Will the day ever end?

THEN, INTO THE HOMESTRETCH, WE sit in a circle and look at our collages. My head is beginning to pound; I am exhausted. I am worried I have triggered Amelia by calling her “fat.” I wonder what other horrible faux pas I have made during the day. I am sure there have been many.

Bobby goes first; her collage features a goddess of some kind surrounded by dozens of cut-out mouths with tight, closed lips.

She purses her own lips tightly, and explains we should all be smiling like the goddess but we can’t because we are silenced by the media.

Then we look at the magazines she has used and examine the expressionless left-behind eyes that had once been disguised by false smiles. With gaping holes instead of mouths, the truth behind the expression in the eyes is revealed.

Roxanne has a lot of slender long legs pasted all over her board, with HATE written repeatedly in thick purple chalk and big cutout black letters.

Amelia is furious with men for wanting thin women; her collage is red and black and angry.

Kiva’s chart is a mixed message of Buddhist hope and western lies; she has tiny fat Buddhas held by thin women standing in forests of green.

They all love my collage; I have a naked Kate Hudson, sitting with a large jeweled crown atop her head, a Born to Rule the World banner above her in big, girly, swirly letters. All sorts of power slogans are stuck beneath her in different colours and typefaces: perfect, ageless, tight, the meaning of life, I feel good, the answer, one free appointment, beautiful legs, anti-ageing, get noticed, banish wrinkles, look ten years younger.

Underneath Kate is an ad for cosmetic surgery: the promise is simple.

Then the reward: a globe of the earth, a crescent moon low in a starlit night, and a man and woman in evening dress drinking champagne.

I have pasted a large, cheery-looking elderly cartoon gnome in the centre of the collage. He is grinning. He originally held a cookie in his outstretched hand but I have stuck a pile of books on Buddhism, Existentialism, and Taoism on his palm instead, with a tin of Slim-Fast on top. The philosophy of today is Dietism, Thinism, Restrictivism.

Intended to be jolly, the gnome looks decidedly malignant.

Then I have the third section; the reality we live with. A big dog looks over at a tiny dog and wishes she were smaller.

A tulip looks at an orchid and wonders why she can’t starve herself into a different, better shape.

A model’s huge, perfect face with a sign that reads: We come in a tub, we’re spreadable, we taste great.

Stuck on top of the model’s forehead is a picture of a tiny woman, the small version every woman knows she should be.

I look at the summation of my existence: I am a round yellow pansy of a flower, trying as hard as I can to be a slender, creamy pink rose.

When that truth hits home, my head explodes. Thankfully the day has ended and I can leave.

I rush away from the group as fast as I can. I get home, my head pounding, and take a bath so hot it leaves me lobster red.

Then I climb under the covers, with my headache once again for company, and I think that I have to go back the next day, that if I can just see it through, I’ll be cured and won’t that be worth suffering all the pain in the world?