No boys here

6th grade was an especially difficult year for me.  It was the year that kids starting "going with" each other.  By the end of the first semester, I was sure that every girl had been asked to go with someone except for me.  I was probably wrong about that, but it certainly seemed that way.  You would think that with my cute new hourglass figure, the boys would be beating down my door, but that was not the case at all.  Perhaps they were intimidated.  Perhaps, it was because I was still somewhat awkward and uncoordinated.  Whatever the reason, I was not getting any attention.  Now, in one of my classes, my desk was pushed into the corner on my right side.  Not a great configuration for someone who is right handed.  I had to sit "side-saddle" in my desk just so I could write.  Of course, I often got in trouble for talking to the boy next to me, because I was facing him for half the day.  I wouldn't say that I had a crush on him, but I definitely would have considered him a friend.  Over the Christmas break, I got a phone call.  He said it was the boy next to me in class, and asked me to go with him.  I said yes.  After all, what is a boyfriend but a friend who is a boy?  School didn't start back for a week, and he didn't call back.  I had a strange sinking feeling that something was amiss.  By the time class rolled around on the first day back, I discovered that not only was it a prank, but it wasn't even the boy who had called me.  It was someone else.  You'd better believe that I didn't get in trouble for talking in class for several weeks.  Unfortunately, I still had to sit sideways in my desk facing the boy, and it made life pretty awkward until it all blew over.
On a positive note, I did discover during that year, that with my newly found muscles that I could run pretty fast over short distances.  Several kids in the grade were still faster than me, but I was probably in the top five girl runners, so that gave me a small measure of confidence in some of our gym activities.  I tried to run longer distances, thinking maybe I was a runner like my daddy, but could never build up the stamina for it.

Hourglass

First, let me apologise for the lack of a post last Thursday.  I contracted a stomach bug, which doesn't go well with pregnancy, and left me a bit out of it for a few days.

Sometime during the summer before I started 6th grade, I sprouted.  I distinctly remember waking up one morning and simply not being able to fit into those accursed training bras anymore.  Instead, I wandered down the hallway to my parents' room and raided my mother's undie drawer.  Woah!  It was overnight!  Suddenly, I no longer looked like a little girl, but a young woman.  At eleven!  I was not ready for this.  When we went to restaurants, I had to beg for the children's menu.  While walking my dog, much older men would eyeball me as they drove by in their cars.  I even watched as one such man turned around, rolled down his window, and asked me how old I was!
That same summer, I went to camp.  Running around outdoors for a week up and down hills had another effect on my growing body.  I developed some serious muscles in my legs.  For a girl who was not at all athletic, this was quite unexpected.  Gone was the pudge of pre-pubescence.  I now had a lovely little hourglass figure with strong, muscular legs.  Funny thing is, I don't think I was any more comfortable with the hourglass than I had been with the chub.  I hadn't expected to grow up so early.  In my mind, this wasn't something that should happen until you were at least in your teens.  Why had I become a young woman so soon?

Early development

A lot of little girls look forward to getting their first bra.  One of my own, in fact, came to me one day and asked if I could buy her some "flat bras".  She didn't really need them, but hey, if that's what she wants, it's a simple enough request.  I was not one of those girls.  For whatever reason, I began budding much earlier than most of my peers.  When I was in 5th grade, my mother started making me wear a bra.  I get where she was coming from.  Really I do.  I had a lot of little white blouses and definitely needed to wear something under them for modesty's sake.  I should have worn a camisole.  Instead, I had training bras, and the kids at school teased me endlessly because I didn't have actual breasts.  Especially the boys.  Great.  Here I was, already a dork, and now I'm being teased for my undergarments, as though that was any of their damn business.  Little did I know that in less than a year's time, those bras would be the least of my worries.

Prepubescent pudge

I remember the first time I looked at myself and thought I was fat.  It was in fourth grade.  My teacher had taken pictures of everyone for some project, and I was wearing one of my favourite outfits - a white blouse with turquoise and pink swirls on it, and a little ruffle at the bottom, with some pink coolots (Yay for 80s fashion!).  In reality, I had simply developed the spare tire that a lot of little girls get shortly before they enter puberty.  The drop waist on the blouse I wore was really not flattering on a little girl with a little pudge.
Fourth grade was a pivotal year for me in many ways.  Every year, the fourth graders at my school put on a Christmas musical, and it was something that I had looked forward to for three whole years.  For some reason, the teachers picked, not a musical, but a musical variety show for that year with no real plot or acting parts in it.  It consisted of four main groups: Susie Snowflake, Frosty the Snowman, reindeer, and elves.  All the cool kids were in Frosty or Susie Snowflake.  Oh, how I longed to be in the Susie Snowflake group with their spangled white circle skirts and pretty make up!  The dorky kids, however, were reindeer and elves.  I was a reindeer.  With a one-piece, brown jumpsuit and black makeup on my nose.  To add insult to the injury of being neglected an opportunity to act after three years of anticipation, I didn't even get in one of the cool groups.  It seemed that even the teachers were conspiring against me.  Thinking about it now, I'm guessing that most of the girls in the other two groups probably had some dancing experience, and I had not yet discovered my love of dance.  I was (I'm sure) known for being somewhat clumsy, and therefore not put in the groups that had more complicated choreography.  I really hated that show.  To this day, it's the only show I've ever been in that I can't even remember the name of.

Young and uncoordinated

When I was four or five, I wanted to take ballet.  The ballet teacher at our local YMCA would not accept me into her class.  She said that I was not coordinated enough to be a ballerina, and should instead take gymnastics.  I really was not at all interested in gymnastics.  I was a girly-girl with long hair, and lots of dresses.  I wanted to wear tutus and prance across the stage en pointe.  Gymnastics held my attention for maybe one round of classes that probably lasted all of six weeks.
When I started grade school, I quickly discovered that I was no good at the sports we had to play in gym class.  I was short, awkward, and almost always one of the last picked for teams.  While I was a perfectly average-sized kid (aside from my height) and this did not actually have anything to do with my weight, I was keenly aware of the fact that I wasn't a particularly athletic girl.  Organised sports simply were not my thing, and it would be many years before I found something physical that I felt confident in doing.

Family history

I grew up in an extremely fat-phobic family.  That's not to say that I didn't have good and loving parents, because I did.  My mother had me as a "bonus baby" when she was 42 years old, and worked hard to lose the weight afterward.  She did, and I always thought she looked great.  I think, however, that she wanted to be the same sized women she was after she had her first round of children in her early 20s.  Not the most realistic wish unless you happen to be willing to undergo quite a bit of plastic surgery.  Quite frankly, I think she still looks pretty damn good, even now, in her 70s.  My father was a fitness fanatic.  Fueled by a very valid concern of heart disease after his father passed away, he took up marathon running, and SCUBA diving in his early 40s.  He still goes to the YMCA to work out five days a week.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have absolutely NO problem with attempting to live a healthy lifestyle.  I often refer to myself jokingly as a hippie-tree-hugger.  My husband is a vegetarian, and nine meals out of ten, I am too.  I actually *gasp!* like fruit and veggies.  They are one of the few food groups that I crave when I'm pregnant.  I love almost all forms of dance, and yoga.  However, for someone built roughly like a fantastical dwarf minus the facial hair, this all pervasive attitude that being thin is only way to be attractive or healthy certainly shaped the way I felt about my body.

Hello World

I have struggled with my body image for as long as I can remember.  Some days, I look in the mirror at my (currently pregnant) figure and am in awe of the natural beauty of the female physique.  Others, all I can see are the stretch marks and breasts that aren't as perky as I would like for them to be.  As I look around me, I realise that most of my friends feel this way, too.  Even the skinny ones.  I am slowly realising that this is a universal struggle and I am not alone, but just one of millions of women who look at themselves daily (or worse yet, never look in a mirror at all) and wrestle with what they see.  Someday, I hope to be at peace with my body.  I hope to win this war and not pass down a legacy of self-loathing to my daughters.  I hope to look at myself and see the beauty that my husband sees and not the imperfections that I see.  With this blog, I hope that by sharing my battles, I can somehow help someone else in her's.
I am an obesophobe.  This is my story.