‹ Prequel: Ana
Sequel: Relearning Laura ›
The "You're Not Fat" Campaign
Assembly
When I get to school the next day, there is an assembly.
About eating disorders.
I sit on the hard gym floor in between Rick and a fat girl named LouAnn, feeling my tailbone press into the wooden slats.
Principle Morales drones on and on about the "very real dangers of eating disorders for teens, expecially girls". I tune him out.
He spews out statistics and I focus on the thinness of my fingers.
He plays a slideshow. There are pictures from thinspo websites of skinnyskinny girls with concave stomachs and protruding hips and thigh gaps and everything is pretty. Cassie stands up and walks out of the gym. Rick glances after her, worried. I stare at the slideshow, mesmerized. All around me, people are saying "Ew!" and "She looks dead" and "Fucking nasty!" and "I'm gonna throw up". But I know better.
I know that the slideshow girls are beautiful.
They're perfect.
And they're what I'm going to be.
About eating disorders.
I sit on the hard gym floor in between Rick and a fat girl named LouAnn, feeling my tailbone press into the wooden slats.
Principle Morales drones on and on about the "very real dangers of eating disorders for teens, expecially girls". I tune him out.
He spews out statistics and I focus on the thinness of my fingers.
He plays a slideshow. There are pictures from thinspo websites of skinnyskinny girls with concave stomachs and protruding hips and thigh gaps and everything is pretty. Cassie stands up and walks out of the gym. Rick glances after her, worried. I stare at the slideshow, mesmerized. All around me, people are saying "Ew!" and "She looks dead" and "Fucking nasty!" and "I'm gonna throw up". But I know better.
I know that the slideshow girls are beautiful.
They're perfect.
And they're what I'm going to be.