No shrinking necessary.

aging, weight loss, and my dying grandmother

In my dream I stand in the center of a low-lit cavernous room filled with women. We are all naked, they stare ahead while I look around, confused. The women who are older than me begin to inflate, they open their mouths wide and begin to scream and claw at their expanding bodies. The women younger than me begin to shrink, their skeletons becoming more visible, they are quiet and dead in the eyes. They do not scream at all, what would be the point? I look down at my own body, unchanging and start to panic—shouldn’t something be happening to me? I cover my ears to muffle the old women’s screams and close my eyes to avoid the dead stares of the young women. I startle awake, grab my boobs, my stomach, my thighs. Everything is as it seems, I tap my phone—witching hour.

In the language of fat acceptance, I am a small fat—size 1x/2x, 16/18. I can shop at most big box stores and the thrift, fit into an airplane seat, and receive adequate health care but I can’t seem to escape the scrutiny of my mother-in-law who insists I’ve lost weight every time I see her. I have stayed more or less the same size for the last decade—my body found her equilibrium and I trust her. My mother-in-law insists despite me telling her I haven’t lost weight, nor do I care to. She insists and shows me a photo of myself from 2021 and then a wedding photo from last year. “See?! Your face has thinned out. I told you you’ve lost weight.” I am thin enough to dress well but fat enough to shrink. There is enough of me to lose.

I take note of each change I notice in my body:

• new skin tag in my left elbow crease

• some moles to keep an eye on

• gray hairs pepper my bangs

• my boobs hang lower, maybe i am slouching

These changes spark curiosity in me, I wonder:

• do I care about them?

• am i uglier because of them?

• does that matter anymore, happily married and beautiful as I am?

My body is filling in— I feel womanly in my size 16 jeans and I feel mature when I need to go up to an 18; to get older is to put on weight, to settle in, to fill out. At nearly 32, I am sturdy and well-fed; I look my age. It is 2026: bodies are shrinking, faces are freezing in place full of plastic while brains are melting. Hulu has received the entire marketing budget of every weight loss drug on the market and everyone pretends like this particular regression to 2008 is fine, normal even. My body alerts me to the threat: recession. I plant a garden, perfect my bread recipe, and teach my friends to budget. At Costco I buy a ten pound bag of russet potatoes, five pounds of carrots, a loaf of sourdough, and an apple pie for my husband and I to share for a few days. I will not deny myself the pleasures of pie or anything else for that matter because life is too short and my grandma is dying.

The cancer in her jaw has spread and it will kill her. For now, she is alive and handling her mortality as well as one can. I won’t say she’s happier but she tries to stay positive. Last Christmas I went to see her for the first time in 6 years and she finally met my husband. At 5:45am on her porch in the house by the marsh she has always lived in, my husband and I sit drinking coffee while she thickens hers with a powder. This house has always smelled like coffee, she refuses to give it up despite the missing bones in her face. We talk while the sun comes up, her speech is different now and I feel awful for missing the way her voice used to sound so like a Golden Girl—she has always been an old woman in Florida. The screened in porch gets brighter, stickier, I can smell the marsh. I listen to my grandma talk about the way her body has changed from cancer treatment. She tells me she is too skinny, She can’t keep on weight and this is concerning. She tells me she has spent her entire life trying to lose weight and now she wishes she could keep it. She scoops coffee into her mouth, dabs away a little drool with the dignity she has always had and gets up to eat breakfast through a tube in her stomach. She says she misses pizza and Taco Bell. I make a mental note to indulge every craving, for her.

my aunt, grandma, mom, and little ol me.

When my mom was in Florida last she texted me all the things she would do different when she begins her active descent to the grave. She cleans out clutter, gets paperwork in order, sleeps on an air mattress on the floor of her mother’s house and thinks about her mortality and me, her only daughter. She tells me her mom is vain, that she cares too much about appearances and what people think. I do not remind her that she has been trying to shrink her own body my entire life. These women that raised me, small fats like me, who tried every fad diet—Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, Slim Fast, keto—in the name of “health” and complimented my weight loss after a week away at summer camp are confronting the realities of their bodies in new ways. They could not control the forward march of time, no matter how hard they tried. The herculean effort to shrink and shrink and shrink never made them any happier and now I wonder if they realize how much time they wasted. I decide I will not waste my time on such frivolities. I imagine the three of us in a field of flowers or my mom’s garden in Montana or at the dining table in the house by the marsh that my grandma has always lived in eating boiled peanuts and shrimp, the food of my childhood, together. We eat and eat and eat until our stomachs ate and then we burst into a thousand colors.

I want to say that I am a kaleidoscope—a beautiful abstraction, “a constantly changing pattern” (Lord Byron, 1819)—of the women who made me and those who continue to shape me. I have always liked the word kaleidoscope because I thought it shared a root with my name, Kaleigh.

“It is derived from the Ancient Greek word καλός (kalos), “beautiful, beauty”, εἶδος (eidos), “form, appearance” and σκοπέω (skopeō), “to look, to examine”, hence “observation of beautiful forms’”¹

“The name [Kaleigh] derives from elements meaning “slender” and “beautiful,” with some etymological roots connected to the Old Irish word caol [meaning] slender or narrow. In its original context, it carries connotations of grace and elegance.”²

Just for fun I look up names that mean ugly to see if there are any. Two names come up: Kennedy and Leod, Scottish, meaning ‘ugly head’ and ‘ugly’ respectively. I look up the gender of those names, both are masculine. Women are not allowed to be ugly in Scotland or anywhere for that matter.

The words slender and narrow with their “connotations of Grace and Elegance” taunt me, they are the unwelcome bitchy devils riding on my shoulders, attached to my name like leeches. What is this implanted desire to take up less space in the world? I thought we moved past all this when Nicole Richie went to treatment and started eating again, I cannot watch women shrink themselves anymore. I am fat in defiance and I do not think that disqualifies me from Grace or Elegance. My theory is that these qualities come as we age, as we develop our tastes and settle into the gravitas of experience. At nearly 32, I hold the attention of 25 year olds rapt as I bestow all my hard-earned wisdom upon their heads. I tell them how hard it is to be a person in your twenties, that growing is uncomfortable but avoiding it is worse. I speak of our thirties as an exclusive club, it has everything, the cost of entry is surviving!

My husband’s best friend stares at me in horror and stubborn disbelief as I tell him everything he has to look forward to in his thirties. He is a nostalgic man who has never had an easy time with change. Turning 30 feels like a sentencing as if there will be a moratorium on fun. I laugh at him and wonder if he’ll feel the same on the eve of his 40th birthday where I will repeat my assurances. I think it is easier to live when we have something to look forward to.

When I am older, I will be beyond influence and this is Elegance. I will take a moment to thoughtfully select my words before speaking and this is Grace. I imagine Graceful Elegant Women luxuriating in every bite of food, savoring a bottle of wine that cost more than $18 with friends and massaging lotion into their skin before bed. Grace and Elegance exist outside of aesthetics, no? To look graceful or elegant has more to do with well-moisturized skin, a suppleness that only comes with years of lotion and regular sunscreen applications. I am not Graceful or Elegant yet, my feet catch on my sheets sometimes.

For now, I am nearly 32 and texting my best friends my plans for our forties,

In our forties we’ll have

• Financial stability & hefty savings account

• Some flabby bits that are perfectly squishy and excellent for hugging

• Annual girls trips to somewhere relaxing and beautiful

• Great sex as often as we want it

They both agree, the conversation moves on.

I think getting older has nothing do with our bodies shrinking. I imagine me and my best friends, the women I have known since I was a teenager, laughing louder than we should in a restaurant. We choose an appetizer to share and different entrees so we can eat family style. We tell each other stories from our separate lives and reminisce on our shared memories. “Remember when…” This is as much a fantasy of living near my best friends as it is a vision of growing old together. Regardless, in every fantasy I have there is a beautiful meal laid out before me, I imagine the first bite of every dish and my mouth waters.

I think getting older has nothing to do with our bodies shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. I am nearly 32 and I have other things to do than care about my weight. I am trying to exist within my body, something I don’t think is possible when we turn ourselves into projects to be managed, whittled, and judged. I am trying to find movement that feels good—the long stretch, an exuberant fuck, the soreness that lasts a day or two. A memory of my husband inside me brings the phrase “cushion for the pushin’ to mind. I hear the slap of our skin and watch my boobs bounce from my armpits where they’ve fallen to. It is better to fuck a fat girl, lucky him. I have taken note of the way his body has changed as well. He feels more substantial now, there is more of him to touch. I do not feel as though I will suffocate him if I relax the weight of my body onto his face. I ride him with more enthusiasm and let him enjoy the view. I have cravings for sensations that force me into my body. Here I am, they say.

I wonder if my writing improves with embodiment, how I can dig deeper into experience and turn it into something meaningful. My rules for writing so far include: never being alone for very long, moving, fucking, and eating. No shrinking necessary.

In my dreams I stand in the center of a meadow in bloom, water burbles along. The early spring sun warms my skin, a breeze brushes past my nipples and through the perimeter of trees. I am surrounded by women we are all naked and we are gazing at each other.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope#Etymology

2. https://momcozy.com/blogs/baby-names/kaleigh (lol)