Her sobs echoed throughout the house as she stormed inside and slammed the door shut after running off the school bus.
“Lexie, sweet heart, what’s wrong?” I asked as I looked at her face with soaking wet cheeks. She then looked up at me with bright red eyes, tears still spilling out.
“Well …” Lexie said softly as I wiped her tears. “All of the kids in my class were making fun of me today because they think I’m too skinny. They said really mean things to me all day long, even after I told the teacher,” She finished.
I was dumbfounded, why would appearance matter to an 8 year old? Immediately I wrapped her up in my arms and held her tight. I cheered her up with words of comfort and finished ...view middle of the document...
I turned back around and ignored her as I usually would. However, this time, her comments actually upset me. I have never been insulted by the way I looked before and I just wanted to crawl into a ball and go home. I held back the tears and anxiously waited for my turn to use the restroom. I could still hear her making snooty comments behind me. She was comparing me to a pancake, of all the thin things that I could be compared to. O’Nesha’s remarks made me think about things I have never even thought to pay attention to before: The differences in our bodies. She was quite developed for a 10 year old, especially when comparing her to me. I will admit I was skinnier than most, but I wasn’t nearly abnormally skinny to the point of it being unhealthy. After all, I was outside all of the time, what else would you expect?
That was just the beginning. This bad habit that I had newly formed continued into sixth grade when I met someone named, who was also more developed than the average sixth grader. She also made comments about how skinny I was. I began feeling extremely self-conscious, and wished that I had curves like her and the other girls that I saw on T.V. (which no average sixth grader even had, by the way).
I began making connections. I made connections between all of the people that I liked to watch on T.V. and read about in magazine. I had pictures of them hanging on my wall, I looked up to them. None of them were as skinny as me. Their stomachs might have been small, but they had something that I didn’t: Curves.
“Catherine,” I began, “You know how I’m so much skinnier than you? Well, how can I look more like you?”
“I’m not sure, but I know I eat a lot more than you do. Try eating a lot of quarter pounders from McDonald’s,” she grinned in response. Catherine took it as a compliment.
Over the years I listened to her advice… Maybe I even listened to it a little too much. Three years later I’m sitting in Spanish 1 class, freshman year.
“Hey Marissa, you look fat,” said my friend, Tristan. I was shocked. I have never once thought of myself as fat. I was even smaller than a lot of my other friends, fat was the last trait I would have used to describe myself. I let it go, but his remarks continued throughout the year. At first I didn’t believe him, I just thought he was annoying and no longer...
