“I want to help you,” the shadchan said. “I really do. But you need to lose some weight first"

"You need to have lap band surgery,” my mother’s friend told me. It was Shabbos afternoon, and I was curled up on the living room couch. The conversation started, as it often did, with her asking my mother how my shidduchim were going. Two years post-high school, my calendar was already crowded with l’chayims and weddings for classmates.

If others were getting engaged and I wasn’t, it must be due to my weight, my mother’s friend reasoned. A risky, invasive surgery would solve all my problems.

She wasn’t the first to offer this advice. A few weeks before, my mother set up a meeting with a well-known shadchan. I spent hours running through every outfit in my closet. What do you wear to impress a shadchan?

When I walked into her living room, I was wearing a flowy black dress and had spent hours carefully applying makeup for that effortless look. I felt good about myself. Stylish. Pretty.

The shadchan skimmed my résumé and then added it to a pile on the corner of her desk. She shook her head. “I want to help you,” she said. “I really do. But you need to lose some weight first. Did you ever consider weight-loss surgery?”

And just like that, the confidence I’d felt evaporated.

I wasn’t the eligible young woman coming to hear about prospective ideas. I was the overweight blob who needed to lose weight in order to be desirable.