Paparazzi

 

I saw this postcard at PostSecret this weekend and laughed out loud.  

Back when I was in college, I was walking past the library and noticed a cameraman filming me as I walked.  Icy terror washed over me.  My mind raced as I imagined the lead-in for the story:  "Recruitment is way down at colleges everywhere as obesity rates sore."  Worst of all, I was wearing pajama bottoms, an inside-out sweatshirt (what was with that crazy little trend?) (or maybe I am inventing that it was a trend to make myself feel better for being a slob, either one) and I hadn't brushed my hair in two or three days.  Producers of "Gossip Girl," if you're reading, I'm available as a style consultant.

"Wow, Barb, come over here and watch this," an at-home viewer would cluck sympathetically.  "This poor fat girl is out of breath just walking at a snail's pace with her backpack on.  Pass the organic soybean dip, please."

I remember thinking that they'd cut my head off for the shot and that no one would really know it was me, and that my college campus was two hours from my house and no one who knew me well would ever see it anyway.  Visions of the footage being picked up and stored away and used for years for any story about the dangers of fat people raced through my head.  Would a company buy still pictures of it and use it for Before ads in the National Enquirer?  What if Richard Simmons somehow sees it and finds out who I am and drags me on to the Maury Povich show and makes me do overly enthusiastic aerobics in tiny shorts and a spandex top that perfectly showcases every ripple of my fat?  I could feel myself start to sweat.

Years earlier, when I was seven and my sister Annie was four, my uncle took us ice skating.  My mom was usually the type of mother who never let her daughters leave the house without looking like we were posing to be the next series of "American Girl" dolls, but it was a freezing cold day and she bundled us up in the warmest winter gear she could find.  To say we clashed would be an understatement.  That night, at the end of the five o'clock news, there was Annie, oblivious to the camera, skating clumsily and looking like an orphan who had raided a lost and found.  My mother had been horrified.  I couldn't even imagine what she'd think if her oldest daughter became The Face (or Rather Ass) of Obesity in America Today.

Finally, I couldn't take acting nonchalant for another second. "Excuse me," I asked the cameraman, "Why are you taping me walking?"  

"I'm not," the guy answered, looking at me as if there were no reason in the world he'd waste film on someone  like me.  "I'm just checking the light before doing a story on the library construction."