Image is Everything

November 14th, 2006.

I met Renee in English class in the 7th grade and was immediately stricken with a mild case of hero worship. Renee was constantly thought provoking, extremely witty and an excellent writer. She made friends easily and impressed teachers with her scholastic abilities. She had great taste in music and impeccable taste in books. She was a great listener and never needed to be the center of attention. In many ways, she was my polar opposite. She was kind when I was cruel. She was calm when I was always riled up. She thought things over carefully while I made impulsive mistakes. Despite all of this, she became my best friend and even though our friendship looked like it was filled with respect and equality, secretly I knew that Renee was everything I wanted to be, but likely never would be.

I took Renee home and introduced her to my parents because I was so proud of my new friend. My Mother sized her up and then took me aside. “You can’t have a fat friend, V,” she whispered to me harshly, “Do you have any idea what that will do to your image?”

Before those bitterly whispered words, I hadn’t even noticed that Renee was significantly overweight. I was too busy being enamored by everything else that was wonderful about her.

Needless to say that I ignored my Mother’s dire warning against befriending Renee and if my image suffered? Oh well. Renee wasn’t superficial in the least and I didn’t want to be, either. We were attached at the hip for 3 years and our friendship lasted through puberty, the transition to high school, and our budding obsession with boys.

When we were 14, I had gained myself my very first boyfriend. Renee was still unattached at the time, but she was fooling around with a boy a bit older than her. She was always fooling around with boys older than her, but I thought that just made her sophisticated and experienced. My boyfriend was my own age, but being a horny 14 year old, he was always pressuring me for sex. Although we were both virgins at the time, I leaned on Renee hard for reassurance and advice since she was more experienced sexually than I was. She urged me towards it although I wasn’t ready. I don’t think her advice had any mal intent. Instead, I think she was ready for sex and advised me based on her own emotional needs.

In the end, I didn’t do it and ironically it was Renee who turned me away from it. She called me up one evening, crying, and admitted that she just lost her virginity….to my boyfriend. She was blubbering into the phone, apologizing profusely, and in my shock I assured her that everything was OK and that we’d talk tomorrow. When I hung up the phone, I buried my face into a pillow and cried.

The next day the shock had worn off and I went over to Renee’s house, hopping mad and ready to confront her. I found her sitting on her front porch waiting for me, unwashed and wrapped in a sheet. Seeing her sitting there looking so melancholy drained my anger instantly and my entire pre-planned confrontation was reduced to a single question, “Why?”

She replied, “It’s hard to explain. But you know how sometimes you feel like your life is shit and you’re going nowhere and no one really cares for you?”

“You know I do, Renee.”

“Well here was this boy and he wanted me….and…I….”

“So that’s it? You don’t even care for him?”

“No, I’m not even attracted to him…”

“But I did care for him. Didn’t that matter to you at all?”

“What do you know about it? You’re skinny.”

I am ashamed to say that it wasn’t until that exact instant that I became aware of a dynamic that plagued our friendship since the very first day we met. Renee was smart, but I was thin. Renee was hysterical, but I was thin. Renee was talented, but I was thin. Renee was everything I wanted to be, but all those fantastic qualities she possessed were trumped by my size 4 jeans.

It’s been almost two decades since our friendship ended and that knowledge still doesn’t sit right with me.

That’s one of the reasons I get so annoyed when people read my writing, disagree with my attitude and always make the assumption that I’m overweight. I mean, what are you trying to say about fat people anyway? Does a person have no worth if their dress size is in the double digits?

Then I remember that the fact of the matter is that most fat girls are bitter and angry and filled with hatred. They can have everything going for them, but in a world so deeply caught up in superficiality and image, they’re nobodies. And while that’s sad, they’re partially to blame. Instead of rejecting the stereotype, they wallow in it. I’ve never met a fat girl who wasn’t a gossipy, backstabbing, manipulative bitch. Products, you might argue, of their environment.

Sometimes I wonder how things would have turned out if Renee would have been thinner. I wonder if we would have still been friends to this day if she had the ability to look past my size and care more about me than she cared about ‘getting one over on the skinny girl.’ I wonder if she’d believe me if I told her that I would have traded my body in a heartbeat for one half of her cleverness.

Probably not. After all, isn’t image everything?

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