A "weighty" obsession

Bumping this up...thought it was cute. :-)

Originally posted on 1/10/07 at 2:56pm
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I tend to shake my head and sigh whenever I read about Mary Kate Olsen or Lindsay Lohan and their ever-present issues with weight. This is not because I feel that their inability to consume anything over 0.45 calories is despicable. No, no, my friends, I actually empathize with these dear children to some degree. I know what it's like to strive to reach a particular standard of self-perceived perfection; I'm sure that most of us have been there.

When I was 11 years old, a ballet classmate of mine informed me that my thighs were getting fat. I had to do a double take. I was already about 5'6 by the time I was 11, and no scale I had ever been on at that point or before then had ever tipped past 100 lbs. I asked her to please repeat her statement, although I couldn't bear the thought of hearing it again. "I said YOUR THIGHS ARE REALLY FAT!!", she exclaimed. She even went as far as to support her claim by pointing out that my thighs looked especially mammoth while I was sitting on the floor doing our stretches. Is it sad that I still remember her name?

Felicia Davis. She was maybe a year older than me, about an inch or so taller, and extremely top-heavy. She was, like, TWO of me, with a little room to spare. Why didn't I point this out to her so she would get out of my face, and so that I could continue wowing the class with my mastery of the arabesqué? Because that's not the way I was raised. My parents taught me to ignore verbally pessimistic, critical people, as their sole purpose was to find solace in their own feelings of inadequacy. So I smiled at her sweetly, held my head especially high in the air, and walked to the other side of the room to work on my pirouettes.

Sadly, that was the first time I began dieting...at age 11 for goodness sakes! No more potato chips, burgers, chocolate, or ice cream for 11 year-old Tami. I even spent the next few months running in place in my bedroom in front of my full-length mirror. I did this for about 20 minutes per night to assist in rapid weight loss. By the end of the year, once I'd turned 12, I was pretty scrawny. But I remember looking in the mirror and thinking to myself, "What in the world am I ever going to do about these thighs??" The answer would come a few weeks before Christmas that year.

We were in our last ballet class before the holidays, and as I was stretching on the bar one of my classmates approached me to chat. Her name? Kristina Pruitt (daughter of John Pruitt, WSB-TV anchor). While I was talking she began staring at me with fascination. I was certain that she was noticing how fat my thighs were, so I just took a deep breath and said, "What is the matter?" She pointed toward my neck, so I faced the mirror right behind us. I didn't see anything, so I asked, "What's the problem?" She said, "Look at how your collarbone sticks out!". I looked again to confirm this, because I had never noticed this before. I tilted my head (you have to tilt your head to the side to see things more clearly) and said, "Guess you're right." Kristina then explained to me that "...only extremely skinny people have collar-bones that stick out."

I began stopping by Dairy Queen on the way home from ballet class each day, and ordering a banana split with extra whipped cream and chocolate on top. I also ordered an extra side of healthy self-image and a double order of happiness with who I was inside and out. :-)