By Amanda Jones
I’m seven and on the monkey bars when I’m dared to ask out my crush. “Ew, I’d never date someone that looks like you,” he says, and the girls laugh and laugh and laugh and I go home and cut up my Care Bear shirt thinking that’s the problem.
I’m nine when the woman at the department store is shocked that I’ve asked for a medium. “Are you sure that will fit, honey?” I look down at my developing chest and tell her to grab the large, just in case anything grows in.
I’m ten when the girl with the pink glitter eyeshadow behind the ice cream counter asks if I’m totally sure I want a waffle cone. “A small might be better,” she suggests, and she’s probably right. Ice cream gives me stomach aches anyway.
I’m thirteen when my friend’s boyfriend gropes me in class and later messages me: “Show me what you look like underneath that t-shirt.” I’m still thirteen when I tell her what happened and she says, “You’re too fat for him to ask you that.” I get her a gift card to Target for her birthday.
I’m fourteen when a boy asks if I wear a bra in gym class. “Well all us guys wanna know…it’s just so hard to focus when you’re running,” he admits. Next time I wear a sweatshirt and faint from the heat.
I’m sixteen when the guy I’ve been seeing says, “Yeah, all the guys in the locker room have been trying to guess your bra size,” after just meeting my parents for the first time. He then tries to find out on his own, and when I tell him no, he drives me home and we don’t talk again after
that.
I’m nineteen when I invite the cute guy I’ve been talking with to my friend’s party. I’m wearing shorts and an oversized t-shirt. My friend across the room is wearing a skintight dress. “You’d be perfect if you had your face but her body,” he says, pointing to her. I sleep next to him that night on the pull-out couch.
I’m twenty when I run into an old friend at the grocery store. He doesn’t know that his good friend and I have actually been seeing each other over the last couple of months. I subtly bring his name up and he says, “Oh him? Yeah, he only dates fat chicks.” I grab a salad on my way out.
Contributor Bio
Amanda Jones loves horror movies, dogs, and Oxford Commas.