someone with an ass like mine. It was simply too much to expect. People fell in love with people who were beautiful, and beautiful I was not.
I knew this before I had any but the murkiest idea of what sex involved. I knew this before I had kissed anyone or been on a date. I knew this because I just knew it, and because everything I saw around me reinforced the undeniable truth that I was hideously deformed and therefore unlovable.
In addition to the jeans I couldn’t wear, there were magazines—Seventeen, which I subscribed to, Teen, which my sister subscribed to—stressing the need to be thin if you wanted to attract boys and offering tips on getting rid of unsightly bulges around your butt, hips and thighs. There was my sister, who told me I had the biggest butt in the known world, as if I either didn’t know my butt was big or had willfully and perversely chosen it over a more attractive model. There was my mother, who told my sister to be nice but told me that I really should exercise more, especially leg lifts and squats and lunges, things to trim my butt and thighs. And then there was the mirror at the end of the hall.
I grew up in a long, narrow ranch house with a hallway running all the way through its lengthy middle, from the TV room at south end to the my parents’ bedroom at the north. You could stand against the south wall and see yourself reflected back from the north end—because at the north end, in my parents’ room by their closets, was a full-length mirror, beveled and bright, expertly and perfectly hung, without a trace of cloudiness or distortion.
I discovered at some point that by turning on the light in the bathroom midway between those two ends, then stepping into the hall when the rest of the house was dark, I’d have a clear view of my silhouette in that mirror at the north end. I did this over and over, though it horrified and sickened me to see my body in profile. That bottom! Who had a bottom like that? It was so... big. And round. And obvious. And in such contrast to the rest of me. If I was so repulsed by myself, how much more appalling others must find me!
In an attempt to minimize my very considerable assets, I began tilting my pelvis up and forward, tucking my butt under as far as I could, until it was habit to stand that way. Not until 25 years later did a chiropractor point out to me how unnatural my stance was, how it might be the source of the hip and back problems I suffered from. And it didn’t even fool anyone! One day when I was 13, I lined up at my algebra teacher’s desk to ask a question about our assignment. When it was my turn, I leaned over his desk to explain the difficulty I was having with a particular equation. Two boys stood behind me. They didn’t even bother to whisper as they discussed my butt, the epic proportions of which they’d never seen elsewhere. It was so big! And round! And I was so flat-chested! Wasn’t my body HILARIOUS!