Anyone who’s spent five minutes on the campus of a large community college knows that there are 10,000 young women there
, and nobody will doubt that they are all gorgeous. Yet anybody who knows anything about these young women won’t be surprised to learn that they all think they’re fat. Well, in fact, only three of them are fat.
The well-documented reason for this lack of female self-esteem is, of course, the false message that the media sends to girls and young women every day about their bodies.
This month I’ve decided to publish a trove of creative nonfiction that illuminates the issue. “Wave Your Flagship Store,” by Jessie Carty, deals in part with what it’s like to shop for plus sizes. Three other pieces—“Legs” by Suzanne Farrell Smith (published earlier this month), “Making Love with Daisy,” by Scott Campbell, and “My Time Was Up,” by Cris Mazza, present three distinct ways in which three distinct women dislike their looks.
You won’t find any solutions in these various works. What you’ll find is a number of sensitive people who express grief in a self-deprecating way, as though self-deprecation were the first step upward from low self-esteem.
And just to show that male neuroses have nothing on what women are forced to go through, I’m also publishing David Womack’s “Notes on Third Grade.” The guy was traumatized, you see, because once in third grade he peed on the floor. Being a guy, however, and therefore easily discovering self-esteem in areas other than appearances, he has—more or less—gotten over it.
The fate of his female teacher is much worse. But I’m not going to spoil that for you here.