As is often the case, my sisters were raised in a household closer to one parent’s family. In our case it was my mother’s family. Part of the reason is geographical, as my mother’s sister Patty lived next door to us for many years, and part of the reason was sheer numbers – my mother was one of six girls. Whatever the reason, the result is the same; we three girls were, by and large, raised by women.

Our mother and my Aunt Patty gave birth to their daughters a little later in life than most women their age. As a result, we were born in time to hear about what they felt were the best years of their lives — the past. In the past they were young (everyone is once), they were beautiful (they had the photos to prove it) they were irresistible to men (they all had several assorted husbands and lovers), they were smart and independent, especially for women of their day. But, that was not the best part of their past lives. The best part of those years, the main reason things were so rosy and their lives were filled with joy and excitement was, say it with me girls, you know the words — they Were Thin!

So, of course they spent a lot of time, effort and grief trying to recapture their youth by recapturing flat tummies and perky breasts. Problem was, they also spent a long of time, effort and grief eating.

They did it all, my mother and her sister. I can remember the grapefruit diet, the cabbage diet, several dalliances with Weight Watchers. There was one diet that involved tiny little strips stored in the medicine cabinet that were used to somehow measure weight loss through a chemical analysis of urine. I suppose that was in the days before, what? Scales? Mirrors?

They did low carbohydrate (dropped weight quickly, but regained even quicker), low calorie (couldn’t eat anything on that one, at least anything good), they ate Ayds. For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember having to get up and change the channel, Ayds was a candy-type product which was purported to have fat reducing properties, or appetite suppressant properties, or somehow made you thin, I’m not really sure what the scientific reasoning behind it was.

These women, who spent a good part of the 1960s and the entire decade of the ‘70s on a diet, drank Tab, the most vile liquid ever produced for public consumption, and Faygo chocolate soda and Frosh. They used low cal powdered milk, which, for some reason that remains to be explained, was slightly blue.

Of course, they also exercised. Jack Lalanne was the first fitness TV star, and I remember my mom and aunt sweating in front of the floor model set, bending and stretching, laughing at themselves before falling onto the couch, realizing that was not fun. They walked, which meant long strolls as the light was fading in the evening, calling their tired and dirty children in for a bath, lightning bugs dancing in the trees, chatting with each other and the neighbors, not the aerobic power walk needed to raise the heart rate and burn calories. Richard Simmons was fun and funny, but by that time they had more or less given up, and poor Richard got a couple of half-hearted dances, if that.

Of course, they never regained their girlish figures. Because, as much as they wanted to wear belts once again, however badly they wanted to regain their tummies and their power and rule the world, they also liked to eat. And they were good at it. They were continuously reading magazines, the ones with a diet plan on a page facing a recipe for something called a mayonnaise cake. Which, believe it or not, is an absolutely delicious chocolate pound cake, which uses mayonnaise in place of oil and eggs.

But I digress.

My mother and aunt were both avid readers. They read novels, they read non-fiction, they read newspapers and magazines and anything else they could lay their hands on. So, of course they read cookbooks with the same fascination a lot of women read bodice ripper romance novels or the Twilight Series or People magazine. Dinner was served every night, all of it homemade and yummy, and served by a woman who had a tiny scale on the kitchen counter to weigh her cottage cheese.

Because food is good, face it. Appalachian cuisine, aka hillbilly cooking, is the art of taking healthy food and making it unhealthy and totally delicious. Apples? Peel them, fry them up in some butter, or, even better, bacon grease. I mean, hey, you have that little can with a strainer to store fat you keep right on the stove anyway. Tomatoes? Hey, lets eat those suckers before they even get ripe, we’ll bread them and fry them up, it’ll be so much better than plain. Green beans? Love them! All you have to do is cook them for hours until they are limp and shiny with salt cured pork fat. And, if fruit is good, pie is better, and a fried pie is the best of all. Wash it down with a Coca Cola or some iced tea so sweet it makes your teeth ache, man, you have you a dinner fit for a king.

Or, you could have some cottage cheese. Because when you were thin, life was good. Now you’re fat, and it’s all over for you. Nothing left but a middle age spread and depression.

And we wonder why American women have such weird body image issues?

But, I am proud to say, my sisters and I, girls who watched the women’s movement as we were becoming women, girls who were alive to witness the rise of women as an important voting block and make up half the people who are attending college, who came of age at a time when women are Supreme Court Justices, world leaders, influential writers and artists, when a chunky black women has been called the most powerful person in the country, our generation broke free from the shackles of our weight! We realized that we don’t need to fit into society’s predetermined idea of what is the ‘right’ size, we are happy with ourselves just as we are, we are attractive no matter how much we weigh, what size our jeans are or how far away we are from Halle Berry’s body. We are not just a number on a scale, we are more than our weight!

Well, that’s the idea anyway, in theory. In practice, not so much.

Women still struggle, we still obsess over our bodies. Our self perception is still intertwined with what we see in the mirror, no matter how much husbands, boyfriends, our families and Dr. Phil tell us we are attractive at any size. This mindset goes far too deep to be easily, if ever, overcome.

So, look over us when we order a house salad with the dressing on the side, when we buy clothes that hide our bodies, when we go hungry for three days and then eat cheese fries and ice cream for dinner. And please, please please don’t ask why, if we want to lose weight, we don’t simply eat less!

We are getting there, it will just take some time.

After all, American women will do anything to lose weight except diet and exercise.