Not Good Enough,

A Fat Parable about How I Learned That Looks Matter.

From the beginning she knew she was different.

In elementary school, she was taunted and teased, made to seem lesser than the other children. Being smart was not important. The important thing was how you looked.

Her father also taunted and teased her, such as the times he told her she’d have to get out of the car because the coming bridge wouldn’t hold her weight and that her new skirts had to be taken back to the store and stretched out to fit her.

She knew from the beginning she wasn’t good enough.

As she became a teenager,. she wasn’t good enough to have a boyfriend. Then she wasn’t good enough to have a car or even learn to drive. “No, then you’ll want a car” was what her father said.

And she certainly wasn’t good enough to go to college.

And then she wasn’t good enough for her parents to show up at her wedding.

But her pretty sister definitely was good enough for a car, college, and a big wedding with a big reception.

So if anyone asks her today why she has so low self-esteem, she says, “It’s because I’ve never been good enough.”