Women: Mighty Morphin' Power Bunny

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Women's Zone Conference: Body Talk
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by Bunny Fisher

, Bunny, hippety-hopped naked from the shower to the boudoir recently. The midday sun was brutal and unforgiving to my reflection in the mirror. I looked at the merchandise. I thought of my forthcoming date. I scrunched my Bunny nose in dismay.

I am fat I am fat I am fat I am fat.

I am not fat I am not fat I am not fat. It's the light. It's the mirror on the door (over sixty years old, surely warped and distorting).

And then, third verse, same as the first: I am fat I am fat I am fat I am fat.

Truth: Bunny is not fat. Bunny is medium, and a pleasant, attractive enough medium at that. But once upon a time, Bunny was fat. Further, Bunny is now, was in the past, and will be forever more MAJORLY neurotic and self-critical.

My actual, living, breathing body and my image of said body are often two drastically different things. I have spent at least 20 (more like 30) of my 33 years trying to solve this problem, get to the root of why I even use the word "problem" and "body" in the same sentence. You'd think, with all these years of living with me, that I'd be comfortable in my skin. I'm not. Well, okay, sometimes I am. Which is better than when I never was. But for me, solving this "problem" means one day getting to a place where I no longer consider my body a "problem." A place where I am comfortable with me, no matter what I look like. And the goal is to find this place before I am 80, which is when all but the vainest women on earth stop worrying about aesthetics. (I mean, you make it to 80, my thinking is you start chain-smoking, drink 15 Bloody Marys for breakfast if you want, and sit around chortling that you've beaten death and outlived all the asshole men who deemed you not worthy.)

My all-time low was seven pounds, ten ounces. Granted, I was only 20 inches long (and one hour old) at the time, so even then I didn't appear svelte. But over the years I've paid rapt attention and noted the many changes, how they made me feel, and how others responded.

In fifth grade, I was so underweight my mother — who never took us to the doctor — took me to the doctor. Three years later, the adolescent pudge struck, and those worries became laughable. Suddenly the concern was that I might be, God forbid, a fatso.

In ninth grade, having reached my glamorous full potential — the international supermodel height of 5'5" — I settled in at 115. I determined that this classified me as enormous. I subsisted on crackers and diet powdered iced tea for months at a time, shat green droppings as a result (and only sporadically), and wept with personal disappointment each time I had to lie on the floor, suck it in, and use pliers to zip up my Sassoon jeans. What was wrong with my body, that it dared to weigh more than 100?

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Women's Zone Conference: Body Talk

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