So, uh, I have another confession to make. For the past 10-ish years after I had my kid, I was treated as hideous by most everyone around me. It’s because I gained weight — a lot of it. Roughly 80 pounds.

It was shocking at first. People who were once warm to me would say, “Back when you were hot, I wanted to hang out. What makes you think I do now?”

I never quite got over the fall from grace due to the weight gain. And in recent years, many people have been doing the emotional equivalent of reopening a wound and pouring ice melt into it, just for their own amusement.

You’d think I’d become a misanthrope by now, but I haven’t. Granted, I’m getting closer to the point of misanthropy and hikikomori living every day, but it hasn’t happened yet. Rather, I got another issue.

I’ve always had Body Dysmorphia, especially since high school. The past 10 years kind of kicked it into overdrive, and I generally have no idea what I look like. I look in the mirror and I think that I look obese.

Yes, I model. Yes, I have gotten paid for it. But no, I’m not secure with my weight. From what I’ve seen, most models aren’t. I model because it helps me cope with my issues in a way that gets me paid and challenges me.

Yet…looks-wise? I don’t think I’ve seen myself as good-looking for years. When I’m not modeling (and sometimes, even when I am), I generally don’t wear form-fitting clothing. 

I don’t know what my jeans clothing size is anymore because I stopped wearing them in favor of very loose-fitting items or old denim that I stretched out with pillows and such. 

When I go on Shein, I shop mostly for things that are size 2X or 3X. I didn’t even bother to try to look at “straight-sized” clothes. It was a moot point, right? 

I was fat, and the scale didn’t really drop below 190 most of the time. Sure, I was 225–230 at my heaviest, but I didn’t see a major change in my look. I was fat and ugly. Done. No argument.

Body dysmorphia is very trippy. I genuinely don’t know what I look like, at least when it comes to my body. I kind of know what my face looks like but even then, I have my doubts.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who looks approximately 250 pounds with a pot belly, maybe with a hulking posture. Needless to say, I have been confused as to why people gave me a look when I said I was obese.

When I say I’m a “4 at best,” I genuinely think that’s the truth. When I say that I’m obese, I mean it — even though I noticed how puzzled people look when I say it. 

I typically wear my clothes loose because it’s a way to hide my body. I figure no one wants to see what I look like because it’s not the standard. People have told me that my clothing makes me look big and boxy, but I don’t see it.

After a very rough couple of weeks, my husband and I decided to take time to ourselves. We went out to my favorite Chinese restaurant, then went to a bonsai tree festival, hit up a small pumpkin festival, and then took time to go shopping in the mall. 

It was a great time, and honestly, it meant a lot to me. I didn’t feel like anyone wanted to be with me in any capacity, so going out this often meant a lot to me.

We were at ZARA, shopping for clothes for my husband. I assumed that I couldn’t fit into anything the store had. This was my go-to belief for the past 10 years, though I deeply envied people who could wear their fashions.

I jokingly saw a zip-up sweatshirt that I decided to try on. I wanted to see if it would even make it up my arm. It was a medium. ZARA tends to run small, too. 

It fit. And somewhat loosely. 

I tried on some sweatpants, size medium. While I will admit they were very tight, they fit too. I was stunned. It was as if time stood still. I went to Hot Topic and tried another medium-sized jacket. It fit too. 

We went to Charlotte Russe. I tried on a jacket that was designed to be very slim-fitting. I fit in both a medium and large, though I found large to be more comfortable. 

One clothing item was a fluke. Three was not a fluke. Three meant that, at least for my tops, I am a medium, and I was just buying weirdly-shaped tees online. (I always wondered why the bottom of my graphic shirts were smaller than the waist. That’s weird, right?)

Medium is not the size of a person who is obese, right? I mean, here I was, shopping in straight-size sections for the first time in 10 years. I was trying to make sense of it.

I don’t think I lost that much weight. Yet here I was, wearing mediums and larges. Maybe it is some type of new vanity sizing where the sizes shrink as a way to get people to buy more stuff. Maybe it’s my brain messing with me.

In America, the average clothing size is a 16 through 18. The average woman also happens to have a waist of 38, a height of 5'3, and a weight of around 168 pounds. 

A recent study revealed that 68 percent of American women wear a size 14 or up. After my most recent shopping experience, I don’t know what my clothing size is. I apparently am a medium in mainstream clothing, maybe?

Part of me thinks that our obesity epidemic might be skewing the idea of what an average body should look like. I’m aware that I’m not a healthy weight, per se. I have a lot of fat around my thighs and waist that probably shouldn’t be there.

But at the same time, it doesn’t explain all the clothing changes. It doesn’t explain the reactions of others when I told them I just realized I am not always plus-sized. They looked at me funny and said, “No, you’re not plus-sized…You’re pretty average.’

Excuse me, where were these folks the past 10 years?!

It’s wild how much one’s perception of self can change based on how others treat you or how others tell you that you look. Even if you think you’re immune to the naysaying of others, it can affect you in a profound way.

As for me? Well, I have to figure out what size I actually am — and maybe make a model of my body to get a better idea of what I look like.