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“Okay, I’m going to lift up your breast and place it here,” the technician announces, firmly lifting up what remains of my poor right breast – having endured two lumpectomies and radiation - and stretching it over the arm of the mammography machine. She cranks the machine – bzzz, bzzz, bzzz - and it compresses my breast, flattening it. I close my eyes, refusing to look at my poor stretched and smashed breast. It hurts. I wince. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“Have you thought about going on a diet,” he asks me. “You’re not fat, but you’re not exactly thin.”

I am fourteen, standing in my father’s kitchen. I will grow another two inches over the next three years. 

I am not fat, but I’m not thin. 

I was so earnest and naïve, maybe about thirteen, when I became the champion of my body. Indoctrinated into a cookie cutter world of women’s ideals, my parents remained stubbornly silent in the face of my changing body and sudden need for industrial grade pads. They trusted in the ‘wisdom’ that was Catholic chastity education.