I sit on the coach, opposite of where Lucy always sat, with my laptop nestled on top of a pillow. My mom has moved her crown, which sits in a glass case, from the center of the mantel to make room for Lucy’s urn. It’s a small thing, but it’s enough to remind me that my mom is more than the pageant.
She uses wax paper to iron some kind of patches onto denim tablecloths, for the pageant luncheon, I’m sure. “Now, I saw a commercial for this special the other day.”
She flips through channels until she lands on MTV.
The camera follows a girl from behind, walking down the street of a snow-covered neighborhood. She’s wide and her stomach hangs over her jeans. I immediately know where this is going.
I hate seeing fat girls on TV or in movies, because the only way the world seems to be okay with putting a fat person on camera is if they’re miserable with themselves or if they’re the jolly best friend. Well, I’m neither of those things.
A voice-over kicks in over footage of the girl doing perfectly normal human things, like, walking and eating. “Sixteen-year-old Priscilla of Bridgeport, Connecticut, may have a sweet tooth, but that doesn’t mean that sixteen has been so sweet. Teased and ridiculed her entire life, Priscilla is done carrying the extra weight. She doesn’t know it yet, but we here at MTV have heard her plea.” The camera zooms in on her ass, which is the kind of butt that tapers down at the bottom and always makes you look like you have a wedgie. Then the camera cuts away to a purple screen with the title of the show stamped across it like a rejection stamp. TRANSFORM ME: I HATE MY FAT BODY.
I glance over at my mom, but she trains her eyes down on her project. I want to get up and lock myself in my room, but I sort of want to know Pathetic Priscilla’s fate, so I decide to stick around. Maybe Priscilla’s life is an even bigger mess than mine and I’ll walk away feeling like I’ve at least got it better than this poor girl.
This isn’t new territory for my mom and me. She had me on more fad diets than I can list before I even turned eleven. It was always a sore point between her and Lucy. I’d hear the two of them downstairs, arguing back and forth about it long after I should have been asleep.
“She’s a child,” Lucy would say.
“I want her to be healthy,” my mom would retort. “Surely you understand where I’m coming from, Luce? I just don’t want her to grow up to be . . .”
“Like me? Just say it, Shirley. You don’t want her to grow up to be like your big sister. She sees me every day for Christ’s sake. I think my existence is deterrent enough.”
“You know what it was like for us when we were kids. You remember.”
My mom never talked about her life before high school. She was big. Like me. And it wasn’t something she was proud of. But the summer before ninth grade, Mom shed her baby fat like dead skin. Lucy was in eleventh grade by then and she hadn’t been so lucky. The dieting eventually stopped when I hit middle school. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it could’ve only been Lucy.
On the TV, Priscilla is ambushed at school by a tiny yet aggressive woman who turns out to be her personal trainer. Despite signing up for the show herself, Priscilla goes into freak-out mode, locking herself in a bathroom stall and crying herself silly. Eventually the trainer comes in and shows her soft side while giving the ultimate pep talk. I mean, seriously, it even got me feeling a little fired up. Over what, I have no idea.
I don’t have to look at my mom to know that her eyes are watering. The this-is-your-life-stop-standing-in-the-way-of-your-thinnest-self moment is my mom’s favorite part of any weight-loss show.