From the time I was 10 or so it was clear to me that I'd been beamed directly from outerspace into my family. All my girl cousins were thin, petite, with typical Chinese waiflike figures. I, on the otherhand, towered over my older cousins soon to be cut out of the hand me down loop as my shoulders grew broad, my arms long and my baby belly fat stubbornly held its position. My mom and her sisters were all slim and petite. My mother's wedding gown had been a size 4 which had to be taken in for her wedding day and by age 10 it was clear that she could not dream of me walking it down the aisle again. My Aunt Liz was slender like my mom and it was said that when they were younger people always thought that they were twins. My Aunt Bo was the youngest of the sisters, slightly taller than the others and a Chinese American version of Marilyn Monroe. She had the beauty mark, the heart-shaped face and had even been a runner up in the Miss Chinatown pageant.
Their eldest sister was Aunt Ruth. She had a well proportioned figure, much like Barbara Stanwick and like she, had been known to have turned a head or two when as a young woman she worked at Ragel's Pharmacy in town, but she never married and dedicated her life to taking care of my great grandmother and my grandparents, after a long life of caring for her younger siblings, cousins, then nieces and nephews as well as the ranch.
On weekends when my family made the journey back to the ranch in Fairfield, I would be reunited with my cousins and aunts and the reminders that there was something wrong with me. Looks were an important part of discussions among my mom and her sisters. Gossip when evaluating a woman's looks would inevitably include comments like, "She looks so chinesy. She needs to do something with her hair." or " She's pretty, it's too bad she got those squinchy eyes from her dad." I had done ok in the eye department, I had a double fold and my eyes had the asian tilt but still were considered larger by asian standards. My sister had not faired so well in the eye department according to this criteria, but she was petite and slim and her hair was much better than mine. Her hair was that nice, thick, glossy black hair which could grow long and full of body. Mine was fine and thin and wouldn't grow much. It seemed to break off before it would grow, just like my nails.
Aunt Bo took me on as a project, I think she was seeking a potential future for her Miss Chinatown pageant legacy. The backhanded compliment that would be served to me again and again from that point on in my life was, "You have such a pretty face, why don't you lose some weight?" I was put on a my first diet by her at age 10. A tablespoon of lecithin granules to proceed all meals and she somehow talked my mother into buying some sort of natural meal replacement powder for me. My body was changing and that puppy fat clung on stubbornly as it prepared me to blossom at the too young age of 11.
And so, 30 years of dieting began. In high school I examined and tried almost every diet published in women's magazines, then Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, protein shakes, meal replacement bars, Ayds, the Scarsdale Diet. At the beginning it was possible to follow the hard boiled egg and salad diets for a few weeks or months and drop 15-20 pounds. Then it became harder and harder. I went to the gym, Richard Simmons and Jazzercize, aerobics, diet pills and though I was a size 12 or14 in high school it wasn't a 5 or 6 like my cousins. There was obviously something wrong with me. My grades were very good, I worked every summer at the ranch, from age 12 I paid into Social Security. Sometimes in the winter I helped out at the accounting offices where my mother had a job and the summer I turned sixteen helped out in my cousin's dental lab. In junior year of high school I got a part time job as a dental assistant which lasted until I graduated. Throughout school I had been in choir, studied piano for 12 years and for a short while I studied flute and played in the orchestra. I had a short but successful season in Speech Club specializing in impromptu speech. I had performed in a number of musicals both at our girls high school as well as the associated boys high school. "Performed" is probably a good word for that time in my life because I performed and performed, trying hard to be what I thought everyone expected from me and knowing inside that no matter how much I achieved, I was a fraud.
My mom insisted that I get a home perm for the first time in 6th grade or so to remediate the hair problem. I remember skeptically telling her I'd only do it if it came out like my teacher's hair, soft, springy waves that gracefully accented her face. My mom was thrilled that her coercing finally paid off, promising me that it was only a "body perm". When I stared into the mirror at a black brillo pad on my head I was unconsolable. I didn't want to go to school and when I was escorted there, my mother tried to enlist the help of my teacher to convince me that my hair looked good, telling her that I had wanted to look just like her. I could tell by the horrified look on my teacher's face that it was obviously not what she thought and in the 70's atmosphere of accenting natural beauty I am sure that she was appalled. I didn't need to be gifted to know that it looked horrible.
I already knew from consulting any of the beauty and fashion magazines of the times that there were severe flaws I would never overcome. I had inherited my mom's family's distinctive flat, broad nose, which was upturned just enough to give a glance of nostril, my torso was boxy and my calves were large. I pored over the sections in the magazines which first advised how to disguise or camoflage these defects with clothing or makeup, then later the magazines which described the cosmetic surgery which could help. I dreamed of breast reduction and tummy tucks, nose jobs. I tried to compensate for these defects in other ways, so I performed and performed.
By the time I was at university I was exhausted from performing. While taking my educational leave at college after my Chemistry 1A fiasco, I voluteered for and was accepted to a weight loss program which combined behaviour modification through the Psych department as well as the Heath and Nutrition department. I was weighed under water, put on a personalized diet plan, kept a food journal and met regularly with a psychologist. This helped to some extent but the first signs of my metabolic disorder started to be detected.
It wasn't until decades later after being diagnosed with polycystic ovaries, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, a multinodular thyroid gland which was removed along with a fibroid filled uterus here in Italy that I started to understand all the money spent, the pounds I lost which promptly found me again and brought along friends. After a thyroidectomy and extensive care at the University of Pisa Medical School, Metabolic Disease sector. I dropped from a size 22 to a size 14. This personal hell which had shaped so much of my life might not have been only a lack of character and discipline. It was a great liberation from the great burden that in this case it might not have been my fault but the destiny of fate.
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