Why do people assume that if you are fat, you’re also stupid?

My life’s journey has taken me through landscapes both harsh and beautiful, and various shades in between. In my earliest memories, I am in shame country, and it is a barren and unwelcoming place.

First grade (or was it second, or even preschool?): I am standing on the bathroom scale. Sixty-eight pounds. I have gained a pound. I feel anxiety squeeze my chest. I had been a good girl this week. I had cottage cheese in my ice cream cone instead of the real thing.

But the scale does not seem to register this. I feel a sense of desperation. I am not good enough. Because I am the fat kid. I am in shame country and I don’t know how to get out. I’m trapped.

Elementary school: I stare at my face in the mirror. I put my nose up inches from the glass and examine it from every angle. I am searching, searching for ugliness, the mark of Cain that stamps me as not good enough. I cannot find it, but I know it must be there. I know it because of what people tell me — and what they leave out.

You would be so pretty if you lost some weight.

That dress looks so slimming on you!

High School: I am in obese country. This is harsh and unforgiving terrain, and I am duly informed by the collective powers that be that you better get out of there fast. This is no place for a girl your age.

I want to get out. As Hashem is my witness, I want it more badly at that point than I’ve ever wanted anything in life. There is Weight Watchers, and Grey Sheet, and the magical “three day diet” that, to put it mildly, overpromises and under-delivers.

Enticingly named “healthy lifestyle changes,” and “weight-loss mentors” they are as alluring as shining stars, and equally as likely to combust into a black hole. Society demands an explanation for my intransigence, and I sense an obligation to excuse myself, to offer up a confession for my sins, to assure the vanguard that I am trying, that I am doing enough, that I have chased every weight-loss option to its logical end point.

Then, one day, I have had enough. I decide to stop eating. I eat nothing all day, and I eat a quarter of a portion for dinner. The pounds melt off me. It is exhilarating.

Months into my no-eating campaign, the comments roll in.

“Wow, now you look just like any other regular, slim girl. You look normal!”

“You look so good that from the back I almost mistook you for your sister, (the slim, pretty one)!”

For once, I dare hope that I can become one of them, the normal ones.