“Oh Betty, she has the Swenson thighs”, whispered my mom’s cousin Joanie, as I emerged in my bathing suit to join my family on the dock.

We were learning how to waterski at my cousin Reggie’s summer home on Lake Chautauqua that summer. This was all extremely exotic stuff for a 15 year old kid from Youngstown who spent most of her summer days selling fried cheese at Guido’s at the Southern Park Mall.  And to my total surprise and delight, I managed to “get up” on the first try that day, and I was so proud, so triumphant, so grateful, and honestly a little shocked.  I was not a sporty kid, I played the cello, and when I wasn’t doing that I was probably doing my hair.  So this was a marvelous revelation—my body was for more than just being looked at.  My uncle drove the boat past the dock, a victory lap, while my family beamed and cheered.  But friends, this is the part I remember the most—-I had an atomic wedgie from the force of my body shooting out of the water into my standing position, and I’ll never forget weighing the decision in front of me: do I let go of the rope to pick the wedgie and certainly fall, or do I hold on tight and enjoy this ride and not give a damn that my butt is hanging out as we pass by my judgmental family?   It was the first time I had to choose—shame or pleasure?

A few months later, my parents sat me down in the living room and said they wanted to talk.  “There’s a new procedure that’s been invented,” said my father.   “It’s called ‘liposuction’, and we want to get it for you. We don’t want you to suffer as your mother has.”  (For the record, my body is a carbon copy of my mother’s.  Short, very curvy, Swenson thighs.  It is worth noting that I am not overweight, nor is she.  We just have a shape that seems to make some people deeply uncomfortable.)  I was 15.  I had never had a boyfriend.  I had yet to have my first kiss. And the only man I had ever loved, and truly, I adored my father,  just told me I had physical flaws that required surgical intervention.  I remember going back upstairs to my room, the whole world changed.  Because I knew liposuction wasn’t something offered to all 15 year old girls, like some sort of dysmorphic quinceañera.  This confirmed what every teenage girl suspects–something was now officially wrong with me.

I know now that my father was scared.  He was afraid that I would not be loved, that no man would find me pleasing in my current state.  His intentions-to spare me  rejection- were noble, but his misguided effort caused me incredible pain. I wish instead he had told me how uniquely beautiful my mother was.  How lucky I was to have inherited her figure, instead of the tall straight androgynous frame of the women on his side of the family.  But he didn’t.  He tried to control something that was uncontrollable.  This moment haunts me every time I start to say something to my 17 year old son about the sprinkle of acne on his cheek.  “Chrissy, stop.  He’s fine.  You think you’re just helping, but you’re not.  You’re telling him he’s not ok. Remember the liposuction….”

In the years to follow, there would be more interventions by a well meaning world, trying to help me with my physical “affliction”.  My first year of college, I had a cello professor who declared, (with the kind of enthusiasm you reserve for when you discover a new law of physics) “you’re ashamed of your hips and your thighs!” as the reason I wasn’t getting the sound he wanted.  Well, no shit.  You would be too if you had the body I have.  I didn’t say that out loud, but I thought it.

Then there was the time after my first son was born, when Sam was a year old, and his dad and I took a trip to Florida.  We were on the beach, enjoying the beautiful day, and having just nursed Sam, I decided it would be a good chance to get away for a little walk.  I was so happy, so contented with my life at that time.  I had had a great pregnancy, given birth to a healthy 9lb. 1oz baby, and had been successful at breastfeeding. As a result, my body and I had agreed to a cease fire.  It had given me a fantastic, healthy baby, and in return I agreed to stop telling it that it sucked.   I mean, how can I hate something that took such good care of Sam for 9 months and then safely delivered him into the world?  That’s crazy.  Even I could concede that.  As I’m walking, thinking my grateful thoughts, I am interrupted by an older woman sitting on a foldable beach chair.  She beckons me over, and I go, thinking she may need help.

“You know why it’s so hard for you to lose weight in your hips and thighs?  Why you are shaped like that?”, she offers. “It’s a hormonal thing!  When your hormones are out of whack, the body carries fat in those places.”  I’m dumbfounded.  What. The. Fuck.  Who says something like this to a total stranger??  And instead of telling her to take her unsolicited advice and shove it, I thank her politely, and walk away.  Because I am a nice girl, (admittedly a nice girl who likes to occasionally say the word “fuck”, but who doesn’t), and nice girls always make others feel comfortable, even when people are being jerks, and even when it makes us feel deeply uncomfortable.  I’m wearing nothing but a black bathing suit, that up until that moment I thought I looked pretty damn good in.  But as I walk away, I’m ashamed.  There is nothing to shield my butt, hips and thighs from her gaze and I only now wish I had brought my coverup with me on my walk.

You may be thinking right about now, “there is no way all these things happened”.  But they did.  I promise you, every single one of these stories is true.  And I think it’s important to mention that objectively speaking, I am not a freakishly shaped.  I am not deformed.  I’m just “specific”. It took me a long time to figure out what’s going on here and I think I finally have made some sense of it.  God, you see, is an artist.  Everything he makes is art, even if you don’t like it.  I think we can all agree that art is subjective and while one person may hail something as “genius” another may think the same work is “derivative”.  And like all artists, he goes through creative periods, phases if you will.  Picasso had his “blue period”, his “rose period”, his “cubist period”.  Well, I believe God is the same, and on the day I was made, the most beautiful thing he could think of was, well, me.  And on the day you were made, the most extraordinary expression of himself he could think of was, well, you.  I happen to think God was in a sort of “Rubens” phase around the time of my conception, which totally explains my thighs.  Supermodels are all part of a different artistic phase that God was in that I don’t completely understand but that doesn’t make them any less art.  Art makes people feel all sorts of things, and sometimes discomfort is one of those.  My body has obviously made some people uncomfortable, but that only further proves my point.  (I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge that my body has made some people very, very comfortable.) So, when I go contemplate liposuction, or dieting or exercising excessively in an effort to shave off the parts of me that aren’t to everyone’s liking, it’s akin to someone going in to the Galleria dell’Accademia with a metal file and going to town on the statue of David because they think they know how to make it just a little bit better.   Michelangelo made David exactly how he wanted him to be.  God made me and you exactly how we he wanted us to be.  We aren’t failed attempts.  We aren’t factory seconds.  We are exactly what he pictured and we are beautiful for that very reason alone.

I didn’t get the liposuction.  And I did not pick my wedgie.   And risk not getting another lap around the lake?  Not on your life.