If my friends had asked me to do this a year and a half ago, I would have thought that this was a nightmare: swimsuit shopping.  It’s one of those activities that make girls like me want to cower in a corner. The concept of it seems harmless enough: go to the local department store to hunt for a suit that is cute and comes in your size.  The problem was a year and a half ago, I weighed 295 pounds, and to find a swimsuit that would fit and flatter was, practically, impossible.  Any type of clothes shopping seemed impossible.  Each attempt at buying clothes ended in me leaving the store empty handed and in tears.  What was I doing rummaging through the clothing racks for a bathing suit, now? How could my opinion have changed in just a year and a half?
I stood at one end of the swimsuit section, scanning for something to catch my eye.  Something that screamed Piper Douglas.  As I did so, my eyes locked onto my own reflection in a full length mirror, and for a second, I thought that I was somebody else.  In some ways, I was. The past year and a half had been very interesting for me.  It was a time spent on diets and long hours at the gym.  During that time, I lost over 150 pounds.  This swimsuit shopping trip was a very important one for me.  In celebration of my new body, my friends and I had decided to go shopping for my very first bikini, and it was almost time for summer vacation to begin.  Crossing my fingers, I hoped that this experience would turn out much more pleasant than it had for me a year and a half ago.
At that moment, I heard my friend Julie cry out, “Oh my gosh, Piper.  You have to check out this bathing suit!”
Her excitement piqued my interest, and immediately, I was able to spot her, a mousy looking brunette, whose effortlessly skinny body had always been something that I was jealous of.  Julie Kasnoff had been my best friend for as long as I can remember.  Throughout the whole weight loss process, she was always there with words of support, and late nights at the gym.  It was, initially, her idea to go bathing suit shopping. 
I moved over to my friend who was holding up an adorable ruffled baby blue bikini.
“You would look so cute in this!” she exclaimed, “It would go with your eye color.”
I held the swimsuit up to my body, and said, “You think?”
Julie grinned.  She waved over to the super model looking girl beside her who was rocking purple streaks in her light brown hair.  It was our other best friend Kat Crosby.  She studied the swimsuit, tapping her chin with her index finger.  For a second, I thought she was going to tell me that the bathing suit was horrible looking.  A part of me almost wanted to tell my friends to forget it and walk out of the store right then and there.
Then, Kat grinned and said, “That’s such a Piper look!”
Like she even knew what a Piper look was.  Still, I couldn’t help, but smile at her.
“I think I will try this on!” I told them.
“Cool,” Kat said pulling a green bikini off a rack in front of her, “I think I’m ready to try something on too.”
Julie held up a floral bikini and smiled. “Me too!”
And so, we made a plan on how we wanted this process to go.  Each girl would get their chance to show off their bathing suit by going to the dressing room, changing, and stepping outside to model for the others.  The other two girls had to just sit, wait, and prepare to tell the other friend what they, truly, thought about her bathing suit choice.  Since I was nervous about trying on my first bikini, I decided to be the last one to model.  Kat decided that she wanted to go first, and for a while, we waited for her.  When she returned from the dressing room to model for us, it was just as I expected.  Kat’s flat stomach and tiny waist made it possible for her to rock the bikini look.  Julie and I quickly approved of her swimsuit choice.  Then, it was Julie’s turn; and, of course, when she returned to model, she also looked great. 
Finally, the moment had arrived.  It was my turn to try on a bikini. As I walked towards the dressing room stall with my swimsuit choice in hand, I could feel my heart racing in my chest.  I entered the dressing room and prepared to change into the bathing suit.  It felt like my heart was about to leap out of my chest as I, quickly, replaced my pants for swimsuit bottoms and my t-shirt with a bikini top. I had faced away from the mirror during this process; because, I did not want to see what I looked like before I had the whole swimsuit on.  It was exciting to see a size 8 swimsuit fit like a glove. I was sure that this was going to be the swimsuit that I would buy, so I could wear it over the summer.
The time had come for me to reveal to myself how I looked in my new bathing suit.  In my head, I slowly began counting.  One. Two. Three.  Then, I turned around, and immediately, I noticed that something wasn’t right.  Don’t worry. I made sure to put the bikini on properly, and it was nice that it fit. The only problem was the way my body looked in the swimsuit. Skin spilled out of my bikini in weird places which caused me to resemble one of those wrinkly dogs called shar peis. I felt like this was the first time that I had, truly, looked at my body since I had lost all that weight. It, instantly, brought me back to the time I weighed 295 pounds, and I began to realize that my body will never look like my friends’ bodies. I stared at my body in the mirror, and I realized how stupid I was for making the decision to go bikini shopping.  Immediately, I hopped out of my bikini and changed back into my regular clothes. I marched out of the dressing room and up to my friends. They grew puzzled as they watched me approach.
“Hey,” Julie greeted, as I walked up to them, “Did the bikini, not fit?”
“I got to go, you guys.” I said, ignoring the question.
Kat knit her eyebrows, and said, “But, aren’t we shopping for swimsuits right now?”
“I have to go,” I insisted, “Please.  We can do this another time, okay? There is something that I need to do right now.”
And before my friends could say anything else, I was out of the store. It took me until I was standing just outside of my house to realize that I had sprinted home. By then, I was sweaty and breathing heavily.  I could feel tears streak down my cheeks.  All I could think about was how that swimsuit looked on my body. How all of that effort I had put into my weight loss became worthless. If I wasn’t so tired from running, I knew that I would have started sobbing. I walked into my home and sought out my mother as soon as I got the chance.  She had always been supportive of my choice to lose weight. When I told her about how I looked in the bikini, she suggested that we would make an appointment with Dr. Wright, so that we could figure out what to do about the issue. I agreed. Before I knew it, I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to learn more about my predicament.
“It’s stretched out skin.” Doctor Wright told my mother and me, as I lay back on the table where doctors give patients their check-ups, “It occurs all the time with people who lose a lot of weight.”
“Is there something that you can do about it?” my mother asked him.
Doctor Wright shook his head, “There’s nothing I can do about it.  I can always make an appointment with a surgeon I know, Doctor Wayne Elliott.  He specializes in cases where patients need surgery done for cosmetic reasons.”
Cosmetic reasons.
“Are you saying that the only way to get this skin removed is through plastic surgery?” I asked him.
Doctor Wright nodded, and just like that, a new, life changing experience had begun.  After that appointment, my mother and I went home and discussed the whole idea of plastic surgery.  It would be an expensive process and not covered by medical insurance.  It would also be risky, because a surgeon would be cutting my body to remove the excess skin.  My mom was unsure about me having this surgery, at first.
“Can’t you just love your body the way it is, Piper?” My mother asked me.
That was easier said than done.  When I weighed 295 pounds, bullying was relentless. They saw all of my body fat and assumed that I was a lazy piece of trash because of it.  The bullying was still a part of me. There were still moments where I really hated the number I saw on the scale. I really could not handle looking at the excess skin on top of everything else. 
Finally, I decided to go onto the internet to learn more about this procedure.  Most of the time, I just found websites promoting places that did plastic surgery, or websites that discussed that they were dangerous procedures.  At first, I was too scared to make plastic surgery an option to get rid of the extra skin. There had to have been another way. I spent a lot of my time, during the research process, studying the flaws of my body in the mirror. I stared at the skin that was hanging lower than it was supposed to.  I found myself thinking back to all of those times that I had been bullied for my weight while growing up.
“MOO!” The high school delinquent, Dillon Summers, would yell as he followed me to my math class during my freshman year in high school.
“Geez, you fat piece of crap.  Could you please walk any faster?” Audrey Montgomery, the head cheerleader at my school, would ask me.
“Do you speak anything other than dinosaur?” Sadie Keene, her rail thin, skinny best friend, would taunt at me.
As I thought of those things people would say to me, I found myself crying.  It was comments like these, bullying in the locker room, and getting hit with random objects outside of class that forced me to come to the decision that I needed to lose weight.  Their comments were the things that propelled me to work hard, day and night.  I watched my diet.  I worked out in the gym.  I tried my hardest to keep my stress low.  It was all for nothing, now. I could still see that part of my past.  All of that pain.  Those dark thoughts I found myself having.  Those times that I felt like nobody understood.  I cried even harder, and the more I thought about it, and the more I looked into it, the more I wanted to go out and get this surgery.  I didn’t want to make my large weight loss be for nothing; and when I told my mom about this decision, she understood.  We started to work to pay for my surgery.
I found myself on an operating table several months later.  During which, I avoided the swimsuit sections in stores and made excuses to my friends as to why we hadn’t returned to pick out a swimsuit for me. Dr. Elliott seemed to know what he was doing, and I was thankful for that.  He discussed the process of my surgery, somewhat, early on.  He explained that some surgeries don’t always turn out the way that people want; but, to me, anything was better than looking like a raisin whenever I put on a bikini. The time had come. I was anesthetized for my surgery. During that period, Dr. Elliott and his team removed all of the skin that was hanging loose and low on my body.  When I woke up, I was afraid of the pain that I would, possibly, suffer after the procedure.  However, due to the medication they gave me, I felt fine for a while.  Soon after the drugs wore off, I, promptly, began to kick myself for, conceivably, the dumbest decision that I have ever made in my life.
Eventually, I was able to get over the pain and the stitches started to heal up. Before long, I realized that the opposite was really true.  After my surgery, I could, finally, see how my body was, actually, supposed to look.  For once, I felt skinny; and as soon as I was given the chance, I made sure to buy that swimsuit from the same store where my friends and I had shopped those many months ago.  I wasn’t planning on wearing it any time soon, because of the scarring I still had from the surgery; but, at least, I could say that I owned a bikini. They only had one left in my size. It was on sale. I guess. We were meant to be together.
By this point, the end of summer drew near. My senior year in high school was about to begin, and my body looked better than ever.  I was approached by Julie and Kat, both of whom wondered where I had disappeared to over summer break.  I was hesitant, but told them about my plastic surgery.  They each told me that I was brave for doing it and that shocked me.  Most people do not have positive views on plastic surgery, but they had seen how hard I had worked to lose weight.  They knew how much this meant to me.  The kids at school, on the other hand, did not.
Chloe Ortiz was the first girl to notice the plastic surgery scars during gym. I had to take team sports during my senior year in high school. I never, really, wanted to take that class, but had no choice. It was a class that I needed to take, in order, to have a full schedule. She seemed nice enough when she asked me about the scars, and I told her the truth.  What I didn’t expect was her to taunt me every day about it, afterwards.
“It must be nice to have a body that looks like yours in clothes”, then, she would tell me, “even though it’s not real.”
Soon after, she told other kids at school about my surgery.  It wasn’t long before everybody was making fun of me about it.
“Hey Barbie, are you still looking for your Ken?” Dillon Summers would ask me, in front of my crush, Troy Bradley.
“I bet you she’ll come back after this weekend with a new nose.” I overheard Aubrey whisper to Sadie.
“Oh,” Sadie said, “It already looked like she had a nose job.”
And they would laugh.  They would laugh like they were watching a comedian give a show. Julie and Kat would try to cheer me up, but nothing worked. Suddenly, I found myself having flashbacks to the time that I weighed 295 pounds, and it was too much.  The room would spin.  My breath got caught up.  My eyes started to water.  I had enough!
“Stop it!” I screamed one day in front of my locker at school, “I got it!  I got plastic surgery!  It wasn’t easy, though. It took a long time to make the decision to get the surgery.  All I wanted was to remove the extra skin that had built up because of how much weight I lost! I just wanted to feel beautiful, for once; but, because of you guys, I can’t!”
Then, I ran home, crying the whole way. Not the pretty kind of crying; but, the kind that involves a lot of snot and wailing.  I realized, that day, that I would not be able to make any of those people happy.  They hated me when I was fat, and they hate me, now, after I removed all of that loose skin.  I was, either, too fat or too fake.  There was no in between, and I couldn’t understand why.  Why do we have to be so judgmental of each other?  Why can’t we let people do what they want with their bodies? I no longer felt good about my new surgery. I suddenly felt like a fraud, and this decision was not going to be something that I could just take back.  For the rest of the school day, all I could do was sit up in my room and cry.  I realized that swimsuit shopping was the least of my worries. All I could think about was all of the bullying and torture that I would have to endure; and, how cowering in the corner was the only way that I could defend myself from it.  I began to miss the girl that I was over a year and a half ago.