Fat face

"Look at these photos from the past week versus the ones from a month ago," I called K over to my laptop and showed him an online photo album full of pictures of me. "My face looks fatter in the recent ones. Is my face getting fatter?"I turned around to look in the mirror hanging on the wall behind my desk, poking at my cheeks and cocking my head so I could see my face from every possible angle.

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't noticed a difference."

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a guy is being honest about matters like this or if he's just unwilling to risk saying something to upset me. I could go into a rant on how girls who need constant reinforcement of their beauty have ruined it for those of us that are looking for honest opinions, but that's not what this blog is for. That's not to say that I am not concerned about my weight. My weight and body image are always on my mind, at least a little bit. Not only do I come from a long line of depressed women, I come from a long line of fat women. I sometimes feel like I am in a constant struggle with my genetics, and consider my current, slightly overweight frame to be less than ideal, but still a win over what it could (should?) be.

I studied the photos a little bit longer, wondering if I should go step on the scale to see if I have gained a significant amount of weight. I try to avoid using the number on a scale as a measure of how "fat" I am. I prefer to pay more attention to how my body looks or how my clothes fit. But I do keep a scale around just in case I need to see if there has been any significant weight gain or loss that I should be concerned about. As I continued to examine my face in the more recent photos I came to a realization: My face wasn't getting fatter - my smile was getting bigger. Satisfied with my discovery, I closed the page of photos.

I'll take a fat, smiling face over a thin, mopey face any day.