The first time I learned that my body was wrong, I was seven years old. It wasn’t a dramatic moment — no pointed fingers or harsh words. Just Aunty Glory at church, patting my round cheeks with that particular aunty concern.
“Ah, this child is eating too much. Be careful o, you wont be able to marry a good man if you're too fat.”
Seven years old, and already my body was a countdown to marriage.
I remember standing in front of my mother’s full-length mirror that evening, pinching at my cheeks, wondering if I could make them smaller. Wondering if that would make Aunty glory happy. Make me more marriageable. More right.
My mother found me there, small hands on baby fat, eyes already learning criticism.
“Ifeyinwa,” she said, “what are you doing?”
Before I could answer, My sister Rita bounced into the room, all skinny legs and perfect posture. Even at nine, she knew how to be just right. “Mummy, can I have more rice?”
“Of course.” Then to me: “That’s enough mirror for today. Good girls don’t spend too much time looking at themselves in mirrors.”
Good girls don’t.
It became the rhythm of my childhood, that phrase. Good girls don’t eat too much. Good girls don’t take seconds. Good girls don’t, don’t, don’t.
The rules were written in every family gathering, served alongside jollof rice and judgment. Sunday lunches became lessons in navigation, how to smile and nod when aunties offered diet tips between mouthfuls of celebration rice. How to watch Rita eat freely while I counted every grain on my plate.
But good girls don’t tell stories about the midnight feasts either. About how I’d sneak to the kitchen after everyone was asleep, when the house was quiet except for daddy’s snoring and the distant sound of Lagos traffic. How I’d eat quickly, secretly, guiltily, filling an emptiness that had nothing to do with hunger.
The first time Aunty Dede my mother's sister caught me, I froze, half a meat pie stopped halfway to my mouth, terror turning the pastry to ash on my tongue. But she just settled onto a kitchen stool, her wrapper loose around her shoulders, and said, “Pass me one too.”
Aunty Dede was different from the other aunties. She wore bright lipstick and laughed too loud and did things good girls don’t. Like leave her banker husband because “prestigious misery is still misery.” Like start her own business when everyone said divorcées should be quiet and grateful for any scraps of respect they could get.
That night in the kitchen, sharing contraband meat pies, she told me about her first husband.
“He was from a good family,” she said, wiping crumbs from her lips. “The kind of man mothers pray their daughters will marry. He bought me designer clothes, took me to fancy restaurants…” She paused, something dark crossing her face. “But I could only wear what he approved. Only eat what he allowed. Small bites, he’d say. Ladies take small bites.”
“My mother cried when I left him,” Aunty Dede continued. “Said I was throwing away a good life. But baby girl…” She turned to me, her face serious in the kitchen’s half-light. “this is real life”
I didn’t understand then. Wouldn’t understand for years. But I remembered. I was ten, still learning the geometry of shrinking myself. Still believing that if I could just be good enough, small enough, quiet enough, I’d earn the right to exist without footnotes.
The lessons continued. At school, during home economics: “Men love a woman who can cook” At children church: “Let’s all practice moderation, especially you young ladies” At home, watching my mother measure portions unequally, more for Rita who was “naturally slim,” less for me who “needed to be careful.”
Then came the Sunday that changed everything. I was twelve, and Aunty Chioma’s daughter had just gotten engaged.
“See how slim she is?” my mother’s friends cooed over lunch. “That’s how you know she meant business”
I watched the bride-to-be pick at her food, pushing rice around her plate in that familiar dance. She’d been big like me once, until last year’s dramatic weight loss transformed her into a success story. Now she sat at the adult table, a diamond ring catching light like validation.
In the kitchen, fetching more water, I overheard the aunties:
“Thank God she lost the weight.”
“Her mother was worried no one would marry her.”
“You know how these things are — no man wants a woman that big.”
“If only Ifeyinwa would…”
That evening, I stood on the bathroom scale for the first time. Numbers became another language I had to learn, like Bible verses or algebra. But unlike those, these numbers were never just numbers, they were prophecies about my future, predictions about my worth.
The diets started that year. First, the Herbal Tea that Aunty Glory swore by. Then the Care tablets my mother’s friend from london sold after church. Each one promised transformation, salvation through shrinking.
“You have such a beautiful face,” they’d say, those aunties with their weapons of mass reduction. “Just imagine how pretty you’d be if…”
If. Always if.
The year I turned sixteen, my body betrayed me further — curves where Rita had angles, softness where she had sharpness. Shopping became warfare.
“Maybe the next size up?” Sales girls would suggest, their voices carrying that particular blend of pity and judgment.
My mother would press her lips together, that familiar disappointment settling between us like a third person. “No, this size will motivate her.”
Clothes became armor, chosen for camouflage rather than expression. Black because it was slimming. Loose because it was modest. Always appropriate, never attention-seeking, because good girls don’t.
Until the Sunday Aunty Dede showed up in Orange. She swept into church late, as usual, wearing an orange dress that made the other aunties clutch their pearls and their prejudices closer.
“Dede,” my mother hissed during greeting time. “You’re still in mourning for Uncle Thomas, your ex-husband.”
“I’m not mourning him,” Aunty Dede laughed. “I’m celebrating the final stage of my escape.”
Later, in the church cafteria where I was hiding from another round of ‘when will it be your turn’ questions aimed at the singles, she found me.
“You know what they’re saying out there?” She settled beside me, her Orange dress bright against the dull tiles. “That I should tone it down, that maybe thats why I couldnt stay in my husbands house.” She smiled, but it held steel. “But do you know what I have since learned?”
“What?”
“That ‘too much’ is just their way of saying you’re not small enough for their comfort.” She pulled something from her bag — a meat pie, like that night years ago. “Here. we shouldnt be eating during mass, but who cares.”
The day after my nineteenth birthday, I wore a yellow dress aunty Dede had bought for me to church. Not bright yellow — even I wasn’t that brave yet — but a soft, buttery shade that made me feel like sunlight.
“Ah-ah, Ifeyinwa,” Aunty Glory said, her voice carrying across the church lobby. “That color… on you?”
I watched my mother’s face tighten, that familiar mix of embarrassment and resignation. Rita, perfect in her cream dress, looked away.
“Yellow,” someone else added. “is not for everyone. You know, it’s better for smaller frames.”
That afternoon, the yellow dress went into the back of my closet, where it would stay until I eventually outgrew it. I never wore yellow again.
The rules piled up like Sunday offerings:
Don’t eat in public.
Don’t wear bright colors.
Don’t take up space.
Don’t draw attention.
Don’t, don’t, don’t.
Until food became something to do in secret. In my bedroom late at night, hiding evidence under my bed like contraband. In school bathrooms between classes, quick and shameful.
Always followed by promises: Tomorrow I’ll be good. Tomorrow I’ll be smaller. Tomorrow I’ll be worthy.
