Life is Easier When You’re Pretty
And other childhood misnomers
At the age of 11, I was already near my full adult height of 5 feet 10 inches, lanky, and full of the promise of beauty with my large eyes and naturally full pout. Crooked teeth aside, I was indeed quite pretty, but none of this meant anything to me at the time. Nor should it have.
“She’s going to be a model! Or a Rockette! I bet her legs are the length required to be a Rockette!” screamed my mother’s good friend Melody, a fiery woman with wild hair that’s color matched her energy. My mom, who had the worldly equivalent of a Ph.D. in criticizing me, even thought Melody might be onto something. They started talking about my future, figuring out how to afford braces, and figuring out where I could be discovered. As often as it was when I was growing up, I sat there, waiting for my fate to be decided. I had no interest. It did not matter.
I was young when I learned the power of owning my own narrative, even if I had to hurt myself in the process, physically or emotionally. I was about 9 years old when the girls in school wouldn’t stop calling me “L’eggo My Eggo” — Californians are completely daft with Italian names (Ledge-e-oh), and this New York transplant was an anomaly. I got some iron-on patches at K-Mart and one day walked into softball practice with “L’eggo My Eggo” up the sleeve of my school-commissioned jersey. They couldn’t insult me if I did it first. I took away their power; it didn’t do shit for my pain.
Hurt them before they hurt me; while I thought it cunning as a child, it turned out to be one of the biggest issues to overcome as an adult to have healthy friendships and romantic relationships. At the time, it kept those bitches quiet and also got me out of my future as a Rockette.
I simply ate my way out of the qualification process.
Sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night, I’d guzzle Kraft American Cheese slices and ice cream or whatever leftovers I could sneak bites out of and not have mom notice. My grandparents’ house was always stocked with goodies and since they tended to spoil me where my mom couldn’t; there were tubs of Cool Whip and sleeves of Oreos and Grammie never questioned why she had to restock them every week. We’d go to doctor appointments, and I’d lie about my food intake, so they started checking everything else. I had a thyroid issue but it was not the cause for my weight gain (it rarely ever is) so I was a conundrum. I fooled them all. Mom withheld dessert. I snuck apple pies in my pocket at Stater Bros. By the time I was 14 years old, I was a size 16 and couldn’t wear any regular teen clothes.
“Life will be easier if you are pretty, Jennifer Ann,” Mom would scold. “What are you doing, what is happening?” She was always focused on the wrong issue — like this instead of why she just threw a pan across the kitchen — so I shrugged.
At this point, the Rockette conversation was years out of my mind, and food had simply become an addictive comfort. The treasure chest of Twinkies and crackers and candies I hid under my bed comforted me when Mom yelled or smacked, which was most of the time. When Grammie and Pop would fight. When I’d be grounded for months for breathing wrong. When I was made fun of walking across campus in too-tight clothes that highlighted my bulges.
Yes, I soothed the pain of being overweight by eating more. That’s how disorganized attachment works, right? You’re comforted by the very things that cause you pain. Like hugging your mother when she cries after she feels overwhelmed from hitting you.
Would that have been easier if I was pretty, too?
The reality was that I was still outwardly pretty, even with my pudge, yet I was so ugly on the inside, masking so much darkness in my home life with the food. Mayonaise slathered on those cheese slices and eating the skin off of all of the fried chicken turned into eating two Big Macs and hiding the evidence under the driver seat just before dinner — an act that went on well into my 20s and early 30s.
I would never be a Rockette now. Thank God. And, clearly, life would not be easy.
Life was never intended to be easy for me, pretty or not. I’ve joked as an adult that I was essentially feral growing up. Friends laugh, often out of discomfort, because they can’t fathom that as real, however true. A borderline mother, an absent father, grandparents who threw money and food and private school our way to avoid parenting my mother — they were Olympic medalists at pretending to not see when she’d scream or smack. I raised myself on handfuls of sugary cereal hidden behind the bathroom door at night and the sheer will of someday living a life where I didn’t have to comfort the people who hurt me in order to merely survive.
At this point, I wanted to be pretty. Healthy. Pretty. Healthy. Sane. Gone.
By the time I got food under control, which quite literally took the blade of a surgeon, another door opened. My will to survive had taken me down a career path that was very much predicated on networking events and booze-filled conversations. I could no longer eat an entire bag of egg noodles covered in butter and parmesan cheese, but I could gulp vodka and double-fist brown liquors and metaphorically put a nipple on top of multiple bottles of wine. I found a new way to hurt myself that made me not feel anything that stung, and this time, while I didn’t feel, I turned vitriolic. All of that inner pain was unleashed on whatever poor person wandered across my path at the wrong time.
I had lost weight and started dressing better, and men and women were finding me attractive. I was only comfortable returning affections when I was drunk — but only during the small window of time before vitriol slammed it shut, and I sent them away crying. Then I’d cry for them back.
I was “pretty.” Life was “easier.” Absolutely fucking easier. Everything is easy when you don’t feel or even care about how you make others feel let alone what happens to you.
Years later, after many hearts, egos, and wills were crushed under the boulders of my rage, and many self-inflicted dangerous situations, alcohol was no longer in the picture. Finally, at the age of 48, I started to address all of the reasons I started mainlining cheese slices in the first place.
Everything started there; everything goes back to there. The pain.
Aggressive EMDR and internal family systems (IFS) work led to shadow work and soon a spiritual awakening that made me even more weird, even if at the same time also much nicer. And thinner. And happier. And dare I say, prettier. Maybe the prettiest I’ve ever been.
Yet, life still isn’t easy. I still cry often over the loss of what could’ve been with my father. I still face the choice every day to not have a relationship with my mother rather than keeping it and risking trying to numb it out other ways. I still get my heart broken. I still struggle with work. I still have a hard time trusting my friends, especially the ones who I can tell either resent the changes I’ve made, don’t like the changes I’ve made, or don’t trust the changes I’ve made. Or, they think that because I’ve worked so hard on myself, I should never melt down again, and flee when I’m a wreck.
But, ya know, I’m pretty. God damn striking. “Serving” or “giving” as the kids these days might say. “Hot as fuck” as my fellow olds might say.
Life is not easier. Life is not better. None of it really matters, how I look and all; now instead of shoving food and drink inside to numb I flaunt that like a wild animal with its prey to mask how broken I almost always feel.
Pretty. What does it mean anyway? If I could go in a machine and change time I would ask redhead Melody to talk about how stable I could be, how life-changing I could be for others, how loving I could be, how loved I could be. Perhaps I could be a doctor. Anything but a Rockette.
Life is easier when you’re pretty when you need a kind stranger to get something down off of a high shelf. That’s it.
Life isn’t easy at all.
