Smart Is Beautiful

A Five Pound Persnickety

The recent hullabaloo over Dancing with the Stars darling, Cheryl Burke, simply boggles the mind.  Just when I think pop culture’s obsession with “skelebrities” has sunk to its lowest, it’s now suddenly newsworthy when a size-4 athlete has to defend herself against bloggers and tabloid writers who attack her for gaining five measly pounds.

I admire Burke’s chutzpah in going on live television to defend not only her own graceful physique, but the healthy body image of all women, especially young girls.  However, my initial pride withered when I remembered the advice my steel-magnolia-mother gave me about handling judgmental people:  

“As hard as it is, you just have to ignore them.  All they want to do is get a rise out of you.  That’s why they’re picking on you in the first place.  So don’t sink totheir level.  Be a Lady.”

Of course, being referred to as a “Lady” is one of the highest compliments bestowed upon a southern woman…well, that and the one that says she “eats like a bird,” though I never really understood that one.    

So, I tried to ignore the vicious boys in my class who were so proficient in slinging insults it was almost an art form…really I did.  But I finally lost it when I was 12 years old.  It was probably due as much to the wildly fluctuating hormones of my newly begun menses as to the fact that I’d been raised to be both ladylike and assertive, though the two words are oxymoronic in Southern culture. 

It was late in the school year and we were all slowly melting into sweaty puddles of sixth-grade angst.  The only respite we received from the heat and humidity, not to mention the smell wafting from the backwoods boys who hadn’t yet been introduced to deodorant, was from a box fan that Mrs. Hicks kept in the front of the classroom. 

While the circulating air did keep the temperature of the room just below that of the seventh level of hell, what little benefit it served was overwhelmed by the hypnotic droning of the fan itself.  The ever-present white noise, coupled with the mind-numbingly boring lesson in diagramming complex sentences, soon had every one of us in a trance-like state.  

The only interruption to our glass-eyed funk was the occasional squeak of Mrs. Hicks’ fast-flying chalk as it clicked and squeaked across the blackboard.  That woman took the same delight in dissecting a plethora of prepositional phrases as if she were carving up a fat, juicy Thanksgiving turkey.

The dress code had been lifted due to the intense heat and I’d worn shorts to school for the first time since the previous summer so when I shifted in my desk, my bare legs stuck uncomfortably to the seat.  The other girls, most of who were still sporting narrow hips and had yet to need a bra, could fold their thin forms up in their desks like they were lawn chairs.  

I’d been wearing a bra for a couple years and was well into filling out a C-cup so instead of using my desk as a platform for showing off my contortionist skills, I suffered my claustrophobia as silently as possible.  

Like a shark scenting blood in the water, one of the meaner boys in my class – let’s call him Eric Clarkson – recognized that it was the chubbiness of my legs that was making me uncomfortable.  Within minutes, a paper airplane landed smoothly on my desk, with the words “OPEN ME” written sloppily on one of its wings.  Looking furtively up at the board to make sure I wasn’t being observed, I carefully opened the folded paper airplane.  

My lethally optimistic heart starting to pitter-pat as I thought about how the long-time object of my affection – a certain black-haired, blue-eyed boy named Alex Reed – had asked me to double check his grammar in the writing assignment we’d had last week.  Maybe he’d finally sent me an I-like-you-do-you-like-me-circle-yes-or-no kind of note and I could finally doodle “Kelly Loves Alex” in my notebooks like the other girls!

Perhaps if I hadn’t gotten my hopes up, I would have reacted in a more civilized way.  The note, of course, wasn’t from the ever-so-dreamy Alex, but from my long-time nemesis Eric.  It said, “Hey Thunder Thighs, you shouldn’t wear shorts. Nobody wants to see your fat legs!”  

Before I even knew I was going to say a word, my mouth opened and out came the words:  “Well Eric Clarkson, I may have thunder thighs but at least I’m not a borderline retard who has to go to special classes like you!”

Not one of my finer moments, I’ll admit.  Thinking back, I don’t know if there is as much cruelty involved in the struggle for survival between wild animals in the harsh savannahs of Africa as there is among ordinary kids in the classrooms of our American school system.  

That day is one of only a handful of times I’ve knowingly said something so cruel to another human being.  When I’m feeling especially masochistic, I remember each of them in detail, imagining how it must have felt to be on the receiving end of my brutal words.  But then again, if we didn’t all take guilt trips, we wouldn’t get out as much, huh?

Everyone in our class knew that Eric was on the slower side of things, but I’d been privy to the truth about his low 80s IQ scores.  We’d all been tested rigorously for a new special academic program.  A few weeks before this incident, when the parents of the kids who’d made the program were in a conference in the cafeteria, my best friend, Tammy Holmes, and I decided to take advantage of our lack of supervision to snoop through Mrs. Hicks’ desk.  

It was there we learned that to qualify for the special program, one had to score a specific number on our IQ test that put us in the “superior intelligence” category.  Most of our classmates were listed as having “average intelligence” scores.  To my surprise, most of them were kids I considered really smart, a lot of who graduated with higher GPAs than those of us with “superior” intellects.   I guess hard work and tenacity trump intellectual arrogance and laziness, huh?

There were only a handful of kids who were labeled “dull” and right at the top of the list was Eric Clarkson.  This was no real surprise because Eric had been attending special classes since we were young.  And while this would have hurt most kids in the popularity department, Eric was immune since he was both athletic and attractive.  

No sooner was the insult out of my mouth than I felt the slow burn of embarrassment start to fill my chubby cheeks.  All eyes in the class were on me, including those behind Mrs. Hick’s bifocals, her outrage making her bug eyes appear twice their normal size.  It was then that I felt the deep stain of shame that, like a burning acid, seeped out of my stomach and into my naive, sugar-n-spice-n-everything-nice young girl’s heart.  

That good-natured sweetness I’d thought I was made of was tainted forever.  I knew that I would always remember the first time I allowed my inner cruel streak out for a walk.  And though part of my childish mind said, “well, he started it,” and even “he deserved it,” the metronome of my emotions swayed between the extreme satisfaction of revenge and life-sucking guilt. 

Even though I knew better and, more importantly, knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of  cruel insults, I’d deliberately hurt another human being simply because he’d hurt me first.

I looked over at Eric to see him rolling his eyes to his friends about me, his expression clearly stating that he was too cool to care about something as unimportant as IQ scores, and I knew that I’d done exactly what my mother had warned me not to do – sink to his level. 

Simply by responding I’d shown weakness, which meant…HE WON.  By responding, I showed him that he’d angered me, which meant…HE WON.  By responding, I let him know that what he wrote hurt me, which meant…HE WON.  See a pattern?  

So I can understand where Cheryl Burke is coming from in her desire to fight back against the bullies.  There’s probably not a person alive who doesn’t get that.  And though she wasn’t mean spirited in her remarks, she still gave them exactly what they wanted.  

The solution is simple.  I think that she – and, for that matter, all women – would be better served if we ignored those psychic vampires living among us instead of handing them even more power.  Because, once again, as my momma said:

“All they want to do is get a rise out of you.” 

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