Lynn 1

“Have some more dear.”

“I don’t want anymore Mom.”

“Come now, you’re a growing girl.”

“I’m a junior in high school. I’m not a growing girl anymore.”

“You’re still growing whether you like it or not.”

“I’ll only be growing wider if I eat everything you’d try to put in front of me.”

“How many times do I have to tell you Lynn? Don’t be afraid of a few pounds. Society has gotten too unhealthy in this absurd pursuit of thinness. It’s not good for you or for anyone else!”

Such was the usual banter at the dinner table at the Phan household. This, of course, wasn’t always representative of dinner, but it was a common enough pattern that the family accepted it as a way of life. Everything was actually very cordial through the first serving. There was usual talk about how everyone’s day had gone, plans for the upcoming week, recent news items, and anything else you'd expect in a typical home. It was only once Lynn Phan had finished her plate that everything began to go wrong. At least half of the time, her mother (a rounder woman herself, but by no means large) would then offer Lynn seconds. Lynn would usually refuse (the exception being when it was one of Lynn’s favorite dishes, in which case no prompting was needed for the chubby Vietnamese girl to eat her fill). Mrs. Phan would then gently insist that her daughter aught to have more, which was declined. Sometimes it ended there, but sometimes it didn’t.

If it didn’t end there, Mrs. Phan would then use one of three classifications of comments that she varied so as not get repetitive. The first was something along the lines of, “One meal isn’t going to do you in,” which was invariably met with her daughter’s reply of, “It’s not one meal I worry about, it’s all of them added together.” The second one was “You’d look better if you were a bit curvier, so don’t worry,” that usually garnered a response of, “The only place I'm getting more curves is my belly, so no thank you!” The third and final tactic was, “Someone’s got to finish this food. There are starving children back in Vietnam. It would be a crime to throw it away.” The guilt trip never worked as Lynn would reply with either, “We can box it up and ship it to them since they’d like it so much,” or “There are five other people at this table. Maybe they’d like some too.”

It was true. Lynn had two younger sisters and two younger brothers and none of them were ever needled like she was to eat more. Lynn had never been able to figure out why she was always the one her mother tried to shove more food onto. Sometimes she wondered if her mother hated her and was trying to make her fat out of spite. Other times she chalked it up to old world notions about beauty. Even though her mother had been born in America to Vietnamese immigrants and was perfectly acclimated to American society (including music, pop culture, and unaccented control of the English language that the entire Phan family shared), she had heard the stories of how bad things had been in Vietnam and why her grandparents left to come to America. Being thin to her parents meant you didn’t have enough to eat, and both of them had worked hard to make sure there’d always been enough food on the table so nobody in the family of five ever went hungry again. As a result, when Lynn was in a good mood, she thought that her mother was probably well intentioned enough, but was misguided. After all, Lynn would say to herself, you have to be somewhat misguided to think that being fat was good for you.

Lynn was somewhat right in figuring out her mother’s thoughts. It was true that she’d been influenced by the poverty of her parents and their quest to make sure that that never happened again. Her immense respect for her parents deepened her conviction to be a daughter they would be proud of, and to raise her family in such a way that they would approve, though they were now both deceased. Mrs. Phan also truly believed that she had Lynn’s best interests in mind in prompting her to eat more. She participated in all of the gossip circles for the Vietnamese community and shook her head and clucked disapprovingly when one of the other women worried that her daughter wasn’t eating enough. When such a thing developed into an actual eating disorder and things were grave, everyone took note to watch their daughters so such a thing wouldn’t happen to them. Lynn had always been a pudgy child at worst, and had been pleasantly plump ever since she’d hit high school, so Mrs. Phan had never had to worry about such for her daughter. Even so, Mrs. Phan thought a good defense was the best offense and made sure to give her daughter every opportunity to eat.

Lynn’s mother also had another reason for trying to fatten up her daughter: she enjoyed being a larger woman herself. In fact, Mrs. Phan wished she herself could be bigger. Her husband enjoyed her added girth as well, and she enjoyed his caresses over her body in their more intimate moments. However, with a household of seven people to look over (plus one dog who pretty much slept on the couch half the time), she was constantly driving back and forth, going through shops and grocery stores, getting kids to soccer practice, cooking, cleaning, and helping with homework where she could. The fact was she had tried to put on weight and couldn’t. Perhaps a bit later in life when life was less hectic, she’d always say to herself. But not today.

Therefore, like so many other mothers before her, she tried to foist her dream onto her daughter. Mrs. Phan saw in Lynn a fat girl who was pressured by society to deny herself through dieting to fit into an ever smaller pair of jeans. Back when she’d been in high school, Mrs. Phan had experienced the same pressures and she felt she saw the same signs in Lynn now. Mrs. Phan’s own mother had never overtly condoned her daughter’s weight gain (she wondered how much her mother had actually supported it since they’d felt a pressure to “fit in” with the new society they’d joined), and in retrospect Mrs. Phan felt that if her mother had been more supportive, she might have been happier with herself and accepted her own desires sooner in life, rather than waiting until college to discover herself (courtesy of the campus dining halls and their buffet style meals and some help from her future husband). Every time she offered more food to Lynn, Mrs. Phan felt that she was creating a more welcoming environment for her daughter where she could be free to be fat.

Of course, this neglected the fact that Lynn didn’t want to be fat. Lynn wanted to be svelte and skinny. She’d always been larger than most of the other girls and it was no walk in the park. Boys didn’t exactly line up for girls like Lynn, and though she had a bright and cheery attitude with a high pitched voice that led the way into any room, Lynn was inexperienced with boys and she chalked it up to her weight. If only I was thinner, was the thought ever at the forefront of Lynn’s mind. And so she resented her mother always pushing food in her face. It certainly wasn’t helping her own goals.

To return to the conversation over the dinner table, when one of these exchanges occurred, the rest of the family for the most part ignored it. It was so common that they thought nothing of it most of the time Sometimes they’d just put their heads down and eat, other times they didn’t even notice. Occasionally if things began running long they’d even start their own conversations with one another while Lynn and her mother would duke it out. When friends would come over and such an exchange broke out, they would usually think it odd, but say nothing out of tact. Such a thing never occurred when “company” was over—Mrs. Phan would have been too embarrassed.

Tonight was beginning to come closer to the stronger exchanges as Mrs. Phan was using most of her arsenal trying to convince her daughter. There was rarely any rhyme or reason to when Mrs. Phan would push her daughter harder—she just did some nights and didn’t others. Lynn certainly never encouraged her and was always equally stubborn at the first comment. Doubtless there was a logic to her approach, but Mrs. Phan never shared it with anyone (including omniscient writers).

However, Lynn wasn’t up for a fight tonight, and she had the trump card on her side. Despite years of the same pattern, Lynn always held one advantage. She would eat what her mother considered a “healthy portion” at the first serving. After all, Lynn did really enjoy dinner and was always hungry for it, whatever it happened to be that night. Therefore, Mrs. Phan could never object from the get-go. Having satisfied her need for a third daily meal, Lynn could then leave the table. Mrs. Phan couldn’t exactly chain her teenage daughter to the table, all she could do was tell her to come back, but that was ineffectual with a teenager always trying to assert her independence. So, every time a disagreement broke out, Lynn would win since she had nothing to lose by walking away.

Ignoring her mother’s comment regarding society and its obsession over being thin, Lynn just politely excused herself from the table saying she had homework to do and headed upstairs leaving the rest of the family behind. The table sat in silence and the rest of the family knew what was coming. Lynn’s youngest brother even imitated their mother and mouthed the words along with her.

Mrs. Phan sighed. “When will that girl ever learn that happiness doesn’t come in a smaller dress size? If only she could find someone who would love her the way she is…”

Mr. Phan mumbled his agreement as usual and reached for some more mashed potatoes. The upside of Lynn not eating more was that he could always get a second helping himself.

***

Upstairs in her room (which she thankfully did not have to share with either of her sisters), Lynn had absolutely no intention of doing homework. She’d done that earlier in the day and instead she decided to turn on her stereo and chill out. Maybe she’d give one of the girls on the water polo team a call a bit later. It was about a month and a half before the season would begin, but the team was still pretty tight on the whole. Certain groups did hang out together more than with others, of course. While Lynn was certainly on friendly terms with someone like Jenna Shcherbatsky, neither would phone the other to go to the movies. Lynn would usually be found with Kristin and Morgan, with Chelsea tagging along every once in a while.

Lynn went over to her stereo to turn it on, and in the process passed by the full length mirror on her closet door. Lynn had seen her reflection all too often, and really wasn’t all that interested by it. However, I have a feeling that you are interested in her appearance, so allow me to satisfy your curiosity. Lynn Phan was a short girl, standing no higher than five foot six inches. As a result, though she was only 138 pounds, she appeared chubby enough to mildly dislike her appearance and keep her from having those seconds her mother always tried to push on her. Her weight had been higher on a fairly regular basis during puberty as her body went through wild swings of hormones and all sorts of fluctuations, but it had also been lower as well. Rarely had Lynn dipped below 129 pounds, however. Lynn’s pudginess was evenly spread throughout her whole body with no one area taking precedence over the other. Lynn had a habit of wearing rather tight shirts in an attempt to be trendy and fashionable. They certainly accented Lynn’s ample 32C breasts, which she saw as one of the few high points of her chubby figure. However, they hadn’t really done much to attract boys to her, even if she showcased them in tight shirts. This was probably because the shirts also showed off a small, going on medium, sized belly with its convex curve. Lynn’s shirts also had a tendency to ride up a bit of the course of a day, and this resulted in about half an inch or so of her tan belly being exposed in what Lynn felt was a most unflattering manner.

Lynn’s pants also cut into her fleshy tummy just enough to force her flab upwards and outwards, which enhanced one’s perception of her fat even further. Lynn certainly didn’t feel that it was needed, but even though she had a size larger in pants from her larger days and sweatpants that could help to cut down on the illusion somewhat, she still clung to her trendy jeans all the same. This was mainly because Lynn did enjoy the fact that she had a nice curvy ass. Perhaps a bit too curvy, but she could live with it. She was well aware that a lot of guys liked a girl who had some junk in their trunk, and Lynn felt that jeans were especially flattering to a girl’s butt. Her derriere had a bit of a jiggle to it even in jeans, but Lynn knew that was part of the package. What she didn’t appreciate were her thighs. It was once said that a woman will never be happy with her thighs, but Lynn took this saying to the extreme. She was disgusted by them every time she cared to notice. While free of cellulite and as smooth as silk, they were simply too big for Lynn. There was very little room between them, and while they didn’t rub together, they came pretty close to doing so. As Lynn would walk, they would wobble and occasionally brush against one another. She’d lived with the feeling so long that Lynn never actively noticed that it occurred. It was only when she took the time to survey herself in the mirror that she truly took notice and frowned at what she saw. Like most girls in Southern California, Lynn wore sandals everywhere and this showed off her feet, which was notable only for the fact that just maybe were her toes the least bit chubby. It was probably just Lynn’s mind playing tricks on her. There was no way her feet could really be fat too. That would just take the cake.

Lynn’s face also enhanced the perception of chubbiness. She’d had a round face ever since she was born, and now Lynn sported a pair of chubby cheeks to match, completing the effect. Because she could do nothing else, Lynn always stuck her tongue out at her reflection in the morning. She had always thought if she didn’t have such a round face people wouldn’t think she was so fat. Unfortunately, it was not a circumstance she could change. Lynn had tried to counteract the shape of her face with rectangular glasses that she needed for reading. However, she felt that their impact was negligible at best. Her straight black hair ended in the middle of her back and framed her face well. She’d experimented earlier in life with shorter hair styles, but felt that they only drew attention to the shape of her face and had opted to keep her hair long, even though it was a pain to stuff under a swim cap for water polo.  

As the sound of one of the numerous pop radio stations filled the room, Lynn threw herself onto her bed, which caused the whole of her body to jiggle. She grabbed a magazine and started paging through it, allowing herself to fall into the glorious relaxation of doing nothing at all. After all, it had been a long day at school, not to mention work.

***

As she did five days a week, Lynn showed up at a store run by a friend of her mother’s, Mrs. Nguyen. Mrs. Nguyen had long run an establishment known colloquially as the Hostess Store. It had started out as a local market for the surrounding residential community where one could get a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk at a decent price and without having to go to the supermarket. Over the years, it had grown to include other items, such as prepackaged donuts, muffins, other varieties of bread, and Hostess snack products.

If you are not familiar with the Hostess brand, dear reader, then you are really missing out (unless you happen to know Drake’s, which is relatively comparable—and perhaps even better when it comes to Yodels). Hostess’s flagship product is, of course, the Twinkie, the long sponge cake with vanilla cream inside that is so ubiquitous in our society that it needs little introduction at all. However, the Hostess Cup Cake with its vanilla filling in chocolate cake with a delectable hard (but of course easy to bite through, as with every Hostess product) chocolate top and seven curly cues of vanilla icing predated its fellow product by a decade. Their Ho Hos had been introduced in 1967 in San Francisco (we make no guarantee as to what was the inspiration for the treat, considering the year, but the result was certainly good whatever circumstances or haze it was invented under), a delicious Swiss-filled chocolate cake with a chocolate coating. Then there were Suzy Qs with vanilla cream filling sandwiched between two thick pieces of devil’s food cake. Ding Dongs are round, moist chocolate cake with a hardened chocolate frosting outside and vanilla cream inside. There are the Donettes, which are small donuts that are either covered in powdered sugar (and have dusted many a sofa) or chocolate coated. Often overlooked are the Hostess Fruit Pies in apple, cherry, lemon, pineapple, blueberry, peach, strawberry, French apple that I’m told are quite good when heated up, though they can be eaten straight from the package with perfect ease.

The point of all this is that they were so popular that people knew what was really the Bear Necessities Market (Mrs. Nguyen was proud of the pun and the bear logo she had on her business cards) was known by everyone as the Hostess Store. Sure, plenty of people came in for their milk and bread like usual, but a lot of them left with a box of one Hostess product for their lunches or general snacking. Even though other convenience stores had been forced to close due to being unable to compete with the supermarkets, the Hostess Store still turned a profit because of its loyal clientele, many of whom knew Mrs. Nguyen either socially or from having come to the store so often. It also benefited from a somewhat liberal attitude in the prevailing neighborhood that supported hometown mom and pop stores over national chains—even if it did mean a slight difference in price. Oh, yeah, and it did happen to have the best pricing and selection of Hostess foods.

Over the summer, Lynn had gotten a job so she would have spending money to have fun. It was her mother’s idea that she should work at the Hostess Store, and Lynn reluctantly agreed. After all, it certainly wasn’t a glamorous job and certainly wasn’t going to look good on a college resume, but Mrs. Nguyen was willing to pay her more than minimum wage and since Lynn had known her for so long, it was sort of hard to say no. So, with a few grumbles she began working at the Hostess Store.

It didn’t take Lynn long to settle in. First of all, the dress code was very lax. The Hostess Store was in somewhat of an older strip mall which had an inefficient ventilation system. As a result, the store was usually a bit too warm in the summer and just slightly cooler than was comfortable in the winter. Mrs. Nguyen told Lynn she was free to wear whatever was most comfortable—provided it was tactful. Part of the local charm of the Hostess Store was that it felt like a neighborhood store anyways, so Mrs. Nguyen felt uniforms were superfluous. Lynn was relieved that she didn’t have to wear some silly, garish uniform like was required at plenty of places her friends were working.

Furthermore, Lynn was informed that in addition to her pay, she should take home a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread for her family each week. Mrs. Phan would later object to this, insisting that they wanted to buy their goods just like everyone else, but this was one argument that Lynn’s mother wound up losing. Mrs. Nguyen also told Lynn that she should feel free to take home a box of Hostess treats for herself every once in a while. Lynn at first politely declined, knowing that it wouldn’t help her figure at all if she did. Mrs. Nguyen didn’t press the issue and that was that.

Except, as you might be able to imagine, it wasn’t. It didn’t take long for Lynn find that it could get quite hot at times in the Hostess Store in the summer. She was surprised that half the things in the store didn’t melt from the heat. Of course, Lynn was carrying boxes back and forth stocking shelves for part of her shift, spending half her time in the stockroom in the back, which was even worse ventilated than the store itself. When she worked the cash register, it was usually in the afternoon when the sun would shine through the windows and right onto her, only making her warmer. After two days, Lynn started showing up to work in a tank top and shorts, which showed off her chubby thighs beautifully, just to stay cool (thankfully Mrs. Nguyen didn’t have a problem with the fact that Lynn’s tank tops probably showed a bit more cleavage than they should have, but Mrs. Nguyen chalked it up to the fact that Lynn was a rounder girl and it was natural for her bosom to gain more attention). Lynn ended her shifts feeling as sweaty as a pig. She figured that she was probably losing weight from sweating so much, not to mention all the work she did around the store. Therefore, it wouldn’t hurt to take one box home once and keep some Ho Hos in her room. Besides, one box wasn’t going to do much harm.

You have of course realized, dear reader, that Lynn had subconsciously justified her decision in exactly the terms that she emphatically rejected when her mother used them to try and convince her to eat another portion. Perhaps the conflict had made a subconscious impression upon Lynn, or perhaps she had stopped listening to the arguments her mother made and automatically rejected them out of hand. Whatever the psychology behind her reasoning, Lynn took the box of chocolate and cream treats and savored all dozen of them over the course of the week. When she had finished them, it seemed only natural that she should take a box of Ding Dongs back with her.

And so began a cycle that Lynn never realized she was falling into, but had put in motion herself. Each week she would take a box of Hostess snacks back with her and would go through the box almost exactly in a week to get another box the next week. Lynn never once thought about her weight. Somehow at the end of the day she was too tired to think about the effect these treats could have on her figure. When she’d get home and dig in after each day of work, Lynn didn’t think of the fact that each bite was dumping more calories into her metabolism and that eventually they’d have an effect (as she rightly argued to her mother when pressed to take another helping against her will). Lynn even began planning ahead, taking an extra box for the Fourth of July weekend and one for when she took a vacation. After a month, Lynn began having a fruit pie with her lunch twice a week after Mrs. Nguyen had brought one into the stockroom as a nice gesture. Lynn thought nothing of it, all the while justifying everything with the fact that she was working hard.

Nothing could be further than the truth. Lynn spent half her shift, sometimes all day, sitting on a stool ringing people up at the register. The boxes she’d carry from the stock room to the storefront were hardly heavy at all. Most of the time she didn’t even carry them, but would use a shopping cart Mrs. Nguyen had commandeered to save people the effort of having to make small trips back and forth to the stockroom with awkward loads of products in their arms. From a physical standpoint, Lynn had a pretty undemanding job.

Working at the Hostess store had definitely had an effect on Lynn’s physique. She’d gained eight pounds in the course of her summer job, all of them thanks to her snacking on and off the job. Her figure filled out oh so subtly at first, but if one had seen a picture at the start of the summer of Lynn and one at the end, it would be easy to tell that Lynn had put on weight. However, the subtle, long term change had gone unnoticed by everyone. Her mother had no idea that any of this was going on, but would have quietly approved if she’d known, and perhaps would have slacked off on her efforts to get Lynn to eat more. Whether Lynn would have put the pieces together on her own if this had occurred, no one will ever know. But since life continued as normal, somehow Lynn blamed the fact that her jeans and shorts were tighter than when the summer began (as well as the higher number on the scale) on her mother’s efforts to pork her up, never guessing that it was in reality her own doing.

But, to return to our story, it was a typical day for Lynn at the Hostess Store. She would head straight there from school, where she’d spend a few hours before going home for dinner and then doing schoolwork afterwards. On weekends she’d put in more hours to make up for the fact she was largely unavailable during the week. Besides, Lynn felt guilty that she was going to have to cut her schedule down further later in the school year when water polo got going with practices and games after school, so she tried to do as much work now as she could, even though Mrs. Nguyen understood and was very supportive of Lynn’s athletic efforts.

Lynn worked the register most days after school and was generally peppy as she rang people up. People had gotten to know her over the summer and appreciated the fact that she was naturally upbeat most of the time. It brightened their day a little bit when they came into the Hostess Store. Mrs. Nguyen had noticed and as a result tried to use Lynn at the register as much as she could.

In between customers, Lynn had permission to do side reading (usually for her English class) to pass the time. She would always look up when she heard the tingle of the bell attached to the door to greet the customer with in her somewhat high pitched voice. Today, as she was reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn towards the end of her shift, Lynn heard the bell and said, “Hi!” as she looked up. Lynn was well familiar with this customer, and promptly went back to her reading, giving him no further attention.

Please don’t consider Lynn to be rude, dear reader, for you must know that the visitor was Tony Tran, who was in Lynn’s grade at high school. The two had had some classes together over the years and knew each other to a certain extent. Like Lynn, he was Vietnamese and—of course—their mothers knew each other. Tony played on the men’s water polo team and he came in to get a loaf of bread and gallon of milk for his family after Thursday practice each week without fail. His visits to the Hostess Store were routine that Lynn didn’t pay much attention to him and checked him out with her usual efficiency, a few general comments to make small talk, and nothing more.

Why Lynn brushed off Tony so readily is hard to say. Perhaps it was the fact that they’d never been all that close to begin with. Maybe it was because Tony had been dating a girl named Leah Salonga since freshman year and Lynn just didn’t see an opening and wasn’t the type to waste effort flirting needlessly. It certainly wasn’t because Tony wasn’t good looking. Playing water polo had given him a pretty buff frame, and, even though he didn’t flaunt it, one could tell just by the way his shirts hung on him. Tony was also a sort of quiet guy in general and their small talk never amounted to anything each week, so perhaps Lynn thought there was no point in going further.

Whatever the reason, this week was no different. Lynn even rang Tony up before he even got to the register. She even knew how much his order would be without doing it. “$5.78,” Lynn said automatically.

“How are you?” Tony asked almost as automatically as he got six dollars out of his wallet.

“All right,” Lynn replied without thinking as she took the money and got the twenty two cents in change, “You?”

“Fine, thanks. See you later.”

“You too.” And Lynn was back to her book again.

As Tony opened the door to leave, he looked over his shoulder at Lynn. She was wholly absorbed in her reading. With a little shake of his head, Tony left, knowing he’d be back again next week.