I Love My Body Hate My Legs

I Love My Body Hate My Legs

I Love My Body Hate My Legs. The only person who has ever told me, in no uncertain terms, that my legs are fat is my grandmother. Other women have been more discreet. They tell me I have such a pretty face, or that I look great in long dresses—consolations meant to make up for my lower half.The incident with my grandmother happened a few summers ago, in the midst of one of New York's oppressive heat waves. I'd fled the city to my parents' home and was lounging by the pool with a group that included my mother, sister, aunt and grandmother.

Instead of a bathing suit—which would have been out of the question—I was wearing a cotton sundress, the kind of flimsy, barely-there thing that stops mid-thigh, leaving my legs, earthworm pale and thick with running muscles, entirely exposed. From the waist up, my body is small and delicately boned, which only seems to highlight the size of my legs, a fact that wasn't lost on my grandmother.

"Brienne," she said. "Can I talk to you alone for a minute?"

Normally, when my grandmother wanted to talk to me alone, it was about my sister. I braced myself for a lecture about being nicer to her.

"Brienne," she began, once we were safely out of earshot from the rest of the group, behind a hedge on the lawn. "You can't tell anyone what I'm about to say to you."

"OK," I said, my imagination going wild. Was she going to talk to me about her boyfriend at the senior center again?

"You're a beautiful girl." She gazed at me directly. "But you have very fat legs."

I said nothing. What was there to say? My legs have always been my biggest insecurity (physically, at least). In the worst of times, when I look at myself in the mirror, all I see are my cankles, and the layers of fat, speckled with cellulite, that rounded out my thighs. In my eyes, my legs are like stuffed turkey sausages—blotchy and thick.

More than anything, they make me feel ashamed—for having that ice cream sandwich after dinner, for not waking up in time to run before work, for not losing that little bit of weight that might not make them perfect, but would at least make them presentable.

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