Cry For the Child If The Tears Will Come

2. Laurel Takes a Long Look At Herself

That night, the night when Laurel decided to change herself in order to silence her cousin Stuart, she did what Constance Chatterley did in an early chapter of Lady Chatterley's Lover; stood naked in front of the long mirror in her bedroom and brought a lamp to shine full on her body. She looked at herself at every angle.

What she saw made her heart shake. She felt awful. She looked nothing like the teenage models in the magazines she read. Stuart was right; she was a "lard ass," she had "thunder thighs," and her stomach stuck out; she indeed had a "jelly belly." Then, like Constance Chatterley did after her own self-examination, she put on her nightgown, threw herself onto her bed, and cried.

Laurel thought she was crying about her shape, but that is not true; her anguish sprang from the fact that for the first time she was experiencing duality. Never before had she been split in two like this. Up until then if she wanted to play soccer with the kids on the street she did it; if she wanted a hot fudge sundae she had one; if she felt like reading a new library book she read it. Now she had two conflicting voices going on in her mind at the same time. One voice was Stuart's, the voice of society. If she wanted to be beautiful and accepted and get boys to ask her out on dates she had to rearrange her body. The other voice was Laurel's own, the one that came from within, the authentic Laurel. She knew that this single issue of food and weight was not very important to her. Reading, playing her piano, not thinking that she was too old to play softball and soccer with the kids on her street, having sleepover parties with her friends--these were the things that she loved.

"I'm only 14," she said to herself as she lay on her bed. "Does it have to happen this soon?"
She knew the voice of Stuart and visual images from the magazines were strong and would continue to be so. "I'll fight," she said. "I'll fight them all. And I'll win."