She has just stepped out of the shower, her skin still covered in a fine mist from the shower spray. She stares at her pale body in the mirror, pinching, prodding, occasionally turning to look at the small hump of fat that falls just below her belly button. "When did that get there?" she wonders. Her eyes linger on her belly, and then follow the line of her body up form the floor. Her list of unsatisfactories grows longer each day. Today she adds the pot-belly, which is present even at eight a.m., on an empty stomach. She stifles a groan of frustration, and her eyes leave the stomach unaffected by hundreds of sit-ups, and meet the blue eyes that stare vacantly back at her from the mirror.
It took a long time to gain this weight, it will take a long time to lose it again.
She sighs, her eyes returning to the soft "love handles" that have begun to develop right above her hips, where her slender waist had once been. What the hell does "love handles" mean anyway? As far as she knows, they are not loved by anybody. She grabs her hips, squeezing hard to punish herself for letting them get there in the first place. Her fingers leave white marks on her hips, which fade to skin-color and then turn red. Her pointer finger becomes her special knife, the one that can cut the fat off of her waist, thighs, butt, arms, wherever needed. How foolish she is. The knife turns back into a pointer finger, and her love handles remain. A moan wells up in her throat, and her eyes are hot and burning. When she raises her head to meet the eyes in the mirror again, she notices they are filled with tears.
I will have only water for a week.
She sniffs, wiping angrily at her salty eyes, and grabs her blue jeans from the floor, silently vowing to not eat as much as she had yesterday. She knows it won't work. It never does. It seems that every morning she wakes up with a similar vow: no dessert today, only fruit, no sugar, run five miles, go to the gym for two hours. Every night, too, is similar: you were bad today, Hannah (remembering the ice cream at lunch), how many fat grams in a slice of American cheese? way too many. And yet, as much as she beats herself over the head for breaking her fat free, low sugar diet and two hours at the gym, she makes more promises, soon to be broken, too. It seems that though she has little problem making herself work out every day, she cancels out those hours when she indulges in a m&m cookie. Is she doomed with this body for life?
Then maybe carrots, and celery, and if I lose, then Sunday I'll have brown rice.
Nobody ever believes her; that is the most frustrating part. They think she is out to get attention, she supposes. And then, she wonders, am I only trying to get compliments? It seems as if the compliments can never fill up her pot, (cauldron, more like it) of self worth. She'll still go home and empties her pot by pinching the fat deposits on her inner thighs. She wants to talk about how bad she feels. (Isn't that what her parents, practitioners of good communication skills, always told her, to talk about her feelings?) She will comment, in casual conversation, how she is feeling fat lately, and always gets the same response: "Oh, Hannah!," a little chuckle, and she is dismissed from the discussion of gaining weight. She, they feel, has nothing of significance to say in this conversation. Instead, inside her head, the words pounding and bouncing off her skull like trapped insects, she is screaming, "Listen to me! I am fat! I hate my body!" On the outside, the words successfully suppressed once more, she presses her lips into a firm white line and sighs again.
Because someone will adore me when my ribs show clearly, and I'm thin even when I sit down.
She hates herself for hating herself. A woman of the nineties, she thinks, is strong and brave. She is independent. She is among womyn. And yet she wonders why she judges her worth by how much her stomach hangs over the waist of her blue jeans when she sits down. It used to be important how her face looked, too, but complaining about a nose a bit too big got old when she realized she was going to be with that nose until the day she died. That's when the skinny, hey-I-just-finished-puberty body began to fill out into a more "womanly" shape. Six months later she finds herself doubled over the toilet, sobbing as she jams a toothbrush down her throat. She just wants to get that candy bar out of her stomach.
Someone will admire my gorgeous arms and legs when I'm only one hundred pounds.
Some days she feels that this battle is one big clichˇd mess that every young woman goes through, and she should just deal with it. Others, she's got her head in the toilet again or finds herself writing a hideously embarrassing poem about how miserable she is. The theme that keeps popping up? If she's not happy with her body, how can anyone else be? And so she trudges wearily onward, in search of the never nearing goal: her own, living Hannah-flesh transforming itself into a supermodel's body.
I want to be skinny.*
"When is this going to end?" she wonders. That boyfriend she had a couple years ago helped by telling her how beautiful she was, but, isn't it enough for her to feel beautiful, all by herself? He had helped, she thinks, grudgingly, throwing a silent thanks to the one guy who had given her self confidence; handed it to her, if only for a little while. "Oh, Hannah, you're a different person." "You even walk differently." her friends had said during their relationship. And they were right. But she wants to parade down the street like she owns the world without a man on her other arm. "Then do it!" she scolds herself, a sudden surge of determination and liberation pounding through her veins. And then she catches a glimpse of her stomach, fatty as ever, and she sighs once more. She shakes her head in frustration as she puts on her shoes and grabs her backpack. "I will be happy with myself and my body," she mutters to herself, doing a last minute check around her room to see if she's forgotten anything. As she passes by the bureau, she stops in front of the infamous mirror. She glares at herself, imagining herself as fearsome and strong, and then laughs at her foolishness. She glares again, glares and laughs, glares and laughs. She takes one last look in the mirror, and smiles. O.K., Hannah, she thinks, another day.
This is the last time, this time I will win.
by Alyssa Hughes