Liking yourself

 My writing partner and I noticed the obese young girl strut by the tea room where we were doing our writing exercises. We always try and pick out someone a bit different to describe and to work into a flash fiction piece. This time we both wrote how happy the person appeared. However, the picture I found to illustrate this piece is no where near as fat as the one we were writing about.

Her hair was cut almost into a crew cut except for five tendrils of different lengths sticking out from different sections of the back of his head.

She decided years ago as her body expanded if she couldn’t be pretty, she’d be interesting.

Her belly jiggled under her horizontal striped shirt. Any fashion consultant would have shuddered saying how the stripes accented the fat.

Micheline would have been pleased that they, the fashion consultants that is, even thought of her.

Years ago she’d developed a strut when she walked, her head thrown back and a smile playing intermittently on her lips.

People, okay women, gravitated toward her. She’d be invited to couples parties, probably because the women didn’t see her as a threat with their men. At that thought she smiles. More than one husband had reached out to touch her breasts, probably some latent memory of mother’s milk.

Micheline didn’t mind because she knew it would go no further. They wouldn’t want to and she wouldn’t want to hurt her friends.

She glanced at her watch. She was late for work, but she’d make up the time later in the day.

God, how she loved her life.