New Me

Today

With a mixture of resignation and hope, I've returned to Weight Watchers. I'm not as big as when "Diet Trials" started, but I'm nearly 2st overweight and WW does do what it says on the tin, so to speak.

I'm not in the league of people whose lives are endangered by their weight and I have to admit that my motivation is largely vanity. Secretly, I hope that, this time, the weight loss will transform me into a real drop-dead beautiful woman.

In My Day

Our valuation of ourselves is very much shaped in our childhood and I became accustomed to the knowledge that my sister Beatrice was the "pretty one". My parents sometimes called me "handsome" which no girl wants to hear.

I looked and could see it was true; Beatrice had hair like a golden waterfall, a rosebud mouth and large and lustrous eyes. She was chubbier than I, something about which I believe I was occasionally merciless.

So the only way in which I could be beautiful was in my imaginings and they were constant. I was always slim, not to say thin, of course. I had a pale and luminous skin and  vivid red corkscrew curling hair. I was usually a fairy princess and I loved to dress up in old velvet and satin curtains and wear a crown to make the point. Importantly, I didn't have to do or say anything for men to drop at my feet, mesmerised by the red hair and fascinating profile.

When I could, I also tried to make up for my lack of personal beauty by wearing the best clothes I could, persuading my nothing-much hair into flattering styles and trying not to get too fat. My quest for beauty was made harder, I thought, by my early development of sizeable breasts. I don't think Mamma helped by remarking admiringly on those clothes which minimised their apparent size.

In my teens I wasn't interested enough in boys to do any of the usual girly flirting and simply didn't recognise the fact that I did, actually, attract some admiring glances.

Paul, on first meeting me, constantly told me that I was pretty and was surprised that only Beatrice had been singled out for this description in childhood. But I can't shake off the feeling that I'm rather plain and need all the help, short of surgery, that I can get.