A Well-Rounded Woman
In the Chicago neighborhood where she grew up, everybody loved the girls with the curves. Decades later, she loves her own.

By Carla Broyles
Sunday, November 12, 2006

Thank God for tiny kitchens . Somewhere between the stove and the refrigerator, I get my daily confirmation from my husband, Stephen, that he is well pleased with what God gave me.

"What's that, baby? I didn't hear you," is my standard comeback, because I always want to hear him say it again -- and he does.

"Lord, have mercy. Look at what I got. All mine, mine, mine."

And so our dance begins. And dinner is put on hold.

You love these? I whisper as I point to the dozens of freckles on my face.

"Yes," he says.

"And these? You love these?" I ask, bringing my lips to a full pout.

"Yes, I love those," he says with his trademark brow raise.

"But what about this and this and this and that and . . . ?"

"All of you," Stephen interjects, pulling both my hands in to his chest. Still I continue like a stock boy taking inventory. Kinky hair balls on the back of my neck . . . check . . . stretch marks on the back of my upper arms . . . check . . . hips . . . check . . . thighs . . . check. And how about the scar on my knee I got when I was 13, running full speed to the corner store when I was supposed to stay on the porch?

"That, too," he says, nodding.

"All of this, huh?" I ask, tracing my silhouette -- all 5-foot-5-inch, 188-pound, D-cup wearing me, with my 30-inch waist and 43-inch hips.

"All of that," my husband says, grinning.

Then I claim my place in his arms, and we resume kitchen duty all up in each other's way.

It's no surprise that I married a man who loves -- no, adores -- me in all of my glory. That's because, like many African American women, I grew up in a culture where there was no shortage of love and acceptance for the girls with the curves.

Growing up on the West Side of Chicago in my own insular world provided a model for how I saw me. You see, Tina Turner got her legs from my Grandma. And by the time I reached high school, where the demographics were different, it was too late. I was already grounded and stubborn and on the verge of being, as some folk refer to it, "full-figured."

Here, in America, where the standard of beauty is single-digit dress sizes, and grown women are praised for their boyish good looks, my childhood narrative featured the daily declarations of a mother with whom skinny didn't sit well, and the compilation of way too many sidewalk serenades.

My mother also grew up on the West Side, and as a wispy, 98-pound teenager in 1970 surrounded by black women with hourglass figures and generous backsides, she decided she wasn't curvy enough. "Twiggy wasn't in; hips were," she tells me. My Aunt Bonnie was the brick house, Mom says. "She had lots of boyfriends. I wanted to be a brick house, too."

So Mom set out to get herself some hips. A friend introduced her to Wate-On, a drugstore supplement that promised to fill her out. She picked up a bottle and kept her fingers crossed. A Wate-On ad from that time featured a black woman with ample thighs and bust in a black leotard, and boasted that one tablet provided more calories than a broiled steak, a baked potato, wax beans or carrots, a slice of bread, ice cream as dessert, and a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. But it didn't work for Mom.

It wasn't until her early 30s that she managed to get past 120 pounds. As I was growing up, she'd always compliment me on having "big, pretty legs, like your grandmother's," and she was just as vocal about my potential.

"I wanted to make sure you understood that nobody could tell you what you couldn't do," she tells me now. For me, that translated into more than what I could accomplish. It also meant that one's opinion about my looks was just that, an opinion. It was what I thought that mattered, and I was comfortable with the standard set on my side of town, on my block, in my house.

Of course, everybody there was black, and now as an adult I wonder how, exactly, race played into it.

I turn to Kathleen LeBesco, a scholar in the emerging academic field of fat studies, for insight. LeBesco's students are a diverse lot, so she has a front row seat on how people from different racial and ethnic groups view weight.

"White students may say that a person is too fat. Black students will say, no, she's not; she carries it well," says LeBesco, who is white and has struggled with her weight her entire life. LeBesco points out that, even today, many African tribes engage in the process of fattening a woman before she marries. Plumpness, LeBesco says, equals affluence and fertility in African culture, and that equals beauty.

LeBesco has found that, for her African American students, being attractive is "partly an attitude thing and partly where the fat is distributed." She also reminds me that while blacks are generally more accepting of girth than whites, that acceptance is not unlimited. Translation: "It's fine to have a big butt, but not a big stomach."

As my Cousin Mimi's maid of honor in 1993 , it was my duty to look as stunning as possible on a college student's budget. I carefully chose my sage green suit -- my way of supporting Mimi, who had to be talked out of wearing a green wedding dress that Christmas season. The music began, and I strutted down the aisle, taking my place out front. There were no other bridesmaids. The best man, who also stood alone, was a chiseled Morehouse man I deemed worthy to stand as my equal.

Then I got the pictures back from Walgreens.

My face! Round and plump and ugh. Clearly, I hadn't intended for my weight to show up here. And just like that, I convinced myself that mommas say nice stuff just because they're mommas, and that men really don't know what they like. I decided to drop some pounds, and did.

Over the years, my weight fluctuated by 10 or 20 pounds, depending on my social calendar. I still wasn't model-thin, but I decided I was okay with that. You see, the positive feedback from friends, relatives and even strangers never stopped. Plus, American culture is fickle, and I'm not one to keep jumping through hoops. Look at poor Nicole Richie who, after being called out for having a little meat on her bones, is now tabloid fodder for being too thin.

With my self-esteem back in working order, I was doing my thing -- working, hanging out with my girls, dating. Then came my annual checkup three years ago with Dr. B.

The ritual was always the same: The physician's assistant would ask me to step on the scale. She'd push the bar to the weight I appeared to be. A little sarcastically, I'd say, "Keep going." She'd try hard not to look astonished as she kept sliding. I'd rescue her, saying "Just put it at 200, then go forward a bit." She'd write down the number and tell me to take my place on the table. Dr. B would come in, pronounce me "heavy" and gently encourage me to lose weight.

But this time was different. Dr. B had gotten my blood work back and called me in for a consultation. She motioned me to get on a fancy new digital scale. She left and came back in carrying a readout from the scale with my body mass index and the results of my lab work.

"Carla, you've got to lose weight," 51. 21 pounds, according to the scale, she told me.

I was stunned.

"Do you know how skinny I'd be if I lost that much weight?" I asked.

My body mass index, or estimated percentage of body fat based on height and weight, was 34.6, outside the healthy range of 18.5 to 24.9 percent. My total cholesterol was 245, Dr. B. said, and more than 200 is considered unhealthy. Convinced it was the Red Lobster shrimp feast I had inhaled the night before, I blew it off. Obviously, I was too young to have what I called "old man issues." Dr. B ordered another test, and the number came back a few points lower, but remained well over 200.

She told me I was going to have to stick to a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet. She also repeated that I'd need to lose 50 pounds. I read up on the ill effects of high cholesterol -- possible heart attack or stroke -- and that did it. I vowed to change my eating habits and fashion a fitness routine for a woman determined to live a long, healthy life.

But with her curves.

Every morning, I ate a breakfast of assorted fruit, whole grains and soy, and headed off to Bally's for my workout. One morning on the way back home, I stopped in at Honda to get my car checked. Ernest, my service consultant, seemed disturbed. So much so that he felt the need to warn me.

"Okay, now, whatever you're doing, don't lose too much."

"Shut up, Ernest," I said and took my place in the customer lounge.

We've gone back and forth like this for the past three years. During that time, I've lost some of the weight -- including a nice bit right before my wedding last year -- and my cholesterol is now below 200. But I'm trying to focus more on building and maintaining healthy habits than on the number on the scale. Maybe healthy for me doesn't mean losing 50 pounds. Maybe I'm in denial. We'll see.

During a recent visit, Ernest explained why he gives me such a hard time. "Women today are too concerned with being thinner," he laments, recalling Pam Grier and Jayne Kennedy, the voluptuous black celebrities of his youth. Without going into too much detail, I tell him I'm trying to lose for health reasons.

"I bet your husband's got something to say about that," he says.

Stephen's position is very clear, and he lets me know mostly with his hands . It is good to be here, in a place where my body is fully appreciated.

So, at this very moment, how do I appear to myself?

It's the morning after my rendezvous in the kitchen with Stephen. In the door mirror of our home office, I stand straight, feet together and shoulders back. I see an attractive woman in a white linen blouse and an apple green cardigan that fits her full bust to a T. The blazer drapes gracefully over her waist. The skirt will soon sway like the perfect pendulum over her ample hips. The sweet chocolate open-toed wedgies on her feet keep her balanced. The look she gets from her husband makes her late for work.

Carla Broyles designs pages for The Post. She can be reached at broylesc@washpost.com.