Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 7

The denial continues

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In case it isn't obvious, I don't much enjoy showing these pictures, but I realise that this is the point of this whole warts-and-all exercise, and I've noted that other bandit bloggers have shown their worst. I feel I can but try to do the same, particularly if it's to help me move on.

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On a positive note, it's down to John that there's any photographic evidence at all of me during these years. I often felt positively poisonous that he was taking the picture at all (most of the smiles are pretty strained!) but came to realise that in the future there would be no record to show that whereas I may have been too large, at least I looked young and my skin was smooth. I recognised that in old age I would probably come to appreciate this record - albeit imperfect, so I tried to stop looking miserable when he pointed his camera at me.

. Picture № 32, 1996, Gandía beach, Spain

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...Have you ever found yourself in a bathing costume, using a towel as cover, under the misguided impression that no one will notice your size?

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I worked in an office with young women who were always on diets and talked about them the live long day. As the office manager I could remain in the background, but it made me all the more determined to shut that particular door forever. At 14 stone (196 lbs, 89 kg) in the early nineties, I had let it go too far. I knew no diet would ever work for me because it involved immersing myself once again, and for too long, in a subject that now bored me to tears. I could no longer stand the idea of thinking about food all the time. I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to talk about it, and I certainly didn’t respond to those who brought up the subject. John understood, and I shall always be grateful to him for that.

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. Picture № 33, 1996, John catching me unawares, as usual.

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I was now on insulin because pills couldn’t control my diabetes. Dieticians would talk earnestly to me about losing weight to help the diabetes, but the most I could manage was to try to learn to eat savoury and not sweet calories – at which I was moderately successful and can now steer clear of chocolate bars and puddings most of the time. But I would tell myself that it was merely swapping sweet for savoury, and it was definitely not a diet. I could no longer cope with this word.

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The problem was that my weight refused to stabilise (as I fondly thought it would), it just kept creeping up. I love to cook and try out new recipes, John was always very appreciative, and we ate out a lot (in order of preference, Thai, Chinese, Italian, pub food). Although I like fast food as much as most people, it requires driving some distance from where I live to satisfy these whims, so I rarely bothered. I shopped at the supermarket once a week, and as I’m not given to convenience foods, preferring to prepare dishes from scratch, the impulse buying instinct, though present, was not out of control. Finally, my insulin consumption was industrial, and I knew what happens to the body when the diabetes is not properly controlled. The weight crept up simply because I ate too much of the right stuff.

Not that I ever climbed on the scales during this phase – perish the thought – but even I had to acknowledge that my clothes were getting tighter, and I started to shop on eBay. I found that (1) I had left size 18 way behind and there weren’t many places where I could buy clothes that would fit me; (2) I was too easily tired to contemplate traipsing round the shops, and (3) I didn’t care anyway.

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In 1998 I sold the flat where I had lived for 13 years since my divorce, and we bought a house on the outskirts of Bristol. I acquired two lovable cats, completed my china dinner service by purchasing odd pieces on eBay, and gave dinner parties to experiment with the oriental and fusion recipes I had grown to adore. I bought a bread machine and had a wonderful time experimenting with the wonder of fresh breads of different kinds (I still find it to be a most wonderful invention, if only I could eat more than a morsel at a time…).

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Picture № 34, Christmas 2001 (aged 48 and goodness knows what weight), with my mother, sister & niece.

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There are few photos of us for a long period here – almost ten years, because John stopped using the stills camera when I gave him a camcorder, which became his pride and joy. I was forever trying to hide from the wretched thing.

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The situation might have continued indefinitely, but family issues caught up with me.

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(Next time will be the last instalment, you will be pleased to hear - hence this one is a bit shorter. )

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-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 6

No more diets

Picture № 25, 1993, in Spain with John and my parents,

celebrating my 40th birthday

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We had lovely holidays – here we had rented a beautiful villa not far from Valencia, to which city outskirts my parents had moved from Argentina to spend their retirement. It was a time to take stock, and I didn’t like what I saw – I was nowhere near getting my weight problem under control, and saddest of all, I had left it too late to have children. All those years obsessing about my appearance and I was going to have nothing to show for them.

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Picture Nos. 26/27/28/29 - Bristol Rugby, early nineties.

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During this time I was asked to take pictures of the Bristol rugby team at their home games for use in their programmes, which I did for several years. I was allowed to be on the touchline with John so that I could run up and down. No, don’t ask – there’s no photo of me because I would sooner have had my throat cut. It was usually blustery, cold, wet and muddy, so I had to wear thermal underwear, plus normal clothes plus waterproof gear over all of that.

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John would prompt me when he could see at which end of the field the action would be, and I’d waddle down with camera, my pockets bulging with spare film. The worst bit was at the beginning, when the Bristol captain would run out with the little mascot – usually a child under 8 dressed wearing the Bristol strip – and I had to stand in the middle of the field and photograph them as they ran out, throwing the ball to each other. To do this, I had to position myself out in the middle of the pitch, ready and waiting 5 minutes before they emerged, then after the pictures were taken run back to the touchline.

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I knew the 8,000 spectators weren’t interested in the navy blue Michelin woman shuffling onto the pitch before the game, and up and down during it, but I reasoned that before the game or when nothing much was happening, they would be casting about for something interesting to look at, and their gaze would fix in amused fascination on the rotund photographer… I always ensured I was on the same side of the field as the television cameras, so that there wouldn’t be a ghost of a chance of my appearing on the local news afterwards.

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John would squat on a little folding stool on the touchline, tucking into his supplies – a hard-boiled egg with salt in a piece of tinfoil, a slice of buttered bread, a Kit-Kat chocolate bar and his ever trusty hipflask of brandy, not to mention the scalding cup of coffee bought at the ground, shaking and slopping as it jostled for position with his cigarette.

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It was fun, but there were limits to my coping with the exposure and self-consciousness I felt before 8,000 people, however anonymous I was, and several years later when the photographic technology grew apace and other photographers had more modern equipment which meant that the printers of the programme could get the pictures to them faster than I could, I dropped out with relief. I was also getting tired of the “If it’s Saturday it must be cold and wet” routine.

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Photography was wonderfully absorbing and took my mind off areas of my life about which I was unhappy, and specifically it meant I was behind the lens, and not being captured by it. In 1995 I was pleased as punch to win one of the trophies at my local camera club.

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Picture № 30, 1995, aged 42, with Group One Backwell Camera Club Trophy

I particularly enjoy candid portraits, and take pictures at dress rehearsals – amateur opera in the past, and Gilbert & Sullivan productions now. The advent of digital cameras has made the whole process so incredibly easy, and enables me to concentrate on the creative side (with mixed results, I don’t claim to be a David Bailey).

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Picture № 31, two members of the chorus at a performance of The Mikado

about 10 years ago

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As I developed on the inside, sadly I expanded on the outside too. Being freed of the tyranny of trying to be slim and pleasing other people, vanity ceased to be a factor in my life altogether, and I rarely looked in the mirror.

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Picture № 32, 1995, out for dinner with John and old school friend

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Later in the year an old school friend came to stay, and when she sent me a photo of the three of us at dinner I realised that the situation had got worse, and as usual my misery showed. However this pained expression was mainly reserved for photographs, which I simply loathed posing for – I’m told that I was capable of as much cheerfulness and humour as anybody…

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(To be continued)

-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 5

A recovery - of sorts

In October 1984 I managed to get unpaid leave from my wine merchant employers, and for two months stayed with my parents where they were living temporarily in Johannesburg, South Africa, during which my mother did all she could to help me. She took the decisions about meals out of my hands by putting me on her strict Scarsdale diet, and I enrolled locally on an aerobics class three times a week. I went to a local public swimming pool and sunned myself to get a tan, so the first few weeks were an agony of hunger and complaining muscles mixed with sunburn.

Gradually it all settled down, and though I never got to like the hideous practice of leaping about causing myself discomfort and breathlessness, I could appreciate that it speeded up the process no end. There were no scales around, but I must have lost at least another 1.5 stone (21 lbs, 9.5kg) – there was nowhere to cheat or get food, and the aerobics teacher had known what was at stake, and she worked me hard in the 30 degree heat.

Picture № 19, Christmas Day 1984, Johannesburg, South Africa

– about 9 stone (126lbs, 57.5 kg)

My Dad was very proud of my achievement, and took lots of pictures of me. It was a mercy however that my mother had her little cheap fixed focus instant camera with her and insisted on taking a few herself, because good ol’ Dad had forgotten to put a film in the camera... (Likewise my extraordinary adventure the day before in a cheetah enclosure when I had posed sitting with and stroking them had gone unrecorded for the same reason.) He was mortified, but my regret was that there were now virtually no records of my great effort – except this one above, clutching a tin of hairspray.

I returned to England early in the new year of 1985, tanned and slim, to find it was already too late. My husband had opted for his mixed doubles tennis partner, a former mutual friend, and I moved into a flat in February.

25 years on, I think I see it all more clearly. I believe what feelings he had disappeared after the first couple of years, and whereas a mature person would have ended it then and there with a minimum of fuss, an immature one such as he was then, stayed on for another six, feeling increasingly trapped and resorting to unkindness as a release, whilst letting himself drift off towards someone else. Leaving someone you no longer love is so much easier when there's someone you do waiting round the corner.

Strictly from my own experience, I find men to be like children where relationships are concerned - they would far rather the woman took the lead, while they concentrate on the macho aspects. They don't on the whole understand their own feelings, or how to handle them. Rarely are they able to analyse their own or their partner's behaviour and draw conclusions which drive the relationship forward. If they get it right, it's instinctive.

...Anyway..., these posts are about the history of my weight problem and not about other aspects of my life, so suffice to say that the next few months were very difficult, and for the first time ever, I lost my appetite almost completely.

Picture № 20, Spring 1986, aged 33

(compare with № 18, I’m wearing same dress,

which now fitted properly…)

My weight went down to 7.5 stone (105 lbs, 47.5kg) and this is virtually the only photo of me at the time – friends and relations were reluctant to take pictures of me because of my state of mind. As usual it’s written all over me – I’m not very good at hiding my feelings. Despite the unhappiness I could acknowledge when I looked at myself in the mirror that I was at last slim, though I remember smiling ruefully to myself as I gazed at the amazing petite image before me, reflecting that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. I did however buy size 10 denims, and derived a grim satisfaction from having to lie down on the floor to do up the zip, though getting up afterwards was a bit of a challenge.

Unfortunately I also thought that this was it now, this was how I would be forever. It had taken divorce to finally ‘sort me out’. Oh but it didn’t.

In trying to climb out of the doldrums, I got myself involved backstage with an amateur opera company, and made new friends, among whom was John, now my partner. Somewhat older than me, he was gentle, kind, undemanding, understanding and totally uncritical about all matters regarding weight. He also loved my experimenting on him with my cooking.

After eight years at the wine merchants, where I had progressed some way up the secretarial tree and had studied part-time to get a diploma in wines and spirits, I opted for voluntary redundancy when there was a change of boss, and moved to an office equipment company to be an office supervisor, where to my surprise I learned that I enjoyed pure admin (do stay awake…).

John and I spent weekends going out and about looking for subjects to photograph, and ate out a lot.

Picture № 21, mid 1988, with John, in Tenerife, Canary Islands
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Gradually it started to pile on again, helped in no small measure by the appearance of Haagen Dazs ice-cream, which I ate by the tub full when on my own. Hardly surprising then that I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, since it was present on both sides of the family anyway, though I only learned about this afterwards.

Picture № 22, late 1988, aged 35 with my niece.

I have a wonderful relationship with her (you may have seen a picture earlier in this blog where I’m holding her little son), and once again I’m hiding behind my favourite Bolivian alpaca poncho, which you’ve also seen before.

Meanwhile my job with the office equipment distributors ended in redundancy following a series of takeovers, and I spent a bizarre 6 months working as a PA in a crematorium.

(Anecdote: a member of a bereaved family thought it would cheer them all up to tuck the dead man's mobile phone – switched on - into the coffin out of sight, which the bright spark then rang during the funeral as it was taking place by the graveside. The crem’s funeral administrator, a prim, permanently worried little man who was always hovering in the background to ensure everything ran smoothly, appeared at the office looking white as a sheet, and as he gulped down a cup of tea told us the story, and that the family, far from being ‘cheered up’, had been absolutely livid, and had to be stopped by the vicar from beating up their relative.)

When this job came to an end, I ended up as an office manager at wholesale seed merchants for 19 years, and much enjoyed being in agriculture. Though I grew up in the capital city of Buenos Aires, my mother's farming background had ensured we spent every available holiday on working farms, so to some extent I understood the business and greatly sympathised with its difficulties.

Four years after divorce, and many gorgeous dinners later therefore, this was what I looked like:

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Picture № 23, 1990, in Gravesend, John’s home town
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Finally admitting I needed outside help, I went to slimming club classes and at first the kindergarten approach suited me – over the next few months I lost two stone and was one of several chosen to go to London for the day to meet the Slimming Magazine Slimmer of the year.

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Picture № 24, 1990, with Slimming Magazine’s Slimmer of the Year
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But… and this is so familiar to slimmers… I couldn’t keep it up. Now that there was no pressure, and experiencing something like contentment for the first time in my life, my weight zoomed up again. It wasn’t just that I felt better – I had at last ‘allowed’ myself not to think of diets and food. I realised that a large part of my brain and waking hours for years and years had been spent worrying about it, planning meals, feeling guilt and self-loathing, worrying about what other people were thinking about me – and when I let myself off the hook, it was wonderful: I became interested in so many different projects and subjects. The main new enthusiasm was photography, which has never left me.

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(to be continued)

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-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 4

Marriage Picture № 13: 1978, aged 25

with husband, and sister on a visit from Argentina

Married life was lovely at first, and though it made me feel self-conscious, I didn’t really take the teasing about my small spare tyre very seriously. I just preferred to time the business of getting into my (large) nightie when my husband was brushing his teeth, and I applied make-up carefully to ensure he concentrated on my face and not the rest of me. Very dedicated to squash and high in the league, not to mention fanatical about tennis, he tried to encourage me to take up some form of exercise, but I didn’t want to - when not at work I wanted to be at home. He wasn’t interested in the new dishes I cooked – he liked his cottage pie and roasts – so I experimented on myself, and had a lovely time trying out new recipes.

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He put up a poster in our bedroom – you might recognise it, it was famous at the time. The girl played tennis locally and he knew her by sight – the front that is.

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Picture № 14: That bloody Athena poster, 1980.

Me, typically, hiding under the duvet.

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I hated it, but he told me he would take it down the day I was slim. I’m afraid I didn’t learn assertiveness for a few more years.
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A pattern started to evolve. I wanted to please him, so I would manage to lose a few pounds. He felt that I had to learn how to lead a healthy life with temptations around me, so it wouldn’t be right to ban tempting high calorie foods from the house – specifically biscuits, or to avoid going out for meals. It made perfect sense, but I just couldn’t cope with it. If there were 5 biscuits eaten from the packet, I’d wolf down the rest of the packet, go out and buy another identical one and eat the first five biscuits from the new one, so he would think I hadn’t had any. My confidence was fast disappearing.
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The psychological problem with diets if you're like me: when you break it you don’t limit the damage and carry on, or pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start again. No, you say f… it, I can’t do it – and go back to the way you were before. Except you don’t go back to where you were: you go further than last time. So – lose two pounds, gain three, lose three pounds, gain four, and so on.
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We were forever going to or giving dinner parties. Our friends were all professionals of one sort or another, slim and sporty. Squash and tennis were discussed to death. “Would you like a second helping?” Both hands up, palms facing the hostess, righteous look on face and pursed lips “Oh goodness I couldn’t possibly! That was SO delicious but I’m really full. But I’d love the recipe!” (Caroline thinking either “that remark makes me want to put two fingers down my throat” or “shit, I suppose I can’t have any more either then”.)
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Picture № 15 - at a wedding in 1981...

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...hating the dress I was wearing because I had been told before we left the house that it was a dress for a slim person.

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The self-loathing started around then. I adored him and so wanted to please him, and felt so weak and pathetic because I couldn’t control my eating the way everybody around me seemed to be able to do. Going to a slimming club would feel like “coming out”, and I was so ashamed of the fact that I couldn’t do it by myself. My parents used to say on their sporadic visits from the southern hemisphere “you’re putting on weight you know” and “why aren’t you pregnant yet?”, my husband the same but differently “you know, people like one to be slim – you’re never loved in the same way if you’re fat” and “either get slim or get pregnant”.

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Get pregnant? And have another reason for blowing up like a balloon? With my history of dieting, the 7 pounds odd at the end of the nine months would be the only weight I would ever lose, and if he looked at me so disapprovingly now, what would it be like when I gradually inflated as in that deeply unpleasant Monty Python sketch where the diner in a restaurant gets bigger and bigger during the course of the meal and then explodes at the end in the most disgusting manner imaginable? That was me, only female. I wasn’t broody, I was far too scared of my own body spiralling out of control to want babies, and unbeknown to me at the time, too unloved to receive any help from him.

Picture № 16 - Another wedding in 1982,

a large and sumptuous affair

I was by chance standing next to actress Karen Dotrice when the official photographer came up and snapped us – I was mortified beyond belief that I had been photographed next to a very skinny celebrity, and the smile is totally fixed. I look at this picture now and my heart bleeds for the unhappy young woman who doesn’t look anywhere near as gross as she felt.
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And so I comforted myself in the usual way – the inevitable mash potato from childhood, in high calorie form, polenta ditto (not the posh, upper class and neatly shaped stuff you get served in restaurants with ‘jus’ and sun-dried wood shavings, but the nursery type of my childhood as made by my Italian grandmother, with full cream milk, lots of butter and melted cheese, the consistency of – yes – mash potato), and oh boy was I an expert on jam doughnuts. I could bore for England on what makes a first class jam doughnut… And even ice-cream - though after the joys of growing up with the wonderful ice-cream in Argentina introduced by Italian immigrants, where every village has several superb ice-cream parlours boasting 100 different flavours, British ice-cream was to me the absolute pits in those days. (In fact most people still adore the horrible liquid Styrofoam stuff squirted out into a peak which has been pumped full of air and chemicals, and with a chocolate flake in it. When I’m dictator I shall hang its inventor up from the highest tree. Sorry, I digress.)
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Then he’d have another go at me and the cycle would start all over again, with even more self-loathing. He was never angry or violent – he just gave the impression all the time of feeling deeply disappointed with me, and was always quiet.  Seen from this distance it was very unkind and uncaring, and the remarks were frequently made in front of other people. He offered to pay for me to go to a health spa for a holiday where I would be put on a diet, but was never willing to get involved personally in trying to help me. He clearly found overweight people generally repellent. I cried on the quiet and felt trapped by my own weaknesses. Friends around us were having babies but I wouldn’t even consider it.
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I was barely aware that the relationship was slowly deteriorating – and when I thought about it, I knew it to be my own fault. Like the proverbial stork however, I felt wedded for life and trusted that we would work our way through it.

Picture No. 17, 1983, at yet another wedding, of a friend

The body language speaks volumes here I think, and I could barely smile. I thought the white collar would show off my face, and the shawl is there because a poncho wasn’t smart – it was just another way to cover up.
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In 1977 on my wedding day I had weighed around 9 stone (126 lbs, 57 kilos). Now in 1983 I was about 11 stone (154 lbs, 70 kg). At my present size two stone doesn’t mean as much, and in fact I can’t wait to weigh 70 kg again, but at that stage of overweight, an increase of this magnitude is extremely noticeable, and I felt very ugly.
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Some years before I had found some pseudo-ephedrine pills at a chemist which didn’t require a prescription, and I used to take them on holiday so that my husband would think I was being very careful and restrained with my food intake, and be pleased. I didn’t take them all the time because I could see they were bad for me – they increased my heart rate and made my hands shake a bit, and worse still, I had noticed that they made me feel very anxious about silly, unimportant things. I eventually cut them out altogether for that reason.

Picture № 18, 1983, in Crete, aged 30

This one makes me cringe to remember – my husband took it when we were on a holiday in Crete with another (slim and very attractive) couple, and I have cut them out of the photo, on my left. It’s evening, we’ve just showered and are ready to go out for dinner. I’m standing apart from them, feeling totally alienated in a summer world where one is next to nude all day long, on the beach. The couple are recently married, all over each other, she’s gorgeous. She eats sparingly at dinner, my husband asks me why I can’t follow her example. I feel fat, self-conscious, and totally unloved. Ugh.
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By this point my parents had moved to Johannesburg, South Africa for a few years, and we planned to visit them in October 1984. I had managed to lose a stone or so (14 lbs, 6kg), but my husband issued me with an ultimatum – that after our two week visit I should get unpaid leave from work and stay on for a couple of months, losing weight under my mother’s watchful eye and attending regular aerobics classes. I simply had to lose the weight or there was no point in carrying on together.
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I was stunned, but resolute.
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(To be continued)

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-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 3

The Student
I arrived in England from Buenos Aires in August 1973, apprehensive, excited, scared, self-conscious, timid – but determined to get a university education. Relatives gave me moral support and pushed me gently in the right direction when I needed it.
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I worked for a year first as a Spanish Assistant in a comprehensive school in Surrey and joined an amateur South American folk group, Viracocha. Here we are, tastefully posed in front of a washing line.

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Picture № 7, early 1974, aged 20, with Viracocha (London)
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.I thought it was because I had played the Spanish guitar since the age of ten and had a repertoire of folk music and Joan Baez under my belt, but it turned out that they wanted me to play the bombo – a drum made of hide – and as I was the owner of a guitar and four ponchos, perhaps we could share them at gigs…

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Ulterior motives notwithstanding, they were a nice bunch, and remained my friends for many years. We played at student venues and only covered our travel costs; it was a very enjoyable time.

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The ponchos were of course my means of hiding what I regarded as an unsightly body – long hair for the top half, poncho for the rest.
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I went to the University of Bristol for three years to study Spanish and Portuguese, and was a late starter at learning how to cook in the various flats/apartments where I lived. (During teenage years I would have preferred “come into the kitchen to learn how to cook” rather than “go and tidy your room” - but I suppose I was too goody goody to voice the opinion.) Following frantic requests, Mum sent basic recipes by post, and I chose what I liked. How to make soup or brain fritters didn’t feature prominently among my new cooking skills, and neither did vegetables in my diet.

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Picture № 8, 1974, now 21, at Bristol University
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Mars bars did, however, and it was a bad omen that when I was eating one, my eyeballs would roll back and I would go into a sort of ecstatic trance... My student boyfriend didn’t seem to mind, but by 1975 I felt quite gross and had hated having to pose for this picture with fellow students, particularly when the other girl was so slim.
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The course required me to spend the summer of my second year working in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, and I was to have a wonderful time in Lisbon and Castellón de la Plana during the baking hot and dry summer of 1976 (remembered by all British people who are old enough) – but before my departure, I knew I needed to boost my confidence by losing weight. I read slimming magazines, learned all about calories, and put myself through a punishing routine, the only time I’ve been able to do this – presumably because it was the first time I had tried it. I lost about 10kg or so (this seems like small potatoes now, but it was a superhuman effort to me then).

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Picture № 9, Benicasim, Spain, aged 22, summer of 1976.

So, I was able to wear a bikini on the beach (only time ever!) and was keenly aware of feeling “normal”. I remember that sensation so well, and have longed ever since to recapture it. Boyfriend came out to join me and we travelled around northern Spain – a happy time.
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.The following term was difficult – I was having to catch up with studies because I had spent too much time enjoying myself, and my relationship started to founder.

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Picture № 10, Bristol, aged 23, autumn 1976

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With that came eating for comfort, and back to the poncho for camouflage – this picture was taken just a few months before we parted company, as the body language shows. I’m perfectly aware now that I was barely overweight at the time, but the lessons from my peers in Argentina had been well learned, and what I saw in the mirror was a fat person – in fact I used to try not to look in a full length mirror unless I absolutely had to. The mirror never lied, but my head told me otherwise.
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I wasn’t unhappy however – at this point my attitude towards overweight was still the usual (i.e. being able to talk about it out loud ...“ooh look at me I’m so fat, chocolate is my downfall” etc etc…), and more importantly, my approach to food was normal, i.e. a bit over-healthy, but no anxiety had crept in – that came later.

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Looking for pictures has forced me to remember things I didn’t even realise were in my sub-conscious back then, for example that top of the list of comfort foods was mash potato, the object of my dreams as a malnourished five year-old at boarding school.
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Meanwhile I was in my final year, and going back to counting calories put me in control once again (that word is always there with slimmers, isn’t it?)

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Picture № 11, aged 24, graduation in Bristol, July 1977.

Six months on by the summer of 1977 I had met my husband-to-be, got engaged and graduated in July. We were married in October, and he repented at leisure, but I’ll leave that for another day.

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Picture № 12, wedding, October 1977, Buenos Aires

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Meanwhile I started to feel self-conscious again when he told me on our return from honeymoon that at 63 kg I was just too heavy - I had thought I was OK…
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(To be continued)

.-oOo-

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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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