Excerpted from Body Drama by Nancy Amanda Redd, published by Penguin Publishing Group. Excerpt courtesy Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The following excerpt is from Nancy Redd’s eye-opening new book designed to help you help your teen girls—and you!—think differently about body image.
Hovering around one hundred and fifty pounds, wearing a size twelve, and standing five feet, four inches tall, as a senior in high school I was what traditional medical charts consider overweight . . . but I never knew it! Being southern and black meant that a couple of extra inches to pinch were nothing to be ashamed of. At the very worst of times, when I struggled to find a pair of jeans that stretched over my ample behind, I thought of myself as “thickly built,” but mostly I just thought of myself as hot stuff.
That same butt that couldn’t get into blue jeans could definitely shake it on the dance floor, and my boyfriend never told me I was fat, nor did any of the people in my high school who voted me school president. I was so confident that I even entered a local beauty pageant and won the title, along with sponsorship to the state program! That, however, was where the fairy tale began to unravel.
On the first day of the state competition, I looked around and what I saw shocked me. The vast majority of the other girls were five feet seven inches tall and above, and ALL of them were at least twenty pounds lighter than I was. Soon we were all squished together on the floor in white slips and heels, wondering what would happen next.