As a kid I was always taller and more shapely than everyone else my age. In 7th grade when all of my little petite friends were getting "boyfriends," one of my friends asked my crush if he liked me.
His response was, "Oh, she's pretty, but she's just way too big for me to be with. If she were smaller, then sure."
I have never forgotten that. And now, ten years later, I still have anxiety every time I look into the mirror.
When I was in 5th grade, we took a class trip to Canada.
While we all walked around a beautiful mansion/ castle, my best friend's mom looked at me and said, "Suck your stomach in. In a year you will lose some inches off, and you won't look as fat."
Junior year of high school, we put on Winnie the Pooh as our spring play, and we performed the show at all of the local elementary schools.
Our cast was mostly black, as is the population of our town. When we brought the play to schools that were also mostly black, the children adored us. We were big, fuzzy rock stars!
However, when we brought it to the suburban and private elementary schools, the little kids were fearful of us. They would ask their teacher, "Why is Pooh black?"
My cast-mates were uncomfortable. The kids didn't laugh very much. Our director blamed it on low cast energy, but we knew him too well to know that he was just trying to ignore the obvious. Those kids didn't see themselves represented for probably the first time in their lives, and they didn't know how to deal with it. I learned a lot about racism and media representation that day.
Now whenever I hear someone complaining about a fictional character being non-white, I always think back to those little suburban kids, confused at their lack of representation for the first time and not knowing how to handle it. Except the people I'm referring to are grown adults with access to plenty of white characters to relate to.
I got married really young, and it took me six years after our divorce to realize that it was an abusive relationship.
One of the first hints was when I went to visit a loved one in Alabama without my husband. During the trip, I got my hair cut from shoulder-length to pageboy cut, and I absolutely adored it. I thought I was beautiful for the first time since my son was born.
I was gone for a full 10 days, and as I got off the Greyhound I heard my husband call to me. He didn't say, "Hi." He didn't say, "We missed you." He didn't say, "Welcome home."
All he said to me was, "What the HELL did you do to your hair?!?!"
The whole ride home he went on and on about how I shouldn't have cut my hair, how I didn't even talk to him about it first, how awful I looked with short hair, and how it made me look slutty.
I had this friend in high school who would sleep over at my house a lot. One time she left a pair of leggings in my room, and I mistook them for mine, so I wore them to school one day.
She saw me wearing them and asked if they were hers, and I realized that they were. I apologized, telling her she'd get them back. She told me it was okay, adding, "Just don't stretch them out."
I've always had bigger thighs. And I never used to care a whole lot. But now I hate them in every pair of leggings I put on.
Growing up, I was never really big, but compared to my 5'4 120 pound mother, I was enormous.
For Christmas in 5th grade, I received a beautiful box wrapped in red paper from my parents. I excitedly opened it in front of my entire family. It was the Richard Simmons Deal-a-Meal diet program. I was absolutely humiliated. My mother's only explanation was, "You need this."
I look back on my childhood and I can remember the comments from them about how big my arms were and how fat I looked in my clothes. I remember my mom saying once that she didn't understand why I was so fat because I didn't eat any more than she did. These things stuck with me. I don't think my parents intentionally tried to hurt me, but their words are burned into my soul.
I'm now 33 years old with a 10 year old daughter of my own. I go out of my way to build up my daughter and to let her know that she is perfect just the way she is.
As a kid, I had short hair, played sports, and was routinely mistaken for a boy. We moved when I was 10, and I started a new school. I kept wearing androgynous clothes and flattening sports bras. I was self-conscious not only of being the new kid with no friends, but of being one of the only kids wearing a bra. I had short, short hair and "boy clothes," but breasts.
It wasn't until high school that I started dressing girlier and growing my hair out. In homeroom one day, a male classmate gave me an unsolicited compliment on my new look.
He went on to describe how my appearance used to freak him out because he couldn't tell what I was. The clincher, though, that stuck with me? "I remember when you moved here...I was like, 'Is it a guy or a chick? What IS it?'"
I replied with a sarcastic joke, but in reality, most sentient beings probably wouldn't like being labelled as "it."
When I was in 7th grade, nobody knew me yet in my new classes. There was this guy who was known for being a douche, yet I still had a crush on him.
One day he and a friend were walking behind me, and I heard him say, "Look, she's so fat!"
A few months later, we were practically best friends in class. He called another girl fat, but I thought he was talking about me. When I asked, he said, "No! Why would I call you fat?" To which I responded, "You actually have before. Ages ago. You said it while you were walking behind me."
He then spent the next seven minutes completely denying that he ever said this, that he didn't even know who I was at the time.
That was the first time I that realized how easy it is for people to make comments that may be insignificant to them but everything to you. So insignificant that they don't even remember making them. So insignificant to him, but so scarring and formative for me.
"You may not be the prettiest girls in the world..."
My mother said this to my sister and me at the ripe old ages of nine and ten, during a "heartfelt" conversation. Those words have stuck with me for over 30 years.
From that moment on, I never believed it when anyone told me I was cute, pretty, beautiful or gorgeous. I believed that all those people were obviously lying, because my mother said differently.
My mom apologizes to this day, and she insists that her words came out wrong. And I believe her, because she is often removing her foot from her mouth after unintentionally saying something harmful. I've tried to let it go, but those words are so deeply engrained in me that I fear they can't be erased.
I've purposely tried to tell my children how handsome and beautiful they are, but I think that my negative outlook of myself has rubbed off on them. Neither one of them see their beauty. I HATE that.
I have been overweight my whole life. In my early twenties, I lost 60 pounds and felt great. One day, my father, who is solely concerned with appearance, paid me what he thought was a compliment.
He said, "I'm so glad you lost that weight. You really looked like whale before."
Needless to say, when I gained the weight back, I was embarrassed and ashamed to see my father.
Has anyone ever made a fleeting comment about you that immediately became tattooed onto the front of your brain for all of eternity, impacting your self-perception and self-worth? Whether it was an offhand comment made by someone you love and respect or a fleeting declaration by someone you barely know, we share the moments that stick.
