What it feels like for (this) girl

I am eleven or twelve or thirteen in the fitting room at The Gap. I barely fit in to a women’s size 16. I ask my mother where I am going to buy jeans once I exceed the sizes at Gap. My mother is a good mother and she doesn’t know what to say. Really, there is no consoling a fat girl. I probably cried. I cried then and seemingly a million times before because I knew I wasn’t pretty. At eleven or twelve or thirteen, I hung a photo of a woman with a “hot body” that I cut from one of my teen magazines, manuals for how to be a good woman. This woman had flat abdominals and tanned skin. This woman attracted men because she was beautiful. This woman was a woman while I was merely a girl.
In my preteen journal I wrote, Loose 30 pounds, next to doodles of hearts and stars, I assume. I considered hanging this, my demand of myself, on my mirror, next to the magazine photo of the beautiful vacant woman. But I did not want my parents, or anyone, to see it. I tore out my declarative scribbles and placed it in my underwear drawer next to some lip gloss purchased at CVS.