Fat--A Fate Worse Than Death? by Ellen Cole

Author:Ellen Cole [Thone, Ruth Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317823155
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 1997-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Is Ugly True?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315820538-13

I lay on the table face up, glowing from a nice massage at this vacation resort in Nice, France, which is the site of a convention for my husband. The tiny masseuse touched my shoulders and upper chest and said, “This part of your body is nice, but,” and her hand lightly touched my stomach, “this is not.”

If I had not been lying down, I would have fallen over in a faint at this surprise attack, this rudeness, this impolitic remark from someone in business to make people feel better. This undisguised attempt was, I assume, to sell me face cream for my wrinkles, lotion for the brown spots on my hands and temples, and an exercise regime for my “not nice” protruding belly.

God almighty, do I deserve this? At that ridiculous moment, I thanked her for her concern, got dressed, paid, even tipped her so as not to be further shamed, and left, trying hard not to give in to feeling defeated, embarrassed, socked in the stomach as it were, and resigned to being ugly.

At home in the United States, it’s bad enough to be large and old, but in France, site of the massage ruined by that last remark, it is worse. Appearance, at least in the large cities we visited (Paris and Nice) appeared to be a big issue for women; I saw small, thin, well-dressed women everywhere, shoring up the stereotypical notion these days that the lazy indulgent Americans are especially fat.

We didn’t see what in the old days would have been called peasants—big-boned, strong farm workers pictured so idyllically in large canvasses by European artists. Even in these United States, size is a class issue (also gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic), middle and upper-class women spending lots more time and money on dieting and on procedures to stay young and thin. For people closer to the earth, or perhaps less influenced by the sophistication or fashion trends of big cities and enclaves of the rich and well-to-do, one’s size is simply one’s size, one’s age a matter of fact, not something to be hated, criticized, or tampered with endlessly.

But on that trip, fraught with dreadful low self-esteem brought on by comparison with the other people we were with, with my husband’s positive comments about other women’s clothing, how nice they looked, and none for me, I fell, only noticing consciously that something was wrong, into that old female pit of thinking I was unattractive, unless someone told me differently, and therefore only to be tolerated, endured, and patronized.

Any sane person will respond immediately that such a mood could not have been produced by any outside agent, that I was and am responsible for extricating myself from such a morass, facing the leftover blaming and resentments later from more solid ground. I agree, but I didn’t know what had happened, what I had let happen, and suffered off and on for days.

One night when our group went out together, I remember well that my husband’s face lit up at my appearance—a red silk blouse over a bright skirt.

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