requests. But even if I had looked like Dylan Schoenfield, who was the most popular girl in our grade, Nicola would have been my best friend. She just got me, and I got her. Although if I had been Dylan Schoenfield, Nicola would’ve hated me.
“Nice try,” I replied.
“Yeah, well, what about all those John Hughes movies? The misfits always win in
those
.”
“Yeah, because they’re
movies
—not real life,” I said as I picked up a black velvet shrug and placed it over the dress. I smiled. With that small addition, it looked like something that the actress Jeanne Moreau would have worn in a 1960s French film directed by François Truffaut. While other kids my age lined up at the multiplexes for the
Twilight
movies, I spent my Fridays at the Nuart and New Beverly watching black-and-white foreign films with subtitles—hence, the “Weird” in “Weird Fat Girl.”
I loved the French vintage look. And from the photos of my mom that I kept on my nightstand, she had, too. In fact, my name—Simone Colette Walker—was in honor of the famous French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and the novelist Colette.
Nicola took off the orange cowboy hat that had swallowed up her head (“That belonged to an actress who had a bit part on the TV show
Dallas
in the seventies before she became a political activist with migrant workers in northern California,” Brad explained) and glanced over at me. “Will you just buy that dress already?”
I glanced at the tag at the neck, ridiculously hoping that somehow the “size 8” had miraculously changed into a “size 16.” It hadn’t. Putting it back on the rack, I grabbed an extra-large vintage Doobie Brothers T-shirt and held it up. “What do you think of this?”
“I think it’s yet another T-shirt that smells like moth balls and makes you look schlumpy,” Nicola replied. She turned to Brad. “No offense about the moth-ball thing.”
“None taken,” he said, not even looking up from his computer, where, from the way his brow was all furrowed, I could tell he was either scouring eBay or Etsy for vintage dresses or trolling OkCupid for a new boyfriend.
I shrugged. “So I like to be comfortable and not buy into the lies we’re sold by the advertising and fashion industries about how tight clothes somehow make you more attractive to the opposite sex, which ultimately results in growth in world population and an even more troubled education system.”
Nicola shook her head. “Okay, that’s way too many syllables for me to deal with when I haven’t had my four P.M . mochachino yet,” she said before she dropped the whole thing and went back to hunting through a box of old scarves.
Although I was grateful that women had the right to vote, the fact that my wardrobe was made up of baggy cargo pants from Old Navy and vintage concert T-shirts (my all-time favorite? a baseball-style Fleetwood Mac
Rumours
T-shirt from 1977 that Brad had been sweet enough to keep on hold for me even though a two-time Grammy winner offered Brad like five hundred dollars for it) wasn’t because I was a member of the Young Feminists of the New Millennium Club. It was because there was nothing more uncomfortable than the feeling of elastic cutting into your skin or having to go through an entire day of school barely breathing because you were sucking in your gut the whole time.
Brad looked up from his computer. “Hey, Simone—some new purses came in.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I think I’m good on that front.”
Because of the weight, I had also become a girl with a purse collection. Not even regular leather bags that I could use every day, but these itty-bitty evening bags that could fit only a lipstick (something I didn’t even wear) and
maybe
a pack of gum. Seeing that my evenings were spent at home in my room or in movie theaters, they didn’t come in real handy and instead lived on the top shelf of my closet.
I once overheard my dad on the phone with my grandmother
“Nice try,” I replied.
“Yeah, well, what about all those John Hughes movies? The misfits always win in
those
.”
“Yeah, because they’re
movies
—not real life,” I said as I picked up a black velvet shrug and placed it over the dress. I smiled. With that small addition, it looked like something that the actress Jeanne Moreau would have worn in a 1960s French film directed by François Truffaut. While other kids my age lined up at the multiplexes for the
Twilight
movies, I spent my Fridays at the Nuart and New Beverly watching black-and-white foreign films with subtitles—hence, the “Weird” in “Weird Fat Girl.”
I loved the French vintage look. And from the photos of my mom that I kept on my nightstand, she had, too. In fact, my name—Simone Colette Walker—was in honor of the famous French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and the novelist Colette.
Nicola took off the orange cowboy hat that had swallowed up her head (“That belonged to an actress who had a bit part on the TV show
Dallas
in the seventies before she became a political activist with migrant workers in northern California,” Brad explained) and glanced over at me. “Will you just buy that dress already?”
I glanced at the tag at the neck, ridiculously hoping that somehow the “size 8” had miraculously changed into a “size 16.” It hadn’t. Putting it back on the rack, I grabbed an extra-large vintage Doobie Brothers T-shirt and held it up. “What do you think of this?”
“I think it’s yet another T-shirt that smells like moth balls and makes you look schlumpy,” Nicola replied. She turned to Brad. “No offense about the moth-ball thing.”
“None taken,” he said, not even looking up from his computer, where, from the way his brow was all furrowed, I could tell he was either scouring eBay or Etsy for vintage dresses or trolling OkCupid for a new boyfriend.
I shrugged. “So I like to be comfortable and not buy into the lies we’re sold by the advertising and fashion industries about how tight clothes somehow make you more attractive to the opposite sex, which ultimately results in growth in world population and an even more troubled education system.”
Nicola shook her head. “Okay, that’s way too many syllables for me to deal with when I haven’t had my four P.M . mochachino yet,” she said before she dropped the whole thing and went back to hunting through a box of old scarves.
Although I was grateful that women had the right to vote, the fact that my wardrobe was made up of baggy cargo pants from Old Navy and vintage concert T-shirts (my all-time favorite? a baseball-style Fleetwood Mac
Rumours
T-shirt from 1977 that Brad had been sweet enough to keep on hold for me even though a two-time Grammy winner offered Brad like five hundred dollars for it) wasn’t because I was a member of the Young Feminists of the New Millennium Club. It was because there was nothing more uncomfortable than the feeling of elastic cutting into your skin or having to go through an entire day of school barely breathing because you were sucking in your gut the whole time.
Brad looked up from his computer. “Hey, Simone—some new purses came in.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I think I’m good on that front.”
Because of the weight, I had also become a girl with a purse collection. Not even regular leather bags that I could use every day, but these itty-bitty evening bags that could fit only a lipstick (something I didn’t even wear) and
maybe
a pack of gum. Seeing that my evenings were spent at home in my room or in movie theaters, they didn’t come in real handy and instead lived on the top shelf of my closet.
I once overheard my dad on the phone with my grandmother
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