Willowdean's body-image struggle

Willowdean's body-image struggle is not a simple rejection of her body or a steady path toward confidence. Willowdean Dickson names herself as fat without treating the word as an insult, yet she remains vulnerable to a culture that makes her body conspicuous and socially consequential. The difference between what she believes about her worth and what she fears other people will think shapes her choices about intimacy, public visibility, and the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant.

Identity and the Language of the Body

Willowdean’s self-description begins with a deliberate distinction: fat is, to her, an accurate word, not a curse. She sees no reason to conceal the first thing many people notice about her, and she compares naming her body to noticing other people’s features. This directness is a form of self-definition. Rather than allowing discomfort around the word to set the terms, she uses it herself and insists that naming her body need not amount to condemning it.

That confidence coexists with the ordinary material demands of dressing for work. The uniform offers pants as an alternative to a dress, but the polyester pants do not fit over her hips. Willowdean blames the garment rather than treating her body as a nuisance, and even imagines her wide hips as an asset. The moment reveals both sides of her outlook: she can resist the assumption that her body is at fault, while still having to navigate clothes designed in a way that does not accommodate her.

Her resistance is sharpened by what she sees in popular media. Watching an MTV weight-loss program, Willowdean recognizes a familiar framing of fat characters: they are shown as miserable about themselves or reduced to the cheerful supporting friend. She rejects both roles as inadequate descriptions of her own life. The program’s narrative treats weight loss as the answer to a girl’s difficulties, while Willowdean watches the spectacle of the girl’s distress and humiliation with discomfort. Her mother’s attention to the program’s emotional turning point, when the participant is urged to pursue thinness, makes the scene personally charged: Willowdean knows this is the part her mother favors, and recognizes how readily a story about a person’s life can become a story about correcting her body.

Judgment, Visibility, and Unequal Pressures

Willowdean’s body-image concerns are intensified by the expectation of being watched. In a conversation with Hannah Perez, she describes the everyday calculations that accompany being fat: whether a chair with armrests will fit, whether a creaking floor will draw attention, whether clothes in a mall will be available in her size, and whether eating at a buffet will turn her into a joke. These are not presented as abstract insecurity alone. They connect her body to ordinary spaces and social situations, where she anticipates that other people may interpret her presence before they know her.

Her attention to Hannah’s treatment helps reveal that scrutiny takes different forms. When classmates comment on Hannah’s appearance and ask why she does not get braces, Willowdean objects to the assumption that Hannah should alter herself to stop their ridicule. Later, she asks Hannah directly about her teeth. Hannah explains that dental work is expensive and that her parents’ jobs do not provide strong insurance. She also says that she is tired of having to stay guarded and lacks someone to accompany her through school. Willowdean recognizes that she cannot know exactly what Hannah’s experience feels like, but their conversation makes clear that social pressure and access to change are not distributed equally. Hannah’s Dominican identity, sexuality, and visible teeth are part of the town’s judgments of her; Willowdean’s size is another conspicuous difference, not a universal measure of what exclusion feels like.

The exchange also exposes a tension in Willowdean’s own thinking. She argues that Hannah should not have to change her teeth, but initially describes herself as so visibly different that entering the pageant would prove she could not belong among the other girls. Hannah challenges that conclusion: girls who are fat, have limps, or have prominent teeth may not usually win beauty pageants, but their absence from the contest would leave its expectations untouched. For Willowdean, being present is therefore both an act of participation and an exposure to the very judgments she fears.

Intimacy and the Fear of Being Seen

Her relationship with Bo Larson brings that fear into private as well as public life. Willowdean believes that Bo likes her, yet doubts that other people will understand what he sees in her. She imagines that dating him would give Patrick Thomas an opportunity to mock them. The obstacle is not uncertainty that Bo has expressed affection; it is Willowdean’s anticipation of how their relationship would look to everyone else.

When Bo asks to be with her, Willowdean makes her body the question, gesturing toward herself and asking why he would want someone like her. She immediately regrets doing so, recognizing that she—not Bo—is making her body the condition of their relationship. Bo tells her that his feelings are serious and that he wants to go places with her openly, including serving as her escort at the pageant. His willingness to be seen together offers a direct counter to her expectation of ridicule, but it does not immediately undo that expectation. Willowdean fears that she will not become thin soon and is angry with herself for caring about public opinion. She kisses him, understands that she likes him, and still refuses the relationship because she cannot accept the social exposure it might bring.

The conflict is not resolved by affection alone. Willowdean can hear Bo call her beautiful and still think of herself as fat, as if the descriptions cannot easily occupy the same space. The moment leaves open the possibility that she might be both, while showing how difficult it is for her to let another person’s desire revise her own view. Her reluctance is tied to more than appearance: she fears becoming a subject of gossip and cannot yet separate choosing intimacy from inviting public judgment.

The Pageant and a Change in Practice

Willowdean’s uncertainty about competing turns the pageant into a test of whether she believes she deserves the same opportunities as other girls. At one point, she wonders whether entering is a mistake and whether competing will only confirm that she is different. Hannah counters that deserving a place does not mean being guaranteed victory; it means making the effort and demanding presence in a space that has not routinely welcomed girls like them. The argument does not erase Willowdean’s fear, but it gives participation a meaning beyond winning.

The swimsuit round makes that meaning concrete. As Ellen Dryver walks onstage confidently in a green two-piece, Willowdean notices her own red swimsuit stretched over her round belly. Her attention narrows to her thighs, the part of her body she dislikes most. Even so, she refuses to treat discomfort as a reason for shame. When it is her turn, she breathes in and smiles, recalling her mother’s encouragement. She cannot see the audience, and no one tells her to leave the stage; she completes the walk without retreating as she once did at the pool. No public catastrophe follows. The contrast is not between insecurity and a suddenly perfect self-image, but between fearing exposure and remaining present through it.

Willowdean’s body-image struggle therefore changes through action more than through a final declaration of certainty. She continues to feel the force of other people’s judgments and to focus on the body parts she dislikes, even as she contests the notion that discomfort should disqualify her. Her principle that anyone with a body can wear a swimsuit turns public visibility into a right rather than a reward for meeting an ideal. At the pageant, that conviction does not make her comfortable; it allows her to be uncomfortable without being ashamed.