When the Worst Body-Shaming Comes from Those You Love

She is lightness and levity as she enters the café, my now very thin friend. I am meeting her and the other girls for brunch, and it is immediately clear that her newly diminutive body will be the focal point of our conversation. She looks like words of adulation with exclamation points at the end, and these words are articulated by all in the group: So pretty! So sexy! So skinny!

Her body was like mine, and now it is not. This makes her worthy of praise.

I am the fattest of my friend group, and this fact is not lost on me. At brunch, there are orders of oatmeal and dry wheat toast and talk of brutal but rewarding workouts. I am, as evidenced by my body, doing the least to look the best. I will never be the complimented one, the adored one.

Well, I think, at least I’m not a burden now, like I used to be, when my elementary school friends were forced to support and defend me against the taunts of those who wouldn’t hide their disgust. The one I was defended against the most was Jon, whose barbs (whale, fatty, cow—so unimaginative, in retrospect) both destroyed and compelled me. He was my nemesis and crush, the leather-jacket bad boy I wanted to kiss in the rain. He was beguilingly tall and brown-eyed and French, but what really drew me to him was his cruelty, which I considered an invitation. If I could only become what he wanted, if I could just win him over, it would be a victory over so much more than him. It would mean I belonged; that I was worthy of love.

And so I diligently planned my transformation. Over the summer before sixth grade, I decided, I would lose twenty pounds. I would show up for the new school year forever changed, a repulsive insect made human, like Kafka in reverse. I would saunter down the aisle of the classroom, and as I passed each desk, a head would slowly turn, until I was standing at the front for my coronation. I would pass Jon last, and in that moment, he would know—he’d been wrong about me all along.

One day, at recess, a friend excitedly clutched my arm and whispered in my ear. One of the girls had gotten her hands on a list the boys had put together of the girls in our class, ranked from first to last by prettiness, and it was now in playground circulation. As my friend handed me the wrinkled piece of yellow notepad paper, I felt confident I knew where my name would be. Frantically, I scrolled through the messy scrawl. First was Beth, blonde and blue-eyed and bubbly and pert. Then Meghan, with her long legs and thick hair. Shelby was mid-pack, as was Joanna. Then finally, I saw it: Nikki. There was a long list of names before me, and one name after. My hands shook as I felt a wave of devastation, then relief. I was almost last . . . but I wasn’t last!

A few weeks later, I invited all the girls in class to my birthday sleepover, and Beth and Meghan attended. We played truth or dare, and I was dared to freeze my bra, which we inexplicably considered a bold and hilarious act. Then we ate angel food cake and danced to pop music in the family room, batting around birthday balloons to the beat. It was the best party I’d ever thrown, anchored by a profound sense of gratitude. Beth and Meghan had made a noble sacrifice by hanging out with me; they had, after all, put their social capital on the line, paid in the currency of what boys want. I felt I could never repay them for their unimaginable kindness.

As for my summer plan to become someone new, it didn’t come to pass. I did try to go on a diet, but I didn’t really commit to it; by the time sixth grade started, I’d only lost a couple pounds, and nobody noticed.

I tell myself that my kind and wonderful friends don’t really care that my body is out of place among theirs, but I don’t believe it; not really. Maybe my transformation still awaits. Maybe I can still make head after head after head turn, so wondrously slowly. I wonder what it would take for people to observe and celebrate a change in me now, like they did that day for my friend at brunch.

My friends love me. Would they love me more if I looked like her?

*

I don’t eat my hash browns at breakfast, and I hope my mom notices. But I do drink a Bloody Mary, and this is enough to warrant comment: “Is it a splurge day for you, too?”

How can I tell my mother that I don’t have splurge days, because I never diet? How does she not know this already? Or does she, and this is a hint?

My family is a family that’s bought into the sales pitch about how women should be. They quantify everything they eat with cold hard numbers—zero for vegetables, three for fish, probably many more for a Bloody Mary—and are always at the mirror, assessing how well they’ve done today.

I eat healthily, mostly, but I also just eat, and so I am different. I can’t join in when they talk about “splurge days,” or those last five pounds, or the really not so bad! vegetable soup that’s only two points, made nightly just in time for swimsuit season. Theirs is a culture I am not a part of, producing bodies that do not look like mine.

My family does not often compliment my body now, but when I finally did get around to losing that weight, they did—effusively. Later in sixth grade, I went on another diet, and this time I stuck with it, carefully recording grams of fat in a notebook and refusing to eat anything I’d deemed, simply, bad—no ice cream, even at the state fair, or pizza, even at a friend’s birthday party. I lost twenty pounds in three months, and my family told me they were proud of me. Doesn’t being healthy feel great?

I did feel great, in a way. Heads didn’t turn in cinematic slow motion, of course, but I finally heard the words I’d so desperately wanted to hear—that I was beautiful, pretty, desirable to all. But there was, too, a profound sense of loss. I could no longer see food as a source of sustenance or joy; it was now just something to control, a means to the end of a body to love.

I think, as much as I wanted the adulation, that some part of me was crushed by it, too; if no one noticed or commented on the change, it would mean I was wrong all along about the importance of this body I’m in. But people did care, explicitly and passionately. I realized this was a burden I’d carry my entire life.

It’s taken years of carefully accumulated experiences—of college exposure to the body-positivity movement; of healthy partnerships with people who make me feel beautiful no matter my size; of the simple act of self-reflection—to learn I should give up control and just be in my body. Now I eat ice cream at fairs and order Bloody Marys at breakfast, and honestly, I feel pretty good about it—until those moments when a family member tells me, through subtext, that it might be time to take back some control.

My family loves me. Would they love me more if I looked different?

*

A few nights ago, I had a dream. I was with my mom and aunt and two faceless strangers, huddled in the bathroom in my house, licking a popsicle. “I stopped eating, and am losing one pound a day!” my aunt exclaimed. The crowd murmured in appreciation. I started laughing, then threw my popsicle into the bathtub, where I watched it melt into a puddle of orange goo.

Everyone turned to me, aghast. “Nikki!” my mom intoned, like I was a toddler who’d scribbled rainbows in crayon on the pure white walls.

“I was joking!” I said, still laughing. But no one else was laughing. And then I started to cry.

I woke up thinking about my body, again, and about how far I’ve come and how far I have to go. Sometimes it feels like I really have transformed. I am, after all, no longer the girl in love with the boy who hates her. I no longer pay attention to the lists of those who seek to rank and hurt. I no longer view desirable friends who hang out with me as extraordinary martyrs.

And yet, decades later, movements later, so much progress later, not a day goes by where I don’t think about my body, and wish for something different. I strive to be confident with how I am; I yearn to be worthy of adulation with exclamation points. I wonder, still now: Would I be happier if I gave in to the texts and subtexts telling me to change—and actually did?

But then, inevitably, I pause. I think about sixth grade, when I did lose weight, and how unabashedly happy and proud everyone was that I had. I recall the pain of realizing people really did care about the shape and size of this body I carry, and it’s a pain I’m not sure I’m ready to repeat.

Have my friends and family always been hoping for a new me? Have they always been waiting for a transformation? I imagine what it would be like to lose weight now—to walk into a café for brunch with friends, and hear the words that would assuredly come. So pretty! So sexy! So skinny! I imagine floating far away on the praise, buoyed by these assurances of my worth, and happy to be leaving this world in which we live.

I still struggle to love a body that I know the people closest to me can’t, at least not fully, at least not unconditionally. Maybe it’s about them. Maybe it’s about more than them, or maybe it’s not about them at all; maybe I am the only one who’s cared, really, all along.

I love myself. Would I love me more if I didn’t look like me?

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