Body Image as Theme

My great-aunt Helena was fat. Or so my mother said. She also graduated from medical school in 1925, was the first woman to earn tenure in the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Medicine, and was the first to hold a senior professorship in neuropathology. She wrote books and articles on her specialty, mentored her younger colleagues, and hand-sewed the most exquisite dresses, which arrived once a year on our doorstep in a lavender-scented box. Yet the only thing I remember my mother saying about Dr. Helena Riggs was, “Poor Aunt Helena. She’s single and she’s fat.”

Those words have stuck with me through the decades. Like a discordant melody, they’ve wormed their way into my head. At some point, I began to research my great-aunt’s professional life. What I found was an amazing woman. Yet, instead of celebrating her accomplishments, my mother relegated her to an object of pity. “She’s single and she’s fat.” Aunt Helena died in 1968. I regret never having the chance to thank her for being a role model for a girl that never fit in.

Because like Aunt Helena, I came under my mother’s disparaging eye. I was her oldest daughter in a brood of seven. A whirlwind of energy sandwiched between two brothers, I was a ragtag, freckled terror unwilling to be molded into a sweet, pretty thing. By the age of eight, I could throw a football “like a boy,” hit any target with a rock, hike solo though the hillsides, and clamber to the top of a coastal oak. I refused to wear frilly dresses, let my hair tangle into knots, snuck books that were forbidden, and talked sass to the priests and nuns.

In high school, I received a failing grade in home economics when I wouldn’t arrange recipe trays for the boys; I landed a “C” in religion when I argued that pregnancy was not just the girl’s fault. I petitioned to be on the boy’s tennis team when the coeds weren’t taken seriously enough. Later, I slid into college on the coattails of a sport, traveled through Europe on a minor-league tennis circuit, and spent a year living in Mexico, all against my parents’ wishes.

I’ve gone on to have a good life: college tennis player turned marathon runner, business banker turned writer and nonprofit executive. I married a kind and caring man, and we’ve raised two extraordinary daughters. I am healthy, happy, and financially secure. And yet my mother’s words have never left me. “She’s single and she’s fat.”

Not that I’m either of those things, but varying versions of my mother’s harsh melody have surfaced in my head over the years. Right now, it runs something like this: “You’re getting old and your face needs work.” Which is why it’s no surprise that the theme of body image plays a starring role in my fictional works. The first to be published, What She Gave Away, launched in September of 2018. It’s a psychological suspense novel featuring two conflicted protagonists, whose lives are forever bound by a selfish and devastating choice.

Kathi is an aging Montecito housewife and a master of denial. As a young woman she came to a cowardly decision that allowed her to hold on to her disintegrating marriage and enter the doors of a privileged life. But choices have consequences, even when one believes the past has been locked away. At the outset of the novel, Kathi’s husband has died, her son has shunned her, her assets are frozen, and she’s been dropped by most of her friends. Yet she focuses on the “upside” of her situation by drowning in goblets of wine and dwelling on the wonders of her recent weight loss.

Newcomer Crystal, a bank loan analyst, uses food to anesthetize herself from the pain of a shattered childhood. She arrives in town seeking revenge against the man she blames for her pain. Her bitter words open the novel:
I’ve targeted the sperm donor. I blame him for the fat.

Her goal of revenge is fueled by the thrills of a self-made game. What is the worst? The very worst that could happen to a person? What would destroy their life? Against a backdrop of denial and corporate corruption, Crystal aims a light on Kathi’s hidden life revealing the secret history that binds the women together. Spanning two years and told in Crystal’s and Kathi’s alternating voices, the women are confronted with the consequences of choice, the price of revenge, and the insidiousness ways the angst of appearance can warp a woman’s life.
I write, in part, because it gives me the ability to make amends for society’s wrongs. Create a fictional world where an undervalued woman can lead the life I believe she deserves.

Through writing, I have the power to overcome obstacles such as discrimination, prejudice, sexism, and harassment. It soothes some of the frustration I feel when I observe a society where my mother’s melody still seems to play nonstop. Where toddlers are dressed by designers, pre-teens outfitted like models, and leaders allowed to belittle or empower women based solely on their looks. It worries me to think of the melodies now playing inside our daughters’ heads. Shouldn’t we be at a point where our accomplishments can stand on their own? She’s a brilliant scientist, an astute politician, a sensitive healer, a perceptive reporter, an amazing athlete, a wonderful mom, but…fill in your own words here.

I hope there will come a day when “she’s single and she’s fat” and all its various iterations can be permanently laid to rest. Until that time, I will weave my stories to ensure that, at least in my fictional worlds, the melody is one I want to hear.

—

Catharine lives and writes on California’s Central Coast. A graduate of UCLA with an MBA from Drake University, she is a former business banker, adjunct college instructor and nonprofit executive with a handful of starter novels tucked away in a drawer. Her first work of psychological suspense features an outsider with a dark past and a bitter grudge who moves to a wealthy beach-side community only to find herself enmeshed in the secrets of her boss and his hapless wife. What She Gave Away was launched by Thomas & Mercer on September 18, 2018.

Check out her website at:
https://www.catharineriggs.com/

Connect with her at:
https://twitter.com/criggswrite
https://www.instagram.com/catharineriggs
Preorder her book at:
https://www.amazon.com/author/catharineriggs

About WHAT SHE GAVE AWAY

Revenge is anything but sweet in this twisty thriller about two women with very different lives locked in the same deadly game.

Imagining the best way to destroy a person’s happiness is Crystal Love’s favorite game. Devious and unpolished, the plus-sized loan analyst couldn’t be more out of place in her new town of Santa Barbara, where the beautifully manicured women never age and the ocean views stretch farther than the million-dollar lawns. And yet her eye for the power dynamics at play in this tony community is dead accurate.

Kathi Wright, on the other hand, has made it her life’s work to fit in with the plastic people who surround her. But when her husband—a wealthy bank president—dies suddenly, she’s left with nothing. Then the FBI shows up, asking questions she can’t answer and freezing assets she once took for granted.

While Kathi struggles to outrun the mess caused by her husband’s mysterious death, Crystal seems focused on her game. But why? And who are her targets?

Spanning two years and told in Crystal’s and Kathi’s alternating voices, this tautly plotted novel reveals the power of choice and the price of revenge.

 

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