Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer Read Online Free PDF Page A

restaurants would go up and down the halls of our dorm selling anything you could think of—egg rolls, fried rice, pizza, burritos . . . It was insane. My dorm perpetually smelled like a food court.”
    Fletch and I are incredulous. He says, “No one did that at Purdue. None of us had any money.”
    “Not a lot of Jappy girls in Indiana,” Stacey reasons.
    “Question, then—how did you lose the forty pounds?” I ask.
    “I’ll let you know when it happens.” Stacey and I laugh, but Fletch looks like he still can’t wrap his mind around the fact that anyone could gain weight in college. He lived off campus his freshman year and existed on bologna omelets. Every time I pile his breakfast plate high with rashers, he reminds me how three pounds of turkey bacon lasted him a whole semester. Drinking might be the only reason he didn’t starve to death. She asks, “What about you? How’d you shake it off ?”
    “When I got home, my parents decided I was ‘fat,’ so they put me on a diet and had me do a weekly weigh-in. I had to lose two pounds or I was in trouble.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    "Don’t know. I always lost two pounds.” 21
    My mom was so damn mad at me after my freshman year, especially once she saw me in a bathing suit for the first time. I went from 135 pounds to 150 and you’d have thought I’d flunked out given her reaction. 22 She always used to tell me her greatest fear was that I’d walk across the stage at my high school graduation overweight. Really? I remember thinking. With forty girls in my school who’d either gotten pregnant or had babies, this is her issue ? 23 Had I not been so affected by reading novels about anorexia like The Best Little Girl in the World when I was younger, I bet I’d have developed an eating disorder in response to her obsession with my weight.
    I clearly remember how annoyed I was every Friday morning, stomach rumbling, standing on the scale in our tiny first- floor bathroom. My mom would crouch down to examine the numbers while my dad made sure I didn’t try to cheat by pressing my hand down on the towel bar. (He didn’t catch on until the third week. Heh.)
    I desperately hated the whole process, especially because I had no choice in the matter. I knew being heavier didn’t change who I was, and I was furious at being forced to alter something about which I felt perfectly fine. And who cared if I weighed fifteen pounds more than when I competed in the Miss Huntington pageant? It’s not like I won and had to worry about going to Miss Indiana with excess baggage. 24
    The worst part of that summer was the exercise. The second I got up and before I’d do anything else, I’d pop Jane Fonda’s workout into the tape player, huffing my way through the sixty-minute advanced version before I’d allow myself to have my first of three meals of wheat toast.
    To this day, I hate Jane Fonda.
    And leg warmers.
    I’m still OK with toast, though.
    The only thing I liked was swimming laps in our pool, which ended up being the main reason I was able to get back to my pageant weight. But, really, I have to laugh when I think of what my family considered ‘fat.’ I’m just shy of five foot eight, and 150 pounds was well within normal limits, especially since I have a big frame and b-o-o-b-s . I’d gone from a seven to a nine, and I hadn’t even broken into double-digit pant sizes at that point. 25 Plus it was the eighties. At least five pounds was hair and product.
    Stacey asks, “Looking back, are you angry with them?”
    “Now? God, no, not at all. The benefit of hindsight tells me weight wasn’t the real issue. They were trying to come to terms with the fact that their moderately obedient child went away to college, and a drinking, swearing, moderately independent young adult returned in her place, you know? More importantly, I looked fantastic when I went back sophomore year. Totally let me date guys in better fraternities. ”
    “Glad you had your