“I think I have a self image problem,” Tracey told me last night.
“You?” I said. “But you’re beautiful! You’re hot! You’re sexy!”
“I know, right,” she said with her usual sass. Damn right she should know – it’s true. Plus I tell her all the time. “But I’m starting to think that’s the problem,” she said. I told her I didn’t understand. “You know half my wardrobe doesn’t fit me?”
“So? Me either,” I told her. They just don’t make XXL’s as big as they used to.
“Yeah, but I didn’t realize how it had snuck up on me,” she said. “I didn’t realize how big I actually was.”
It seems today Tracey was getting dressed and was checking out how much weight she’d put on. She looked at her bum. ‘Not too bad,’ she thought to herself. But then she started to wonder if maybe she was seeing herself through rose coloured glasses.
So she decided to test herself: she decided to pretend she was looking at a stranger’s bum.
Facing away from the mirror she closed her eyes and pictured herself walking down town past a group of women. Tracey opened her eyes and spun her head around, looking over her shoulder at the woman she’d just passed.
And this is what she thought.
‘Oh my god she’s got a big ass!’ Then she added, without missing a beat, ‘I’m glad my bum isn’t that big.’
And then the penny dropped.
“So you see,” she told me, “my self image is at odds with my reality.”
Maybe. But I don’t see that as a problem.
The real problem, as I see it, is if she starts noticing what’s actually there I dread what she’ll see when she looks at me.
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’raising a family on little more than laughs’