A Little More Fat Please
In the early 80's, while my mom and my pubescent peers alike complained about their extra poundage, I prayed to mother nature to grant me curves. I ate ice cream and milkshakes and everything else that would encourage the pinch of at least an extra inch, but my metabolism always won out over will. In sixth grade my desk was directly facing Lisa O.'s for one miserable year. A little brunette with perfectly placed freckles on a button nose and a charming gap between her two front teeth; Lisa O. often berated me for my scrawny legs and bony knees. 
"You look like an Ethiopian," she'd explain. "So disgusting."
In the world outside grade school, a porky, post-"All in the Family" Sally Struthers was back on TV airwaves pleading viewers to help feed the starving in Ethiopia. But none of my peers were telling me I looked like those emaciated children out of concern for my health. Even teachers had been known to ask me outright if I was with about as much sensitivity and genuine concern as Lisa O.
My mom bought Jane Fonda's workout record and book the instant it hit the shelves. Though little in overall size, my mom always had that extra bulge below the waist. Her bottom half was not just round. It wasn't round and firm and robust. It was kind of like a lumpy, silk covered, hand-sewn pillow stuffed up with cotton balls. It jiggled when she walked. In her bedroom, my mom would shimmy on her black and purple striped leotard over white tights with carnation pink leg warmers. She’d flutter down the stairs and into the empty foyer where vinyl Jane waited on the ready in the family fisher. On the center of the tan carpeted floor, my mom knew all the moves by heart and would sometimes ask me to join her as some sort of mother-daughter thing.
"And feel the burn," Jane would demand through the fuzzy vibrating speakers.
"I’m feeling it, Jane" mom would grunt, rolling her eyes, jumping up and down, twisting her wide hips from side to side.
Sometimes I’d be lured in and my cat would press her wispy haired ears back against her round head and scamper away at the sound of the nearby glass coffee table shaking under the rhythm of our feet. I might have accompanied my mom through the routine sometimes but having the luxury, I only did the exercises that I liked. I skipped the ones that were geared towards firming up fat fannies and hippo hips. I was eleven and though I’d already gotten my period I had no curves to show for it whatsoever. I couldn't afford to scare away the shape that hadn't even arrived yet.
Mom’s full workout included one particularly absurd-looking technique that called for "walking" back and forth on her gelatinous butt cheeks with her legs together and straight out in front of her, and without using arms or hands to paddle her along the floor. I was skeptical and amused watching her scoot over the carpeting on her blubbery behind determined that it would rid her of all her cellulite. Really, this was a good way to wear out and wedge up one's stretchy polyester leotard and end up with a pesky rug burn.
Most of the time, I’d stand alongside the edge of the rug, practicing the breast enhancement technique, which I learned from watching the movie "Grease" a bazillion times, of squeezing my palms together with my elbows out to the sides, chanting over Jane Fonda, "I must, I must, I must increase my bust..."
