."
"I wish I could," she replied. And my heart broke.
She is not my child, but my child might be her someday. A week into her teens, Cora doesn't internalize the opinions of others. Yet. The world will ensure that time will come.
Claire, a few years removed, has made remarks about her body that always turn out to be observations only, lacking in the negative connotations those statements typically carry. She, at a young ten years old, has no problem strutting around in her bathing suit, pulled taut over her round belly. That she should be concerned about the opinions of others seems laughable to her. But that blissful ignorance won't be allowed for long.
Standing there with the heat beating down on her sunscreen smeared face, my daughter's friend had already been conditioned to care. Not by her parents. I know them well. They had done everything in their power to instill confidence in her. Not by her friends; they mimicked my opinion of her beauty and were not afraid to say it out loud. Somewhere, maybe in some magazine she flipped through filled with airbrushed versions of reality, she learned she was not good enough. Maybe it was the fit and polished Stepford woman who flashed across the ads on her TV screen, beckoning her to find happiness and acceptance through perfected looks. Maybe it was the stick-thin models who walked the runway, or the straight-teethed female with a flawless figure that hung high on billboards across the city, or the crop-topped teen with chiseled abs that stared at her from the cover of every catalog delivered to her mailbox.
From a thousand places or maybe just one, the belief that her appearance dictated the opinion of others had filtered in. And the world did everything in its power to back that belief at every turn. I unknowingly did, too.
I wanted to fight it, make her see what I saw. But I WAS her. At 5'5, 105 toned pounds, I kept my shirt on at the public pool because I was terrified of the judgement I'd receive otherwise. I was 13. In my childhood bedroom, Scotch-taped to a wall, was a Polaroid of me beaming proudly up at the camera, a handful of gold swimming medals clanking in my hands. The bottom of that photo was missing. I had taken a pair of scissors to it to crop out my thighs, the powerful thighs that made those medals possible.
There's much from my childhood I don't remember, but I remember my 8th grade Home Ec. teacher making a comment about me filling my plate with a second helping of chips at our end-of-the-year potluck. The class laughed and I returned to my seat, the chip already in my mouth turning soggy as I froze in place, refusing to be seen chewing. That plate remained untouched and found its way to the trash bin. She made that comment because I was so thin. I'm sure she thought there was no harm in it. Just as my high school drama teacher must have thought when she directed a rehearsing group on stage to scoot to the side to "let the little fat one in." I was not fat. She knew that, so she felt a comment like that would roll off my back. Clearly I would hear the irony in it and laugh as the other students did—I was Barbie-thin after all. But what I heard was a repeat of that Home Economics teacher's belief.
I was fat. These important women thought I ate too much, thought I was overweight.
I know now that is nonsense, but at 13, I didn't have the mental capacity to view myself through that lens. Their words mattered, and my nonexistent self-esteem twisted them to fit that narrative. I had to choose my words carefully so they were not up for interpretation.
"Do you see these thighs?" I asked her. "They are large and they are strong and I'm so grateful for them. My boobs are saggy, but I like them. My chin doubles when I laugh and I love it. I'm lucky to have this body that lets me chase after you guys at this park. I'm not the size the world says I should be, but I am the size I say I should be. And that's all that matters. That's it. What YOU think. People will look at you through the years and judge you. Don't give them your time. Seriously, don't. Because you will find people who love every inch of you and teach you to do the same. Those are the people you should cling to."
She cautiously removed her shirt, tossed it on the lounge chair, and linked arms with Cora as she dragged her into the pool.
"My mom is always saying that stuff," Cora laughed over her shoulder. "You'll get used to it."
They left me there to think about how hypocritical my statement was. I didn't believe the words I was pleading with her to believe. Because the very world that was warping her opinion of herself had, years ago, worn me down. I cringed in the mirror. I hated taking my shirt off at the pool. I despised the way my stomach rolled over the top of my jeans. And I lied about that daily. To my kids. To my friends. To myself.
I have been really fit. I have been really fat. I have been really strong. I have eaten healthy and gorged myself and lived on lettuce leaves and battled a vicious and relentless eating disorder. I have been all over the map and back again. How could I stand before her and tell her it would all be okay when I knew the way the society works? I knew how differently people greeted me when I was flaunting a bikini, firm abs on full display. I knew the shift in eye contact when my thighs stretched my jeans thin. I knew the correlation between the compliments on my looks and the shrinking number on the scale. I knew how my self-worth was tied to those compliments. I was a strong, independent woman who, most days, thought I was awesome. But I ate up every single word of praise, regardless of how shallow. As the pounds piled on though, the remarks shifted from, "You look incredible," to "Those shoes are incredible." They became impersonal, always about things. That told me that my worth was directly tied to my weight.
That is how we are conditioned to react. When someone loses weight, we fawn over them, beg them for their secrets. When someone gains weight, we seal our lips. I am guilty of that. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't. Because we live in an age where only one body type is beautiful, regardless of the movement pleading with us to think otherwise. There's the social media shift from fat-shaming to body-acceptance—like fat is a thing we need permission to accept. We should never have to beg for our bodies to be accepted.
So I said all of those hypocritical things to her because they were the right things to say. Because maybe they'll help, maybe just for a moment. And I said those things because I couldn't tell her that for her entire life, she would be made to feel less-than because of her size and I didn't have a clue how to stop it. And I said those things out of hope that if I kept saying them, if I repeated them over and over, I'd will them to be true. If I can get her to believe them, if I can get my daughters to believe them, maybe then I will believe them.
Is there harm in that hope, in that hypocrisy? Should we keep shouting those words louder and louder until the world hears? Or will they continue to fall on deaf ears as we compliment shoes and unintentionally perpetuate the problem?
