The message

When I wrote yesterday about things that made me receptive to the message that I was fat, it was specific to my circumstances, and those factors may be more important for how I dealt with it.

That being said, there are a lot of factors out there in the broader environment that are telling you - especially if you're female - that you're fat.

I don't think I really got the full message when I was 6. I mean, I got that I was fat, and I got that it was bad, but I had just learned to read. I was not reading magazines, I didn't watch that much television, and there wasn't the level of exposure that there would later be.

I know Mom dieted. I remember calorie charts and exercise booklets (that I would frequently refer to growing up) and times of going to aerobics and jazzercise. I don't remember diet pills, but I do remember a chocolate candy-like weight-loss suppressant that was actually quite tasty. This was unfortunate, because kids would get into them and eat a bunch. In fact, I believe one of my younger sisters did so, which may have been when we stopped keeping them in the house, but the real problem with that product was that it was called "Ayds", and when a frightening new disease with a very similar name was called that a few years later, it was a problem.

http://www.dietspotlight.com/ayds-review/

Actually, those things weren't so much about telling me personally that I was fat; which only takes being told once (maybe more than once, but it sinks in.) What it did reinforce was that no one wanted to be fat. Fat was a very bad thing to be, and since I was fat, that meant that on some level I was bad. Then fat being bad is what the media really reinforced.

There are many things that are sad about this story, but the worst may be that I really wasn't fat.

I thought I was, all along. That was the image I carried in my head from 6 to 21. Then at the Missionary Training Center they recommended that you have some pictures of your family to share because it helps people relate to you as a person, and not just as a missionary. I had not brought any, so I wrote to my mother asking her to send some.

I meant current pictures of the family, but I hadn't specified, and she sent a bunch of old pictures, including one of us up at Mt. Hood. I am about 6 in the picture, so that was when everything was happening. My attention was diverted from the camera to the snow in my hands, and I look remarkably angelic. 

I don't remember ever having seen that picture before, meaning it probably hadn't made it into one of the albums. That was not surprising, because we still  have lots of plastic bags full of photos. It did surprise me that I didn't look fat. I had become fat since then, but I thought I had just been staying fat.

That picture was important, but the more useful one may be my first grade class picture, where I can be seen among other children. I am in the back row, third kid from the right. I look normal. If I were to guess what someone would tease that girl about, I would guess the thick unruly hair.

My level of memory for this picture is remarkable. I have forgotten the last names of two of the kids, both of whom moved, but I still remember the full names of the other three kids who moved, and who went by their middle name and whose last name changed because of divorce, and who had a skin condition, and which kids were best friends. Some of that is because I knew them for longer than this year. However, I can safely say that after this year, I never knew how I looked.