Big Summer(6)

The last piece in the garment bag was a swimsuit called the Darcy. I lifted the hanger, swallowing hard. Swimsuits would probably always be hard for me. Even after all this time, all the work I’d done to love my body—to at least accept the parts I couldn’t love—I still cringed at the cellulite that riddled my thighs, the batwings of loose flesh under my upper arms, and the curve of my belly.

The swimsuit had a kind of vintage style. There was a skirt, but it wasn’t the heavy, knee-length kind I’d remembered from my own mother’s infrequently worn bathing suits, but a sweet flounce of ruffles that would brush the widest part of my thighs. You can do this, I coached myself, and pulled the suit on, over my underpants, and adjusted the straps.

Another deep breath, and I looked in the mirror. There were my thighs, so white they seemed to glare in the gloom. There were my stretch marks; there were the folds of fat on my back; there was the bulge of my stomach. I shut my eyes, shook my head, and told myself, A body is a body.

“Daphne?” Leela called. “Is everything okay?”

I didn’t answer. Deep breath, I told myself. Head up. I slicked on red lipstick and slid my feet into my wedges. I made myself smile. Finally, I looked again, and this time, instead of seeing cellulite or rolls, or arms or thighs, I saw a woman with shiny hair and bright red lips; a woman who’d dive into the deep end and smile for the camera and live her life out in the open, as if she had just as much right to the world as anyone else.

Holding that thought in my head, I opened the door. Leela, who’d been bouncing on the tips of her toes for each previous reveal, went very still. Her hands, which she’d had clasped against her chest, fell to her sides.

“Oh,” she said very softly. “Oh.”

“It’s perfect,” I said, and sniffled.

“Perfect,” she repeated, also sniffling, and I knew that not only had I found the swimsuit and the clothes of my dreams, but I’d landed a job, too.

Once I’d changed back into my own clothes, I returned to the table. Leela, beaming, extended her hand.

“I’d love to hire you as the exclusive face, and figure, of Leef Fashion.” Her hand was warm, her grip firm, her gaze direct, her smile bright.

“And I’d love to accept. It’s just…”

Leela looked at me, her face open and expectant.

“Why me?” I asked. “I mean, why not someone, you know, bigger?” No pun intended, I thought, and felt myself flush.

Leela tilted her head for a moment in silence, her silvery hair falling against her cheek. “I like to think that building a campaign is like putting together a great outfit,” she finally said. “You pull a piece from here, a part from there. And everything has to fit. When I thought about who would fit my brand, I knew I wanted someone like you, who’s just starting out. I want to make magic with someone I like; someone who is just at the beginning of her story. I want someone real,” she concluded. “Well, as real as anyone ever is on social. And you’re real, Daphne,” Leela said. “That’s what people love about you, that’s why they follow you. From that very first video you posted to the review you did of that workout plan… BodyBest?”

“BestBody,” I murmured. That had been a doozy. The company had sent me its workout plan, a sixty-dollar booklet full of exhortations about “Get your best beach body now,” and “Be a hot ass,” and “Nothing tastes as good as strong feels,” and shots of slim, extraordinarily fit models with washboard abs and endless legs demonstrating the moves. I’d done the entire workout plan, all twelve weeks of it. I’d filmed myself doing jump squats and burpees, even though I’d been red-faced and sweaty, with parts of me flopping and wobbling when I did mountain climbers or star jumps (none of the models had enough excess flesh for anything to flop or wobble). My carefully worded review had alluded both to the challenging workouts and the punitive language, which I’d found distracting and knew to be ineffective. Research shows that shaming fat folks into thinness doesn’t work. And come on—if it did, most of the fat women in the world would have probably disappeared by now, I’d written.

“You have an authenticity that people like. You’re just…” She tilted her head again. “Unapologetically yourself. People feel like you’re their friend,” Leela said, looking straight into my eyes. “You’re going places, Daphne, and I want us to go together.” She extended her cool hand. “So, what do you say?”

I made myself smile. I was delighted with her praise, with her confidence that I was going places. I was also still thinking about the BestBody review and how the truth was that the workout had left me in tears, so disgusted with myself that I’d wanted to take a knife to my thighs and my belly. I hadn’t written that, of course. No one wanted to see anything that raw. The trick of the Internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real… which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all. The more followers I got, the more I thought about that contradiction; the more my followers praised me for being fearless and authentic, the less fearless and authentic I believed myself to be in real life.

Leela was still looking at me, all silvery hair and expectant eyes, so I took her hand. “I’m in.”