Saturday I went shopping with the girls — something I haven’t done since high school. Didn’t buy anything, but spent 5 hours at the mall. And it doesn’t matter how beautiful you are, girls still end up feeling self conscious about something, and usually several things. We talked about ballet classes — how one of us went to a ballet school that didn’t take girls with fat mothers, another one got told she needed to see an orthopedic surgeon when she was six. I took ballet off and on just for fun and I remember being in high school and my ballet teacher told me my legs were crooked and to quit riding bicycles cause it was deforming my legs. Every time I’m in front of a mirror standing up straight, I look at the back of my knees where she said I was crooked and can’t help but think of her.

And the four of us — each of us is young, attractive, healthfully thin (I was the heaviest girl there and I can hardly be called fat) and successful to boot, and I don’t think there was any one of us that didn’t feel somehow inadequate, or had some memory of feeling inadequate at some time in our lives.