Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 2

Picture № 6: Aged 19, February 1973,

Buenos Aires, at my sister's wedding

Words to a 19 year old

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Plans were in progress for me to travel to Britain later that year to work for a year and then go to university. It was an exciting time for me, and full of dreams. As bridesmaid I adored the floaty long dress in shades of turquoise which I was wearing. There were paua shell earrings to match, and in my hair, specially waved for the occasion, an antique brooch turned into a hairclip fashioned from iridescent blue butterfly wings. You can’t see that I also wore a gold chain round my neck with a medal given to me by my godmother – it had my name on one side, and the date of my confirmation on the other. Nor can you see the pink topaz ring on my left hand, a gift from my father on my 17th birthday. I was very proud to be dancing with him at the time when the photographer took the picture. My father died in 2004, and I no longer have the jewellery, as it was stolen from my home in March this year.

I came upon the picture recently while looking through my Mother’s massive collection of photographs, and thirty-six years on I am struck by the confident innocence on the face of a person who seems far removed from myself, another entity. I got to thinking what I would have said to her if I could somehow have spoken to her across the time divide…

Her heart: Naturally what interested her most at the time was romance – not men, not sex – just romance, though she pretended it was her academic future, of course. She knew she would meet a wonderful man – probably English, perhaps in uniform, heart-achingly handsome and a bit like the soldier in the film Ryan’s Daughter – and because in life (as she saw it) one had only one bite at the cherry, it would be a very important decision, and thereafter they would live in happiness and fidelity for the rest of their lives. Now I would want to tell her gently that she had a lot of toughening up to do, because her heart would be broken three times, and each time it would feel that life was not worth living, and that she would never recover. But it was and she would, and in fact she was going to have harder battles to fight. I would have told her that it’s much simpler to understand what makes a man tick than it does a woman, and that it was important that from the beginning she should command respect from them for her feelings, even if it meant they thought she was unfriendly. I would have begged her to be patient, and take her time before choosing, and that despite parental disapproval, living with someone before marriage was the only real way to make the most informed choice.

Her head: She thought a university degree meant an equal opportunity to have a successful career – she had never stopped to think that in her home environment she had been a bigger fish in a smaller pond. In Argentina she was the younger daughter of the headmistress of an English school, where she had been taught to love books and write well in two languages. In England, this merely meant that she was being the same as everybody else she mixed with, and her innocence was even more overwhelming than she could have foreseen. With no one around to offer advice, her confidence suffered. I wish I could have told her not to be timid, that though no better than anyone else, she was no worse either, and could have sought advice so that she didn’t automatically settle for secretarial work after graduation. I would also have told her firmly not to feel or be over-respectful towards working colleagues just because they were senior to her, or male.

Her body: The hardest of all battles – peer pressure. In Buenos Aires the pressure to be very slim, and to be as attractive as possible to catch a partner (by whatever means), was immense. Even here at nineteen she felt overweight. Sadly the combination of the two factors set the pattern for the rest of her life. It was unfortunate that she hadn’t been taught to enjoy exercise, and her journey to obesity was a very predictable one. I would have told her to be kinder to herself, to discover her own self-worth, and know that self-improvement, if it is to work, must be for yourself, not for anybody else. Most important of all I would tell her to fight back, and not to allow herself to be treated as a failure.

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Herself: But… though the journey to self-knowledge is never easy, I would want her to know that you get there in the end. Being loved gives you confidence, loving makes you brave, but unhappiness eventually brings both a new kind of strength and gratitude for all that is good in our lives. It helps you get everything into perspective because you become harder to impress, and less prone to embarrassment. You learn how to protect yourself against the hurt.

Decent medical help for the obese was bound to come sooner or later. I’m so very glad for the sake of that nineteen year old that it came within her lifetime.

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(to be continued)

Go to Part 3

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