Kicking body image problems in the pants

Last Friday, I stood in a conga line at the Gap waiting to purchase my first pair of stretchy black pants. They were needed that night for Restaurant Week, eventually/hopefully for job interviews and as a boost to my all-sweatpants-all-the-time, full-offashion-faux-pas wardrobe. As I waited my turn for the register, I must admit that I was feeling pretty darn good about myself. I had finally returned to my eleventh grade pants size, and as I had swirled and spun in the dressing room mirror, I kept thinking how the black pants made my derriere look so enchanting and petite under the harsh, glaring lights.

I was wrong. Melody got back. My ass was as big as Lindsay Lohan's newest set of implants; I was just blissfully in the dark for the past 20 years. Thankfully, the girl in front of me at the register -- whose left thigh was approximately the girth of my left wrist -- clued me in after she announced to the employees that she wasn't going to purchase any pants on this trip. She confidentially stage-whispered that she was unhappy with all of the extra body fat she had accumulated since the summer. I watched as every female within hearing radius, including myself, craned her eyes to judge the meaty thighs. And I found myself thinking that Miss Kate Moss clone was either delusional or rather typical of the female population at Penn.

Go into Pottruck on any weekday around 11 a.m. Even better, just walk by the window. Wave at the taut muscles glistening on the elliptical machines with their gleaming identical iPods strapped around their tiny tan biceps. Now, go to class, go to Dunkin' Donuts, go to Bui's or The Greek Lady. Return to Pottruck's zoo-like window and stare at members of your own species. Chances are, when you meander back to the window, at least some of the females from your first trip will still be there, huffing and puffing and blowing the house down. They know to reset the timer midway through the workout, to get more time. They know to switch floors and machines to evade suspicious looks from the staff.

All of this makes me very sad, as I'm not sure when these girls have time to do much else besides burn off the previous night's beer pong festivities. I know girls who calorie-count so well that I'm surprised they're not doing insurance risk management. I overhear them say: I'm on a celery diet, a grapefruit diet, a no-carbs, no-protein, no-fat fast. As for me, I hate feeling guilty about my diet, which consists of carbs, protein, fat and Scoop DeVille sundaes. I hate being in a room full of women who are constantly mathematically computing what the next meal will do for their ever-fluctuating weight.

There seems to be a direct correlation between girls who don't eat a lot of calories and girls who don't have a positive body image. I think maybe eating boosts my self-esteem, because the more I eat, the happier I get. You ever notice how happy you feel after eating chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and a banana? Not the same feeling as when you're downing celery with a side of grapefruit, eh? Definitely not the same feeling when you're asking for a Ziploc instead of a doggie bag after dining out.

In fact, the first time I went out to dinner with one of my closest friends at Penn, she asked me midway through the meal if I had an "eating problem," because I was slowly picking through my Caesar salad. "No," I replied, somewhat guiltily. I admitted that I had had a smidgen of Chinese food earlier, perhaps a bit too close to our meal. She proceeded to explain that she was attuned to the eating habits of other females, because so many of her friends were constantly exercising and not eating. She had feared I was one of them.

Truthfully, it's only when I'm around other weight-conscious females that I consider my weight at all. When I was little, my mother used to buy my pants at the local Limited Too. Apparently, I had a bit of a Buddha belly for the early years of my life, and my mom would buy elastic waistbands instead of button-downs like everyone else had. I didn't realize this until years later, and there was never any big deal made about my rotund little figure. Because I was blissfully unaware and probably caught up in some Baby-sitters Club or Boxcar Children book; it was only when I switched from the Boxcar Children to YM and Seventeen did I realize that Hanes Her Way wasn't the true "way" for everyone.

My encounter at the Gap brought back all of the memories of elastic waistbands and YM and even those snazzy leggings we all wore in second grade. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go up to this girl in line, explain to her that she looked fine and then give her a swift kick in the pants.

Melody Joy Kramer is a junior English major from Cherry Hill, N.J. Perpendicular Harmony appears on Wednesdays.

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