The Immaculate Illusion
by Sydney Allison Hinton
Photo by Sydney Allison Hinton
My former body is a ghost. I don’t have ballet mirrors all around me to see what my body looks like in all positions throughout the day. I have this wispy image of myself and how I think I look. My ghost is dainty. Curvy and fills out her jeans, but not too much to spill over the top.
I went on a hike with my friends in California, and I felt my lungs burn and squeeze to get as much oxygen as they could. I felt like I was internally on fire, while my friends climbed on ahead of me with ease. Breathing in through my nose and out my mouth wasn’t helping as it normally did to calm me down. I tried to rationalize all the distant wildfire smoke making breathing harder on top of the elevation.
Around the halfway point of the hike, I felt my vision go a little blurry. I could feel my body dip in and out of hot and cold sweat. At one point I thought I saw stars in my peripheral vision. I thought, what if I passed out and tumbled down the side of the cliff? What if one of the rocks or roots I grasped to pull myself along broke loose and caused me to spill down the mountain? What if they had to call an ambulance and they couldn’t reach me? What if they couldn’t lift me onto the spinal board and out of the valley where I tumbled? What if they had to call my parents in Illinois and explain what happened? That I didn’t allow my body a break that it screamed for so desperately. I thought how stupid and embarrassing it would be as I tried to hide the wheeze creeping into my throat.
My ghost isn’t rippled like the reflection in a pool, but she retains the warped, indistinct image. Her arms are smooth, and her shoulders narrow. Her hair is perfectly curled and never frizzes. She’s the air-brushed “acceptable” plus-size model without stretch marks that companies use to seem diverse and progressive. She doesn’t take up too much space.
I put on one of my favorite records and listen to Motherfolk’s croon lean into a passionate cry. The album begins with soft, almost string-like sounds with light keying of the piano and some prolonged notes from guitars. The singers harmonize, “I feel like I’m trying to kill a ghost…” followed by a plucky bass. With every beat I expect the music to take a turn for some minor chords but am continually surprised by their eerie lyrics and upbeat melodies.
In a split second I finally hear the lyrics despite having sung along to them for months.
‘Cause if I look too close, I start to lose focus…
And I pull myself together as best as I can…
But underneath it all, I’m scared as hell of what comes after this
And if you look too close, I start to unravel the stitches that hold
me together don’t matter…
I feel as if I’ve seen my ghost for the first time. She sits next to me at my record player and lets the next song bleed into the stagnant air. She places her dainty hand on my knee as she silently begs me to look her in the eye and see her. I ignore her and listen to the rest of the album that is filled with songs like the first—upbeat tempos, major chords, but deeply personal and haunting lyrics about mental illness and other family ghosts. I think about that hike occasionally. I think about hikes I want to take but realize my body might not allow. While we sit and listen, I remember the first time I saw her, and I realized she accompanied me.
I agreed to finally stop for a break when a friend with asthma needed to rest. I would not speak up for myself. I slipped off my sneakers and dipped my feet in the cool creek water around the rocks. The icy water shot through my larger body and jolted me awake as my knees knocked back and forth trying to get more oxygen to their muscles.
My ghost materialized and sat next to me on a rock on the far side of the creek where we stopped. She gently placed her hand on my knee as a reminder. I tried to ignore her, but she’s always there whether I choose to see her or not. Instead of swatting her away as I always do, I let her rest with me. She looked at me with a tilted head and furrowed brow, as if to tell me I wasn’t the same as I was back then. I inhabited a different body now. One that was larger and required more breaks and more grace.
The last hike I went on was 2,980 feet lower in altitude. It had a lower elevation incline; 877 feet less. It was also two years ago. I should have thought about it more before I agreed to go.
I used to hate my ghost. Sometimes I think I still do. I hate all that she represents, what I once looked like, and that I don’t look like her anymore. She quietly guides my attention to the areas that cannot match hers anymore. I loathe her presence alongside me and despise her stark contrast. She caresses my developing rolls and extended curves that amplify the stretching marks on my body. She reminds me of the Spanx I once wore to smooth out the imperfections. I remember feeling the shame and guilt of being the only pre-teen in the room with an extra garment to unlatch before going to the restroom. I hid it in the back of the closet and reached for it only as a last resort. I hate her for not changing with me. I see I’m larger than I ever thought I’d be. She only ever appeared in my mind or in mirrors. Occasionally in glass storefronts.
Until recently.
She stood in front of me now and I didn’t recognize her. Her body, a fraction of mine, resembled someone I used to see in photos from high school. Back then, I thought I was so big, and too much. Now I longed for that body again. In this wheezing, pained version of myself I thought of having a eulogy for my former body. She was gone and wasn’t coming back.
In the sandy creek bed in California, I imagine all my loved ones gathering to eulogize my former body: the carefree body from childhood. The body without any perception of what it means to exist in a larger frame in this world. The body that had yet to understand that it didn’t fit into the confines the world has set up. The guests appear as wispy apparitions and figments from my imagination, matching my ghost. The flowers and trees are in full bloom. Petals and leaves float to gently land on the shimmering surface of the water as it swells along the trails. Birds are chirping and the sun shines through the leaves creating nature’s stained-glass cathedral. There’s a slight breeze surrounding the mourning guests as they all stand barefoot in the water with me. The day is warm as guests soak up the soft scents of pollen and grass. Everyone prepares what I think they would say about my former body, but I prepare an elegy.
The ghost swirled around them as they talked about how I used to climb all the tallest trees and screech at the top of my lungs, unafraid of anyone who would hear.
Some guests began to speak. Sydney would swing upside down from branches letting her shirt expose her belly without care or second thought. When she was a little older, she began ballet lessons. The ghost seemed to pirouette between the guests as she skimmed across the top of the swelling water.
I was constantly surrounded by mirrors to check my posture and positions in ballet. Teachers would gently place their hands between my shoulder blades and push out to rectify my perpetually slumped shoulders. I noticed my small, round child’s belly in the mirrors when they told me to stand up straight. They told me to pretend like a string was pulling my hair bun to the ceiling. I watched the big girls perform routines en pointe and never thought my body would be able to do the things they could do.
Other guests chimed in. Sydney joined the competitive swim team when she was a little older. The ghost stretched her arms across her body like I did before my practices and meets. My ghost looked like a curvy Olympian muse as she sprang off a rock and dove into the creek without so much as a splash.
I swapped mirrors for the reflection of rippling water. Before diving into the pool, I always saw the reflection looking back at me that warped my waist, hips, and thighs more than the other girls. At least here, bigger thighs were more welcome. I could hide in the water most of the time. On the pool deck, my coach constantly reminded me to tilt my head back, quit looking at my feet, and press my hips up to the surface of the water, all for a better streamline. I couldn’t help noticing how my belly would stick out of the water in streamline, but the other girls’ didn’t. I’d further suck my bellybutton to my spine to help ensure the most streamline possible. Or that’s what I told myself.
Sydney was in the elite choir at her high school and won numerous awards in regional contests. My ghost stood in line with the guests as she straightened her posture and took a deep, inflating breath. However, her stomach never moved an inch.
When I tired of laps, I fully committed to choir and theatre. When I had to buy a dress for the traveling choir, and gave the size I needed, my director gave me a quizzical look and said, “Really?” with a judgmental shrug. I never mentioned how I felt the seams tighten every time I took a deep breath from my diaphragm, or how I worried that with one breath, some drastic wardrobe malfunction would ensue.
Eventually Sydney became the president of the drama club and was the lead in the musical two years in a row. The ghost gently floated down the creek as if to perform for all the guests. She sauntered down the line with precise, choreographed flowing movements.
In drama club, I worried about finding costumes in the right size, rather than right period. Some relief came when my grandma decided to costume the shows and took it upon herself to create mine from scratch. Grandma said it was because I was the lead, but I knew better. I felt loved while simultaneously hating the special accommodations. When I saw that Grandma had to pad her clothing mannequin with extra stuffing from a pillow to replicate my size better, I felt a flush of panic wash over me as I descended to her sewing room in the basement. Bumps prickled my skin as I tried to ignore how the naked mannequin looked without any kind of hourglass waist, and tried to focus on how perfect the costumes would fit. The illusion was immaculate since the threads were made specifically to fit me.
All the guests are silent, leaving me room to think of the first time I cried over my body.
I cried to my parents when I tried to pick out clothes for a wedding, but nothing fit from my closet. I cried, but I didn’t say how I felt like my body was inherently wrong because of all the different diet programs I grew up around and was exposed to from various family members. I cried but I didn’t say how I hated exercising and the idea of it since it was always weaponized against me for the sake of “getting healthy” rather than for enjoyment.
I cried and felt fully exposed for the first time in front of my family, unable to use clothing to hide my body this time.
A ghost stood in the corner, watching my breakdown. She resembled my high school body and what I ached to look like again.
To temporarily alleviate my concerns, I agreed to join a diet program with the illusion of feeling healthier.
Over the next nine months, I met with a diet coach who measured every part of my body. This coach was a thin, tall woman who explained the food portions I should eat for every meal, showed me the one-pound plastic models of fat and muscle in her office, and took photos of my profile on the vertically striped wall for my before photo. She explained it was painted that way so we could really see our progress. After our first meeting she took me on a tour of the store and showed me the section of pre-packaged food I could purchase from during Phase One. Two hundred dollars later for two weeks of meal packets and I was out the door.
I weighed in daily with a Wi-Fi enabled scale so my coach could further measure my progress. Replaced meals with protein enriched packets. Documented calories. Walked to class even when it rained or snowed. Only drank water. Only ate the supplements sent to me. Only ate certain things at the dining hall. Only supplemented my diet with brownies that came in a foil packet that you add water and microwave. I believed I enjoyed what I put into my body when I started to see results.
I heard someone tell me, “It’s like there was a whole other girl under there.” I knew this was meant as a compliment, but my skin crawled with discomfort. I should feel proud, but I wanted to scream and cry that it’s still me. It felt like my presence was finally being respected and acknowledged since it was a smaller body.
Silence grows at the creek, enveloping me, the guests, and my ghost.
I want to trade bodies with the ghost. She reminds me of my favorite concert shirts I keep in the back of my closet because I think I can fit into them again one day. Like some cheap prize for a hard-fought game, I don’t want to play. I save them and reconcile to create something that’s not a wearable article of clothing. But she sits in the corner and knows the truth. I hope to match her body again one day.
I recognize her as someone who is similar to me. But she’s not me. I want to bury her. I’m tired of seeing our differences. She reminds me of the uncanny valley theory: “[T]he hypothesized relationship between the extent to which a humanoid entity resembles an actual human being and the emotional response such an entity evokes.” She’s all the best fragments of me that I once had. Parts of me want her back. Other parts of me just want her to disappear so I can move on.
No matter how much I want to exist like her, when I move, and watch myself move, I know she’s just a phantom. Her graceful movements and presence don’t align with my disjointed, clumsy actions. When I hold up a shirt to see if it’ll fit me, first, I think of her. It would definitely fit her. I realize it won’t work for me by the time it’s too late and I see myself in the mirror.
She can’t speak so she never uses the words the other kids did to taunt my body. I don’t notice she’s present until I feel the pit in my stomach grow, expanding my already large frame. She can’t speak so she never uses the words the other kids used to taunt my body. She still gives me pitied looks when I think of those words more than I should.
I don’t realize I’m thinking of her. Moments like when I walk into a dressing room and I see that we’re not the same person. She stands behind me, hiding behind my now larger body, showing me what I’ve lost and gained. Lost the former image and gained pounds of insecurity and self-hatred. Lost the childhood baby fat and gained the adulthood obesity. Lost the ability to do much of anything without thinking of my former body. My ghost holds the threads keeping this illusion together. Then suddenly, and without warning, she pulls them as we watch my illusion crumble in the mirror before us. She forces me to see myself instead of her.
The rest of the guests expressed their loving words and kind thoughts about my former body as they left the creek bed one by one. My ghost hovered behind me, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. She knelt behind me on the rock, as if to support me somehow, while my feet dangled in the water. I watched the splashes and droplets fly as I kicked them across the creek to rid the last of the guests from my mind.
