I’ve worked all my life to love my curves, so hearing her say she thinks I’m beautiful, that I have the best body, is honestly surprising. It also makes me proud of all the work I’ve put into not saying negative things about my body in front of them.
I’m in between those sizes where I’m too big for regular clothes but somehow too small for plus-size ones. I have to choose between having jeans that fit my ass and I can’t zip, or jeans I can zip but are baggy on me. I’m tall and too wide for boutique dresses, but when I go to Maurice’s or anything like that, I don’t have rolls or curves to fit them properly. It’s exhausting.
But I’ve made it my life’s mission to make sure they know my body is beautiful and powerful. It gave me two healthy, beautiful kids. It has been through hell and back, and it is still going. That is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I’m not insecure sometimes.
“Honey, you are so beautiful, and your body is perfect the way it is. You’re comparing a child to a woman’s body, and that’s not fair. It’s really not fair to compare anyone to anyone, because we’re all different and special in our own way.”
I make a turn into the YMCA’s parking lot, but I park instead of heading to drop off. I can’t let her go like this.
Unbuckling, I turn, softening my expression when I see her skeptical face. “We all grow at different rates. And your friends?—”
“They’re not my friends. They were talking behind my back,” she interrupts.
“Were they talking behind your back, or were they just not talking to you?”
She rolls her eyes.
“I’ll take that as they were not talking to you.”
The sigh she lets out could make me laugh, but I hold it in. I don’t want her not to trust me. When she was little, I read something like if you don’t listen to kids when they tell you the little things, they won’t come back to you with the bigger things.
This, in the grand scheme of things, is not a huge thing, but it is for her. In her world, two girls who I think she wants to be friends with were talking about other people’s bodies, and she lumped herself into that.
“What I am going to say is that no matter what you look like or what your body looks like, you deserve to enjoy your time at a water park. All it takes for you to have a bikini body,” I say with air quotes, “is to have a body and a bikini. If you have both, then you’re ready.” I squeezed her hand gently. “It’s not nice to talk about others’ bodies, whether they look similar or very different from us. That’s something I’ve learned through life.”
“But they were right.”
“About what?”
“That girls without a butt and boobs look like little girls and not like women.”
“My love, you’re not a woman yet.”
She sighs.
“Yet. You will be one day, but not yet. Besides, there are plenty of women with small breasts or no breasts at all. Women with smaller butts and with bigger butts. It doesn’t matter. All bodies are beautiful, okay?”
“I don’t even have my period yet,” she mutters.
“Girl, be thankful for that. Once you get your period, there’s no going back, and you have to deal with that once a month for the rest of your life. Trust me, enjoy it while you don’t have it.”
She closes her eyes and whispers something inaudible.
“I know you think I’m a superhero or whatever, but I don’t have supersonic hearing.”
“I said fine.”
“Go have fun, my girl. School is back in a couple of weeks, and you won’t have the chance to do this again for a while.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want me to walk you up there and go have a talk with Rowenna and Tina about talking about other girls behind their backs?"
“No.”
“We’re all in this together, and there’s already so many things we have to fight against; each other shouldn’t be one of them.”
“Mom, please, no.”
