Stepfordized: Part 11

The warm sun greeted Isabella as she rose from her bed, trickling through her apartment window and filling her spacious bedroom with cozy morning light. With a happy sigh and the excitement of the track season starting up soon, she got out of bed and began running in place. Once her heart rate was good and elevated, Isabella moved on to jumping jacks, arm circles, and finally shoulder rolls before sitting down on the floor to stretch.

As an athlete and a runner especially, it was very important to her to take care of her body as much as possible in every way she could. This included eating right, regular exercise, and daily stretches to increase her mobility and keep her muscles in good condition for the upcoming season and its associated practices. Bending over from the ground, Isabella reached forward, bending at the waist and effortlessly wrapping her hands around her feet. As she held the position, she reflected on the other soccer team members and how pudgy and out of shape they looked every time she saw them at practice. They stretched just fine at the beginning of practice, but most of them didn’t appear to be doing much outside of jogging around the track at a moderately leisurely pace the rest of the time. It was all well and good to Isabella since most of her training was done against herself and her own times, but she did lament not having much in the way of a competitive rival that could push her to greater heights. The other girls seemed more interested in chatting and talking to Coach Campbell about her figure and how she got it than actually putting in the work to get there. It was annoying, but Isabella had bigger concerns than how the other Storks who had yet to properly put forth any effort were wasting their practice time.

After her morning stretches were complete, the tight-bodied Spaniard made her way to the kitchen for a quick and easy bruschetta comprised of a tomato and onion relish she’d prepped earlier in the week and Ritz crackers. It was low in calories and gave her plenty of clean energy, though she had to admit that she was starting to get tired of having it every morning. Once her breakfast was finished, Isabella threw on a sports tank top and a cute pair of tan jeans and headed out of the door. The morning air was dewy and full, filled with the scent of a post-rain street that made it all the more beautiful when the sun crested high enough to clear the trees and distant buildings of the downtown districts. The morning was SO nice, Isabella decided, that she tightened the straps of her backpack and began jogging to school. Energy poured into her muscles and dopamine rushed to her brain as she savored the warm stretches of sun just as much as the cool, blued shade from the nearby foliage. By the time she arrived at the academy, Isabella felt invincible.

(1)

Mondays were intentionally given only one class that semester as Isabella didn’t want to have a day where she felt overwhelmed on the first day after the weekend was over. In fact, she would have chosen to have her class later in the day so she could sleep in should she have any friends over on Sunday or get a little too wild over the weekend. It was a means of self-care to start her week light, but she was only able to nab the last Health and Nutrition course available by crashing it early in the morning. As expected, most of the girls didn’t show up and she got in fairly easily, but that only meant that her extra self-care day was shot in the foot for at least a few hours if her walk to and from the 90-minute class was included.

Professor Monroe was an extremely lackadaisical teacher in Isabella’s opinion, as the first few weeks were mostly just getting to know everyone and going over the syllabus for the first week, talking about what health and nutrition really is for the second, and on the third, they watched an episode of Bill Nye The Science Guy about the digestive system. She hadn’t expected much from a health teacher who waddled into the classroom each week weighing upwards of 600 pounds and kept an entire pantry full of snack foods in the back cabinet space. She insisted that the girls were welcome to any of them for free so long as they had a valid reason submitted in writing, otherwise they had to pay for whatever they grabbed. One girl had already found herself pregnant even before the semester began and submitted her request. Now she lingered in the back during class snacking on whatever she felt like having during the lecture. It was a little obnoxious to Isabella to have such a massive teacher telling them what’s good for their bodies, but at the end of the day, the professor was really kind and Isabella only needed to kiss her ass for one semester before she was free of it for good.

“So each of you has probably asked yourself the same question.” Professor Monroe began. “Why the hell is Curvy Kate, a SSBBW model, teaching a class about Health and Nutrition? Well, let’s finally get around to answering that right now.”

Kate leaned on her black, reinforced cane as she plopped herself down into an extra wide chair, smiling widely as she huffed through rosy cheeks from the exertion. Isabella rolled her eyes as the massive blonde began a speech about how she used to be thin and fitness oriented, but discovered that the mental toll it took on her was too much, blah blah blah. The toned, slender Spaniard reflected back on how the morning run made her feel and just how excited and rejuvenated she’d felt upon feeling the morning air on her skin. She couldn’t imagine giving that up for anything, let alone having it somehow hurt her. Still, unlike the grotesque slobs shown on tv who were the same size as her teacher, Professor Monroe did seem to radiate vitality despite her weight. Isabella imagined that she would have made a hot cheerleader when she was thin, imagining a fit, busty blonde with a little extra thickness in her tanned, muscular thighs.

 (2)

“What most people think of as healthy is a thin, trim figure, however that’s not necessarily the case. Yes, obesity does increase the risk of certain diseases, but through proper diet and regular exercise, even someone my size can live a happy, healthy life. So my question to all the skeptics out there is this: What does a healthy person look like?” The class murmured for a bit before a slim and pretty black girl raised her hand. “Mia?” Kate asked. “Someone who isn’t coughing or sneezing or like…having problems with they body.” Mia offered. “So that’s me. And you, and everyone in this room. The problem is that you didn’t really describe an appearance. All you did was point out what you don’t see. What if the person has HIV and is managing their symptoms or has asthma? They’re not healthy, but there are no visible symptoms as long as they’re managed. Just like a person who looks fine on the surface might have low blood pressure or be a carrier of a genetic disease. All this to say, you can’t necessarily tell how healthy a person is just by looking at them.” Said the professor.

Tired of hearing what sounded like the teacher just defending her right to be fat, Isabella raised her hand.

“Yes. Isa?”

“So what about things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes?” She asked, trying her best not to sound argumentative or confrontational.

“Actually those are good points and relevant to me specifically! Diabetes is effectively just your body becoming overly tolerant to sugar and no longer producing the insulin it needs to break it down. It also runs in my family which is why I make sure to have more fats and proteins than sugar in my diet. High cholesterol and blood pressure are also related as the former leads to the formation of visceral or ‘hard’ fat. That’s the stuff that is firm and grows around your organs, effectively crushing them and increasing blood pressure. Exercising regularly helps to get rid of that. What you see on me is subcutaneous fat, which is the plushy, fluffy, squishy stuff and is only harmful if you have so much of it that your muscles can’t support your weight anymore. The cure for that of course is…exercise!”

The class went on with Isabella raising a number of objections in the form of diplomatically worded questions and Kate effortlessly throwing technically accurate but still sugar-coated, optimistic answers back at her while praising her for her participation. In the end, the slender girl just gave up on trying to assert her thoughts on health and wellness into the class. Kate’s ideas on risk vs. illness were dangerous and enabling, but Isabella figured that that might just be her glowing personality coming through in lieu of classical training. Admittedly, even if what she was teaching was flawed, she was kind of hard to hate.

After class, Isabella pondered what to do. She was bored and done for the day, but knew that if she went back home, she’d either be stuck there all day with nothing to do or get called away by something after she had wound down and would need to get dressed all over again. Instead, she opted to explore the school and make use of the free, on-campus gym since there was no soccer practice that day and she hadn’t had a proper workout yet outside of her brief morning run. It was a pity, Isabella thought, that the better she became at running, the less of a workout she got from doing it. Cardio alone, however, wasn’t enough. If she wanted to be a better soccer player, she’d need to build up her legs.

The DGWA had a number of exercise facilities on campus, but most of them were strangely unused by the majority of women. As she entered the weight room she looked around and found only one other woman standing in front of the mirror with a pair of dumbells, grunting with exertion despite only lifting 10 pounds in each arm. Isabella moved to the squat rack and began piling plates onto the bar. Isabella knew that she wasn’t overly muscular which was exactly why she needed to train, but most of what she knew came from running, not weightlifting. She began an uncertain process of getting under the bar, lifting it onto her shoulders, then trying to squat it. Then if she was successful, she would rerack and add more plates. If she couldn’t squat comfortably, she would hurriedly rerack and then take the plates off. The entire system was trial by error and very loud with the constant clanging of the bar on the rack. When she felt that she had done a sufficient amount of squats, she began looking around at the other leg-based machines curiously, trying to discern from the pictures on them how to use the equipment. She was already stacking weights onto a leg press machine when she was stopped by the other woman.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.” Came a voice from across the room.

The woman walked over with a mix of annoyance and halfhearted concern on her face. She was fat, but unlike many of the women in town, it was in a sort of bulbous, unflattering way. The woman was clearly some kind of Asian, but her face was so round and puffy that any smooth, slender features had completely vanished long ago. Her eyes too seemed strange. They were squinty and almond-shaped but seemed to lack the fullness that Asian eyelids had as if she were some kind of disjointed mix of white and either Japanese or Korean. As she waddled over, the woman’s saggy paunch wobbled side to side with each step despite already being tucked into her pants, giving her a spongy, blobby, bulge that completely dominated her middle. Isabella noted her flabby arms as dimpled bingo wings spread loosely against the rest of her body when at rest and drooped like bags of cottage cheese when she lifted them. In Isabella’s honest opinion, the figureless woman looked slimy from the sweat and kind of gross, like her skin was made of pale bologna.

(3)

“Uhhh. Hey. I’m Isab-“ Isabella began before she was cut off.

“You’re ruining my workout is what you are…doing.” The woman said, stumbling over what appeared to be an attempt at a snappy retort to her trying to introduce herself.

Annoyed and a little offended herself, Isabella shot her back a skeptical, narrow-eyed look of her own.

“It’s an open gym. I’m allowed to be here. Besides, you were the one who interrupted me.”

“I stopped you because you’re using these machines wrong. It was bad enough watching you try to squat way too much weight without a spotter and almost kill yourself under a barbell. It’s loud, unsafe, and you obviously have no idea what you’re doing.” The woman lectured.

“So what, I’m not allowed to be here?” Isabella asked, her irritation seeping through her fraying diplomacy curtain.

“It’s not that you’re not allowed to be here. It’s that I think there’s no point to you being here.” The woman said, removing several plates from the weight bench after looking Isabella up and down.

“What the fuck? Who the hell do you think you are to tell me whether or not I can go to the fucking gym?” Isabella snapped.

“Minsuh.” The woman said, glaring at Isabella with a sort of disdainful, venomous approval.

“Huh?” Isabella asked.

“My name is Minsuh. Everyone calls me Minnie, but that’s not my fucking name. So if you address me, do it as Minsuh or I will not respond. And again, I’m not telling you whether or not you CAN go to the gym so much as I don’t think it’s worth wasting your time on. Women in this town don’t exactly stay fit for very long, so even if you do get some small muscle gain or weight loss or whatever you’re here for, it’ll all be gone once you’re fat and pregnant like everybody the fuck else in Ansley Park. And please spare me the ‘I’m a tough guy sports feminist and that’s not going to happen to me’ speech. I PROMISE you I’ve heard it before.” Minsuh said grumpily as she climbed onto the machine.

“Like this.” She said.

Minsuh demonstrated the leg press movement several times before carefully dismounting and motioning for Isabella to get on.

“If you don’t believe me, go ahead and look into it. Play detective or something fun like that. This place gets everybody. Even me. Hell, the only reason I look like this now is because I’ve dropped 70 pounds after hitting 260.” Minsuh continued.

Isabella braced her hands on the bars and began to press the pressure plate loaded with all the weights, lifting it higher into the air along its track before relaxing again.

“Well hey, that’s great. Congratulations.” Isabella said, seeing Minsuh’s change of demeanor towards her and trying to make a friend instead of an enemy.

Minsuh looked her dead in the eye and responded, “I was 92 when I first moved here.”

Isabella immediately regretted her statement and finished her set in silence. It made sense as to why Minsuh looked so deflated and droopy now. She used to be much fatter and ended up working off some of the weight, leaving her skin loose but still fat. Too bad more of it didn’t leave her face, she thought.

“Look, I don’t actually care if you work out here. I’ll even spot you. But seriously, think about what I said. Even if it doesn’t make sense right now, just pay attention when you walk around town or even here on campus. When you start noticing a pattern, remember two things: As long as you stay here, it will get you too, and that I told you so from the very beginning. You may not like hearing it, but before long you’ll be stuffing yourself with bonbons and drinking red wine at book club.” Minsuh said grimly.

Isabella finished her leg routine with Minsuh’s advice for most of it before the bitchily ominous woman left her alone with one last reminder being called from the door:

“Just look around.”

Isabella couldn’t help but think about what Minsuh had told her. On it’s face, it was insulting and stupid, but on the other, she’d already noticed what the older woman was talking about earlier in various ways. Almost all of the local women were either pregnant or a mother of at least two. Those that weren’t were almost exclusively new students at the academy and not from around here. Even the team name, the Ansley Park Storks suddenly seemed conspicuous to Isabella’s new conspiracy-driven mind. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like Minsuh wasn’t just crazy. When the soccer team had first started up, every one of the girls was in better shape than they were now and seemed to be more active in training or actually playing the game.

With her mind racing, Isabella grabbed a coffee on the way home and began her research.

Isabella looked all night for pictures of people she had seen in town and knew by name, hoping to find a facebook or instagram. Some women had them, and sure enough, Isabella could see visible changes in style and appearance the further she went back into their history. Some girls started out looking completely homely and came out looking like pretty soccer moms while others showed up looking like the head of the rugby team and years later were composed of 50% plastic after numerous cosmetic surgeries and mommy makeovers. Once again, all of them had kids. S. Plural.

Isabella became fascinated, watching for it everywhere she went. She went out to bakeries and coffee shops just as an excuse to go and look at the rest of the townswomen. She took note of every door dasher who showed up, finding that the men were largely unaffected by anything as far as she could tell, but each of the women was plump and preppy if not pregnant to boot. Students she knew from school would walk into diners she stopped in at and eat their hearts out like they hadn’t a care in the world.

Towards the end of the week, Isabella found herself watching an episode of Darling Sunrise with Donna Celeste as it played on one of the small TVs in the school cafeteria. It featured a heavily accented black woman with dreadlocks dishing out hard truths to the host and sending the audience into a frenzy. Isabella remembered seeing that woman outside when she’d first moved to Ansley Park, standing outside a TV station with a sign about abortion rights or something. It seemed weird to her that someone like her would even be on a talk show like Darling Sunrise, let alone getting cheered for so ferociously.

Later still, thoughts of the show convinced Isabella to look into previous guests to try and look into previous guests of the show and if it had had any effect on them, suspecting that maybe the radio station had something to do with the town’s apparent fixation on fertility and outright female submission. As she looked, her lips curling into a sly grin as she happened upon a particular person of interest: her very own Professor Monroe.

(4)

“Huh?” Isabella said, scrunching up her face as she read through ‘Curvy Kate’s’ supposed autobiographical history. She had to scroll up and down several times to make sure that she was reading the right article, as the woman in the beginning of the account was thin, muscular…….and black.

“What…the fuck…?” Isabella whispered, her eyes widening at the documented series of selfies showing ‘Anukuare Mahama’ and her slow-motion transformation into the white-skinned, 600-pound blonde named Kate Monroe. Kate dolled her transformation up as some inspiring story about being of mixed heritage and living under the oppressive beauty standards of today before finding herself in Ansley Park, but Isabella couldn’t look past the number of skin bleaching treatments she posted selfies from or permanent dye and straightening jobs she would have done on her hair each month.

Kate’s early accomplishments were astounding despite being framed as fun, but ultimately hollow victories in the name of fitting in. She was apparently in charge of her own gym at one point and made her living as a yoga instructor and personal trainer. She’d been a dancer, an actress, and even a fire spinner before coming to Ansley Park to support a friend who wound up unintentionally pregnant.

For the next couple hours, Isabella hunted through facebook looking for Claire Grant after having been mentioned a few times as the center of a certain popular clique that Kate was a part of. Finding the profile wasn’t difficult, as the profile picture was of a sparkling and very curvaceous looking blonde in extremely high-end clothing. What was tough was getting through the thousand selfies, food pics, and photos of her now 6 kids including a recently newborn daughter. After a few minutes of scrolling, however, Isabella happened upon much thinner pictures of the preppy blonde when she had gotten pregnant with her first child. All the pictures before that may as well have been a different woman entirely. Her hair was long and purple and she was impressively thin with dark makeup and a decidedly not-steppy wardrobe. It amazed the tawny girl how drastically this woman in particular had changed and how seemingly happy she was about it years later. Just a couple of years later and Claire had become a pastel-clad, big-boobed mommy. Even more amazing was the fact that Claire had only recently celebrated her 27th birthday, meaning that she was still astonishingly young when the apparent ‘Stepford Virus’ as Isabella now called it hit.

(5,6)

Isabella had become obsessed with researching the phenomenon while trying to make sure to avoid it herself. She couldn’t see herself ever giving up sports or getting fat or letting someone knock her up before she was out of college, but she also figured that lots of other women had felt the same. She’d shut herself into her apartment to avoid any contagion or manipulative interaction, only leaving her computer to get food from the door and go to the bathroom. Granted, Isabella wasn’t excited about being stuck in the house either, but she resolved to keep herself a little out of touch with the rest of the town until she had a better idea of what she was dealing with and how to defend herself. There were still classes, but Isabella kept to herself and powered through her work as a means of leaving early whenever possible to get to the gym before she was sidetracked by something or someone for the umpteenth time.

When practice finally rolled around, Isabella felt like she was finally seeing some results from her training with Minsuh, even noticing as she was warming up that her legs had become a little thicker since she started working them more.

“Lookin’ good, Isa!!” Called Coach Campbell from across the field as the rising star of the team finished her stretches.

The praise felt nice to hear. Isabella had been cooped up so long that she hadn’t really had much time to just enjoy herself without fear of some weird social contagion. She wasn’t fully convinced that the phenomena was even real yet, but knew that if it was, she’d be the first to beat it.

(7)