When was the first time you realized you were fat?
I don’t know if this is a factor in a boy’s life, but I’m pretty sure it’s a rite of passage for girls. Sure you always knew you looked different from your friends, since the life lesson that we are each and every one unique on this earth has already been taught. But if you are fat, hell, even if you’re thin, there’s that one defining moment that changes your life forever.
I was 13, and just returning home from a summer in Europe. My parents were firm believers that their daughters should know where they came from, and so my sister and I were packed off to relatives in the Croatian Islands. That and the fact that it had been one year since major surgery for me, and a year without mishap to boot. The trip was a sigh of relief.
Besides the family politics that no one can ever avoid, life there was very good. It was foreign, it was summer, it was days at the beach. It was salami sandwiches and swimming and Fanta. I certainly wasn’t trying to lose weight (i.e. see “salami”), but did have to buy some new pairs of shorts when the ones I had packed decided to fly south. Even then, I didn’t notice a change in myself, and no one in my family ever said a word. I was having too much fun to care.
When I got back though, everyone noticed. People saw me, and the shock would register. Friends I hadn’t seen in over two months would wave at me from across the street and come running over, mouths falling open as they got a closer view. I got Oh my God’s every hour of every day those first weeks home, and the phrase that did it all: “I can’t believe how good you look now!”
Maybe if the Now hadn’t been there, I would have been spared reality for at least another few months. You look so good…. NOW. This didn’t get me thinking about now at all, but enforced in my mind, very clearly, that if everyone was so amazed at how good I looked now, how bad did I look then?
Every girl might not remember her moment exactly, but I do believe that every girl has one. This is important, because this is when it all starts to change. If you weren’t fashion conscious before, you certainly are now. Even if you want to be unique, you also want to look just like everyone else, for the sake of fitting in, and how your butt looks in jeans becomes huge priority. Teen Beat, trash, welcome Cosmo. Eye liner, lipstick and mascara replaces the flavoured lip smacker, and you invest in the first bottle of hair spray. Sure your hair is crunchy, but everyone else is doing it, right?
It’s not about what goes, goes, anymore Gone are the days of not thinking about it; you didn’t think about it then because you didn’t realize “it” existed. Now you can’t stop thinking about it, and the neverending battle for better, better, BETTER than what you have and what you are, begins.
Has anyone ever won this battle before? I don’t really know. Some people say they have, but I’m not sure if I believe them. What I do know is that it’s absolute torture getting there, and that it’s far from over.
I find it terribly ironic that I spent an entire summer with bottles of pop in hand, eating salami, smoked meats, desserts dripping with custard and just about everything else I turn away now, and I thinned out without even noticing.
I’m not going to adopt this diet in attempt for a repeat. I’m not on the islands, and I’m not thirteen. I’m also not in that mindset anymore. I have a million things to do, a million people to see, and there’s no such thing as lazing on the beach for a solid eight weeks, perfectly happy that there is nothing else to do.
Point being that maybe if we all stopped fucking obsessing so much, if I stopped fucking obsessing so much, there would be much less to fret over. No?
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