Queen of the Oddballs (7 page)

That ice cream truck’s a-callin’ me. Gotta go get a Dreamsicle. BYE!

• President Nixon makes an historic visit to China and brings back a pair of Chinese giant pandas: Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling.
  
 

• Shigei, a Japanese exchange student, moves into our house. For his art class assignment, he paints a still life of my brother’s bong.
  
 

• For the first time ever, women are allowed to run in the Boston Marathon. I ditch P.E. almost every day.
  
 

• I scale Barbra Streisand’s fence with my friend David. We leave a vase she admired at the antique store where David works, asking if she’d give us two tickets to the McGovern for President fund-raiser where she’s performing, since they cost $100.00 apiece. Two weeks later she actually sends us free tickets! Good thing we didn’t mention the reason we want to go to the concert is to see Carole King and James Taylor, not her.
  
 

• President Nixon indefinitely cancels the Paris Peace Talks. Six weeks later, he declares an escalation in the war, expanding the destruction against North Vietnam. I am a monitor at anti-war demonstrations, and protest alongside Jane Fonda while next to us pro-war groups carry signs and shout, “We’re not fonda Fonda.”
  
 

• The FAA announces all airlines must begin screening passengers and baggage before boarding due to increased terrorism worldwide.
  
 

• I see Shirley Chisholm, the first female African American presidential candidate, speak at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and create a photo essay of the event for my high school photography class final. Shirley loses. I get a
  
 

I
was thirteen years old when women started burning their bras. Since I had just begun wearing one and was pretty damn excited about it, I opted out. But it was at that time I became what the
Los Angeles Times
two years later dubbed me: a “Teen Libber.”

I had taken my first political stand at age nine by boycotting Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, and Junior Mints because the candy company that made them was run by the founder of the John Birch Society, a group of right-wing, anti-Semitic racists.

At first my boycott wasn’t by choice—my mom and dad forbade my brother and me to buy the offending items. But I quickly felt the heady sense of empowerment that comes with taking action to fight injustice. Little did my parents know the impact this childhood boycott would have on my brother and me. By the time we hit high school we were both teenage activists.

In my freshman year (or, as I called it, “fresh
woman
” year) some friends and I started a women’s consciousness-raising group. Fifteen of us met weekly, gathering in basements and bedrooms to discuss sexism, racism, classism, ageism, and any other-
ism
we could think of.

We weren’t just talkers. We also took action. We prowled newsstands in Westwood Village and Santa Monica, plastering “This exploits women” stickers on
Glamour
and
Playboy
magazines. We produced the first-ever High School Women’s Conference, where girls from all over Los Angeles gathered for workshops on Self-Defense and “High School Oppression,” and participated in discussions on such hot topics as “Rock Culture and Chauvinism,” whatever
that
was. At NBC Studios in Burbank we spearheaded a demonstration against Sexism in the Media, picketing the
Dean Martin Show
and his scantily clad Golddiggers. That landed us on the six o’clock news. Articles about us appeared in the
Evening Outlook
and the
Los Angeles Times
, headlines proclaiming: “High School Feminists Speak Out” and “Teen Libbers Fight for Own Cause.” We were committed to a revolution.

But it was our weekly consciousness-raising sessions that had the biggest impact on me. And it was one particular meeting in the spring of 1972 that stands out most.

It was the night we gathered at Jill’s house in Beverly Hills, just down the street from Zsa Zsa Gabor’s gated estate. We sat in a circle on the living room floor alongside Jill’s parents’ collections of African fertility goddess statues and brightly woven textiles.

“We’re gonna do something a little different,” Jill, that night’s leader, said, gathering her frizzy hair into a bun. Her unshaven armpits peeked out of her tank top. We were proud of
all
our hair.

“I want everyone to take off their clothes,” she announced.

Murmurs of laughter spread as the group looked nervously at one another.

“Don’t worry, my parents and brother are gonna be out late.” And with a playful smile, Jill pulled her shirt over her head, revealing her small, perky breasts.

We laughed again; some of us even looked away. But we were determined to take risks and to support our “sisters” in those risks. So, once the initial awkwardness passed, one girl began to take off her clothes. Then another, and another. Shirts, then bras, pants, then underpants. Everyone was pumped. Everyone, that is, except me. I sat motionless and fully clothed.

“Hillary, you gonna join us?” Jill asked.

“Sure,” I said as I slowly unbuckled one brown sandal. I was twenty-five pounds overweight, and letting a whole group witness all that flesh in the flesh was not my idea of fun. Yet to not participate would be even worse. I’d still be fat,
and
I’d be a loser.

I took a deep breath and gradually untied my embroidered peasant blouse. Another inhale and I slid out of my jeans. The others were already naked, watching me, so, my face turning red hot, I swiftly removed my bra and underwear and crossed my arms over my body, hunkering down into the rug.

Our circle of naked girls sat surrounded by the sculptures of African women with pendulous breasts as if we were participating in some tribal initiation. Jill nodded at us in approval. “The patriarch and the media teach us to hate our bodies. Women don’t look like the bone-thin models in ads and commercials. We refuse to buy into the bullshit,” she pronounced.

“Right on!” Cathy shouted, raising her fist in the air, revealing
her
hairy armpit.

“It’s bullshit!” several others chimed in.

“So tonight,” Jill continued, “we’re gonna get into the middle of the circle, one at a time, and share at least three things we love about our bodies.”

“Wow!” “Cool!” “Far out!” Everyone was keyed up. I was mortified.

Just one year earlier my parents had taken me to Weight Watchers. Only five feet tall, I shed 22 of my 140 pounds in three months, and the program awarded me a diamond achievement pin. But one week later I returned to my life of Sara Lee banana cake, Pepperidge Farm coconut cake, and Scooter Pies, and I gained back every pound, plus extra. My weight, I told myself, was a political statement—fat was a feminist issue. I was proving that I could love my body no matter its shape or size. I ate what I wanted to, when I wanted to, and I was proud of it. Or at least I thought I was. Until that night.

One by one, my naked friends stepped into the middle of the circle and sat.

Ava was first. I couldn’t help but notice her shapely, large breasts. Her stomach was flat and tight, and she was blessed with the kind of curvy perfection that could have landed her on the pages of one of those offending magazines we plastered with stickers.

“I really love my calves. They’re muscular and strong,” she began. “I love my thighs, my waist, and my belly.”

Who the hell loves her belly? I fidgeted, the nubs of the hand-woven African rug poking into my bare ass.

Ava smiled and returned to the circle as Molly, tall, blond, and striking, bounded into the middle and sat.

“I love my eyes and my nose. My stomach’s cool, so are my legs. Actually, though, I hate my butt. It’s—”

Jill interrupted. “We’re only talking about what we love tonight. No judgments.”

“Oh, well, then that’s it.”

To my relief Sarah was next. She was even more overweight than I was and extremely hairy. Everywhere. Surely she would have a hard time finding things she loved about her body.

I eagerly sat forward, but Sarah grinned. “I love the rolls on my stomach, my big womanly thighs, and my childbearing hips. But mostly, I love my hairy chest.”

I felt nauseous and light-headed.

I was next in the circle. I rose slowly and shuffled into the middle. I sat with my knees up and my arms crossed, hiding as much of my perspiring body as I could.

“Well,” I began, my voice shaking, “I like my teeth. You know what, I
love
my teeth.” My head down, I stared at the rug so I didn’t have to meet anyone’s gaze. Instead I saw my unshaven legs with wiry dark hairs swirling across pale skin, my flabby stomach, and a bright red pimple on the inside of my fat left thigh.

I had to come up with something else, and fast.

“Um, oh, my hands are great. They’re strong and dexterous. Uh…then…let’s see….” I stammered, “Well…you know, uh….”

I couldn’t think of one other thing.

Suddenly I felt a tear dripping out of the eye I couldn’t even say I loved, onto the cheek that hadn’t made the list, either. There I sat, in the middle of the circle, naked and weeping.

I couldn’t lie. “I hate my body.”

Hot with shame, I slowly stood up to return to my place. But then, without a word, fourteen naked girls rose and encircled me.

“I love your thighs,” Molly said softly. “They’re perfectly proportioned and strong as hell.”

“I love your stomach,” Ava called out. “It’s soft and inviting.”

“I love it, too,” Sarah and Diane agreed.

“Your breasts are incredible. So big and round and full,” Jill said.

This went on and on, my friends heaping praise and compliments—whether they were true or not—on my unloved body: “You have deep, soulful eyes,” “A perfect nose,” “Your feet are so petite and cute.”

I cried harder. Not only was I moved by the generosity of my sisters, but I also realized that here I was, in a relationship with my body
for life,
and I hadn’t once cared for it. It was like being stuck in a loveless marriage.

In that moment, in that room, surrounded by love and support, for the first time ever, I actually felt…well…sort of beautiful. I decided right then and there that I would commit the feeling to memory like an actress learning her lines until the character becomes totally natural. Through my weight’s ups and downs, through being thick or thin, I would hold on to my fellow Teen Libbers’ kind words and start the revolution within.