The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

thanks to Clueless .
    Needless to say, I didn’t accomplish that goal then. One spring, two years after college, however, everything changed. Five of my close friends and I decided to take a trip to the Dominican Republic together. A girls’ trip. Half of us were single and half of us were not, but we were all determined to act as one cohesive, partying, semi-slutty unit. One of my friends was already notorious for her sixty-five albums on Facebook, full of memorable, oft-embarrassing pictures of me and my other friends. She could make or break your photo history. This thought alone made me resolve to look my bestfor this trip, better than I had ever looked before. I had to get in shape. So, I took on the Master Cleanse, a.k.a. the maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and lemonade diet, a.k.a. “the Beyoncé Diet,” and gained an entirely new perspective on dieting.
    I decided to take “before and after” pictures. Considering my previous life felt like a giant “before” picture, I could have selected any picture I wanted, but I wanted to do this right. I decided to take full-on, gutty-flabtastic front and profile pictures, to show the world what I was. I would keep those pictures on file as inspiration, and they wouldn’t be seen by the public until after I’d demonstrated some progress.
    Next, I decided to enlist my mother. How I convinced her is still a mystery to me. Maybe it was the guilt she felt for passing her notorious abdominal genes down to me.
    “Haha,” she’d say, poking my stomach, setting off an involuntary wave of mini-jiggles, “you got that from me.”
    Maybe she, too, shared my desire to wear midriff T-shirts without high-waisted jeans. Either way, she decided to join me.
    “I’ll do it with you. But only for four days.”
    And that was enough for me. Despite my hatred of group projects, I’m a collaborator. A team player. When it comes to difficult things that I want to accomplish, I’m all about working with people. Even writing. While there’s a satisfaction that comes with completing something all by yourself, sometimes things are just more efficient and promising when you know that people are in the trenches, suffering with you.
    So we embarked on our journey together and it was literally shitty. I ass-peed for the first time in my adult life. I got up to urinate frequently; my record was four times during an hour-and-a-half-long meeting. So as to distract myself from eating, I watched moviesand online food videos. Watching other people eat on television was soothing. I used my blog to document my journey and attracted a slew of followers interested in my weight-loss journey. The rapid results surprised me. I posted a Before and After picture of my five-day progress, and there was a noticeable difference. I continued for five more days, for a total of ten days WITHOUT FOOD! I took my final After picture and I had a fucking six-pack. I had never seen my abs before that. I posted my proud pictures on Facebook, and my feed and blog exploded. People who had made fun of me for doing the diet before suddenly expressed a desire to try it. If approval can be judged by Facebook comments, let’s say I passed expectation. Best of all, I was ready to proudly rock a bikini in the Dominican Republic.
    Completing the Master Cleanse opened up a whole new door of masochism for me. I was now privy to my starvation limits and would undoubtedly subject myself to something of equal or greater suffering in the future, just to reach my body goals. Because once the compliments come in, you’re totally seduced into equating self-worth with skinniness. Wow, you look great! Oh my God, so skinny! Geez, what’s your workout plan? The compliments were the most addictive drug of all. I live for the validation that accompanies weight loss.
    Moving to Los Angeles only intensified my need to be thin. Though fellow dieters seem to be everywhere and restaurants provide more “fit friendly” options, it took a more