Sometimes I wonder: are all women doomed to be “wide-brimmed” after a certain age? Walking behind one such waddling hen type today, the fear of my own future spent looking like that struck me. What if there was no getting around it (in this case, literally and metaphorically)? Especially with my limited means for any surgical procedures that could “jumpstart” my husk anew. What if, in the end, no woman can avoid her fate: being unfuckable. For the next generation, I suppose it won’t matter—they seem to give no shits whatsoever about getting railed. To them, it was never as ingrained—as indoctrinated—that a woman’s worth is based almost entirely on her appearance. Then again, maybe the erstwhile youths of the moment will understand one day…particularly as so much of their youth is documented ad nauseam from the outset of their The Truman Show lives (therefore, with all those images and videos to sift through, they’ll be able to pinpoint the exact moment when they “turned”). Only difference is, their respective audiences are far more, er, niche. Oh, and they’re actually aware of being watched. Incessantly court voyeurism, as a matter of fact. 

I feel like I used to be the same way. Until I started to panic that I might look like the wide, waddling woman in front of me. Something my boyfriend assured me to the contrary, always ready with a rote sentence like, “Anna, of course you don’t look fat.” You could never trust a boyfriend who wanted to ensure he would still receive his desired sex quota. I wondered if this woman had a boyfriend, a husband, a situationship. Or if she had been abandoned once her body started to change. I pondered if she could see herself as she was, or if the powerful nature of denial could always provide a gentler self-image versus an objective one. Did she have a moment—a brief flash—one day in the mirror where she glimpsed what she had truly become? Or was she able to see it happen gradually, then suddenly? At one point, in short, did she cease to recognize the person she had become? Or did she see that “original person” still—somewhere deep down inside, or just around the edges? Would I be able to recognize myself when the change came for me? Or could I tell myself that nothing had changed at all? Is that what this woman had told herself in order to keep going, to keep…waddling? That “wide load” being the sort of shape that would have undoubtedly been the subject of endless junior high beratement if someone like her had been a teacher at my school. 

In fact, there was a teacher at my school with her exact figure who taught English when I was in the seventh grade; I think that’s why, all at once, I was having thoughts of junior high-level ridicule while judging this woman from behind. How merciless and intolerant that age group’s ridicule could be. How lacking in consideration of the notion that, invariably, these children, too, would be fodder for teasing. Once they reached their own period of “oldness and irrelevancy.” For men, though, it was, as usual, easier. They hadn’t grown accustomed to being appraised solely by their looks their entire life. For them, growing older had the connotation of a “fine wine”—getting better with age, as opposed to less consumable/more rancid à la women. Maybe this woman had been a lithe beauty several years back, before the requisite weight gain and hair chop-off that females of her demographic seem determined to adhere to.

Maybe she was still beautiful if I saw her from the front. But any such remaining physical beauty was totally mitigated by the unmistakable shape of late middle age she had taken on (likely compounded by having children, which I whole-heartedly refused to…yet I wasn’t sure if that would spare my body’s mutation in the end). The kind of shape that grabs hold of so many suburban-area moms. Except I wasn’t in suburbia. I was walking on a city street toward the train. Which meant either this woman was a tourist, or it was a myth that city dwellers are naturally more “fit.” A myth that a woman could avoid her wide-with-age destiny just because she was “cosmopolitan.” 

Sure, I knew there were some women who could evade the process as much as possible. Those women were usually celebrities or trophy wives who knew their livelihood was dependent on their looks. But, by and large (no pun intended), the “fairer” sex was condemned to growing rounder—and mushier—with age. Especially that stubborn midsection sometimes colloquially referred to as a FUPA (fat upper pussy area). It is said that men at least get the curse of a beer belly (whether they drink that much beer or not) as comeuppance for their congenital privilege. But it hardly feels that way when women are subjected to something similar. It would only be “karmically just” if older women were immune from their own form of a paunch as well.

Alas, “God” or whoever didn’t see fit to balance the scales on that front either, instead causing the scale to practically break once a woman of a certain age stepped on it. But, oh no, this is one of the things we couldn’t address out loud anymore. It was probably in the realm of “body shaming” or “fatphobia.” Though, honestly, who wants to be fat? No one. Sure, there are women who want and appreciate “thickness” (mostly because it appeals to some men), but no woman actually desires a rotund physique. I know I didn’t. Which was why seeing Wide Woman swaying side to side slowly with her cumbersome body instilled the “fear of fat” further within me. 

If I started an intense workout regimen today, could I avert what had happened to her? Or had she also worked out religiously to no avail? I guess what I needed to know was: would it be worth it to try at all to stymy “middle-age body”? Or should I just give in the way Wide Woman so obviously had? A part of me wanted to stop and ask her. But, of course, that would be endlessly rude, a patent violation of “established propriety.” Besides, I was already starting to pass by her thanks to the benefit of my agile, still-fast-metabolizing body. Or what was left of it before my own eventual, unenviable fall. Though the word “winter” feels more appropriate for cliche metaphor’s sake.