Originally appeared in The News & Observer:
'Have you lost weight?" used to be the two in the one-two punch that people inevitably would use to greet me if they hadn't seen me for a while.
Few would wait for the answer to "How ya been?" before trampling on my warped weight psyche with the second question.
"No," I would answer before I had indeed lost some weight, "I'm just not as fat as you remember."
How many times have I slunk back home feeling like my weight is the one quality that defines me? Who cares that I'm rearing two delightful children on less than five hours of sleep a night; that I've managed to wallpaper a crooked bathroom, in stripes no less; that I'm always the first to arrive with chicken pot pie when someone is in need?
If you're like me, you know that when you walk away, the first thing people discuss is not what a great person you are but how big your butt looks as it disappears around the corner.
This month, columnist Ellen Goodman wrote about how disturbing she finds the current anorexic chic among supermodels, and she cited the relationship between advertising and weight disorders among young women.
Although I am certain that such visual assaults have filled other normal-looking women with the desire to be less, it is the verbal wounds that have brought me to this place where my body is the enemy of my mind. I remember the boy in eighth-grade who took up half a yearbook page with his huge, curly musings about not being able to get around my behind in the hallway; the former girlfriend of a military boyfriend who sent him letters at boot camp, delightfully pointing out how my rear end was as wide as she was tall, in case he had missed that fact himself.
I did have a really great body, once, for about two weeks the summer before I turned 14. The barrel formerly known as my torso had somehow transformed itself into a recognizable female shape. Unfortunately, the fat grams from that year's birthday cake were the shot that started the decade-long stampede for my thighs.
An editor at Ms. magazine has said that weight is an underlying obsession of white women.
Me? Obsessed? Only if you call a bulimic stint in 11th grade (I only managed to make myself throw up twice), a bunless hot dog diet in 12th grade (some misguided notion about high-protein/low carbs) and a bladder infection that nearly wiped out a kidney because I didn't want to go to the doctor and face the scales an obsession.
Many people lay the blame at the plastic feet of Barbie, but I don't remember yearning for her 42-12-36 figure. Others will fault the glorification of the supermodels and of the naked and ubiquitous Demi Moore. Demi looks like a 12-year-old boy with strategically placed cantaloupes, if you ask me.
No, it's words that have done this to many women. It's your dad watching every bite of food you put in your mouth and telling you that you don't need it; it's your brother pinching your thigh and asking your husband how he can stand the sight of it; it's your size 4 friends and relatives always talking about how fat they are, leaving you to wonder, then, how disgusted they must be by your size 14.
It won't be the platoon of Barbies she owns that will chip away at the self-esteem of my daughter, who at 4 already receives uninvited comments about her shapeliness.
It will be the day she under-stands what "chubby" means that will be the impetus of the next generation's obsession.
For the sake of my daughter and yours, be aware of the weight of your words.
(Burgetta Eplin Wheeler is assistant news editor.)
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