Pictures of me.

There's a picture of me as a child on my wall. I'm sitting in the garden reading Matilda by Roald Dahl, a fitting choice because I'm around four in the picture and thus am emulating the eponymous heroine. I'm wearing a white frilly t-shirt, white socks and sandals and blue stripey shorts. I've got a visor on, it's also blue and I'm wearing it like a tennis pro. I've just turned round to see who's disturbing my reading, I think someone probably shouted because I zoned out when I read.

I remember wishing desperately that I could sprout long hair like sleeping beauty and the little mermaid. I'd have liked it to be blonde or black instead of my own colour. I always want what I don't have, and I have since I was a child. Now I want to be thin, which it seems I was looking at the picture. I have come some way on convincing myself that my body shape is the best, there's simply too much of it. I carry weight round my bottom half- this means that my legs look strong. I'm tall and broad, so I look strong and sporty rather than squat and chubby; my build tends to athleticism though I'm not at all athletic, so I look thinner than others my size or weight by virtue of having large bones, though they poke through my decollete more than I would like. I am flat-chested, but I can deal with this because it means I'll never ever look matronly; he keeps describing people as matronly, and I know that I am not. I am always fidgeting so I can't be. I could be a man, from behind, or in front.... but that is better than being matronly.

I wonder what my five year old self would think if she saw me in a line-up of girls, and was asked to pick which one she'd want to be out of them. I'd love to know what other people really and truly think of my body, or of me, but uncertainty is what makes us.