continued...

My daughter is three. She watches me get dressed in the morning. One day she sees me turn sideways to the mirror and smooth down the fabric on the back of my pants.

“What are you looking at, Mommy?” she asks.
“Just checking,” I say.
“What are you checking?” she asks.

I feel like I did when I was 17, going to the drugstore to buy condoms for the first time. “May I help you?” the clerk had asked. I knew exactly what I had wanted to say, but my head swam with all of the implications. Fifteen years later, I am again at a loss for words. Not because I don’t know what I want to say. But because I don’t want to be the person that telling the truth will surely imply that I am. So I lie.

“Where are the light bulbs?” I asked the clerk back then, instead of asking for the condoms.

“I’m just checking to make sure my pants are ironed nicely,” I answer my daughter now, instead of telling her that I’m checking out my ass to make sure I don’t look fat.

“Aisle 2,” the clerk had answered.

“They’ll get wrinkly when you sit on your bum anyway,” my daughter tells me.

My first fib put me in danger. At least, it had the potential to, if I had proceeded to have sex with my boyfriend without procuring the items in question.

But my second fib puts both myself and my daughter in danger. If I fudge the truth, she is in danger of walking into the world unprepared for its harsh, “weightist,” looks-obsessed realities; in danger of becoming a looks-obsessed, “weightist” herself; or worse, in danger of suffering from eating disorders or a life filled with inevitable failures as she seeks perfection that only airbrushing brings. And by fudging the truth, I am in danger of being a liar. I am in danger of simply mouthing the words — to reflect the person I believe I should be, if I am to raise a healthy, strong, happy, self-confident daughter; rather than reflecting the person I really am.

Hence my quandary:

If I tell my daughter the truth, she will know I think it’s good to be thin and that being fashionable is important. She will know I watch what I eat, closely, and that I spend more on shoes than her father, my husband, will ever realize.