“In essence,” I continued. “I suppose we’re almost redefining the word friend today with certain forms of online communication.”
“Meaning?” Dr. Chase leaned forward with her elbows on the podium, smiling. At some point, she’d slid her silver wireframe glasses onto her head. She was definitely into whatever it was I was trying to say. I decided to keep talking, cautious not to sound like a desperate loser with no friends who hangs out on the internet all day.
“Well, I have lots of so-called friends on Facebook who are much more like drive-by acquaintances or friends of friends. Some of them are people I once went to school with and never even liked, who wouldn’t have given me the time of day if I spontaneously caught on fire during a Calculus class.” This earned a few chuckles, so I paused until the room grew quiet again. “In person, I might spot these people across a department store and run the other way. But online, we’re the kind of friends who post comments on each other’s photos or send Happy Birthday wishes back and forth. I think the internet lets us all be hypocrites.”
My classmates remained silent for a moment, as Dr. Chase’s eyes scanned the room, looking for reactions. A few of them looked puzzled, with an eyebrow raised or a head tilted to the side, but my professor seemed pleased. As I let my own words sink through my thick skull, I started to realize how unique a viewpoint I might have stumbled upon.
After class, Dr. Chase intercepted me on my way out.
“Well, Jen, I think we’ve found your topic.” She seemed pleased to have inspired me with such a great idea. Or at least to have hosted such a great debate in her classroom for a change.
“Internet hypocrisy?” I asked, skeptically.
Dr. Chase exhaled deeply, giving herself some time to think. “Maybe not as such, but there’s something to what you were saying about having a dual personality, on and off the web. I think it might be an interesting study to look at perception and falsehood on the internet. Maybe see what you can discover.”
“Do you really think so? I don’t even know how to go about doing this.” I smoothed my long brown hair on both sides, being sure to cover my hearing aids. Nervous habit.
“Well, it’s up to you how to proceed,” said Dr. Chase, shoving a stack of notebooks and essay papers into her tote bag. “But I think you need to explore the anonymity and duplicity you were talking about. Find a way to really dig deep into these aspects of social media and I think you’ve got yourself a paper.”
Basically, it was the beginning of the end.
CHAPTER TWO
“So, where does Olivia fit in?” Mom interrupts again.
“I’m getting to that, Mom. See, I spent a few days thinking about the internet hypocrisy thing and kept coming up empty handed. I couldn’t find a way to do the research on something like that. It was too big to tackle the regular way.”
She nods, taking my empty tea cup and setting it on the coffee table.
“It wasn’t until I went to my doctor’s appointment later that week that I really came up with something...”
As I took the bus down Commonwealth Ave to my doctor’s office, I tried to think about other things. Frustrated, I’d let the idea of my research project go for a little while. I had other things to worry about. My appointment that day was the dreaded annual physical, one that tended to haunt me for the months that followed it. For some reason, my doctor and I were having a constant disagreement about a hot-button topic: my weight. While I felt that it was simply an area that needed improvement, nothing life-threatening, she wouldn’t let the subject go.
Granted, my weight was one improvement I’d been “working on” for a long time. When I say I’d been working on it, I mean that I kept thinking about exercising, but ended up praying instead to wake up one morning in a normal size—like an 8 or a 10, not super skinny or anything. Just healthy.
Even with the extra pounds on my frame, I was still pretty healthy. Healthy enough. I only got sick, like, once a year… and my acne was finally starting to clear up. That was a definite plus; especially since I’d heard a lady at a cosmetics counter once say that healthy skin reflects a healthy inside. Obviously, I had nothing to worry about.
So why did my doctor disagree with me every time I saw her?
“Jennifer,” Dr. Brinkley sighed, flipping through the pages of my chart at my annual physical. She is a tall, thin woman with a bird-like nose. Her white blond hair is always impeccable in a neat chignon and the clothing she wears under her lab coat is usually the latest from the Talbot’s rack. Not that I would wear anything from Talbot’s, at the risk of looking like a somewhat fashionable plain-clothes nun, but I didn’t think I would fit into anything in that store anyway.
When Dr. Brinkley cleared her throat, I pulled my eyes away from her crisply creased slacks. Right. I was not here for a fashion consultation.
“Jennifer,” she tried again, this time leaning forward over her crossed legs. This was her let’s-be-serious-for-a-moment face. I knew it well, given how many times I’d seen it before. “What are we going to do about your situation?”
“Situation?” I adjusted my left hearing aid, pushing it further in. Would she buy it if I played dumb?
“Yes,” Dr. Brinkley raised an eyebrow at me, as though challenging me to ask her again. “For the last eight years, we’ve been talking about the same problem. And for eight years, you’ve been saying you were going to get healthy.”
“But I am healthy… enough.”
“Sure… Healthy enough for now. But you know very well that this extra weight will put you at risk for some scary things like diabetes and heart disease, among others. I’m not asking you to drop half your body weight here, Jennifer. Even losing ten-percent would significantly reduce your risk factors. If you do nothing, you’re just waiting for it to make you sick or, eventually, kill you.”
I blinked at her. “Ouch, Dr. Brinkley.”
“Well, Jennifer, I’m concerned about you. The time for niceties is over. You need to lose 30 pounds to get yourself to a healthy weight. I can’t do it for you.” As she said this, Dr. Brinkley reached a hand out to touch my elbow. “Do this for yourself. You deserve to be healthy.”
Looking into her eyes, I really wanted to tell her I could do it. That I would do it, once and for all. But 30 is such a big, big number… and a bit more than that ten-percent that she was talking about. Where was I supposed to start? “I don’t know how to do this… to stay motivated. I keep trying and… then I give up.”
“Close your eyes for a minute, Jennifer,” she said, her voice more soothing. I looked at her in disbelief. “Just try it, okay?”
I closed my eyes, albeit skeptically, and tried to clear my mind to listen to whatever words of wisdom she was about to impart.
“I want you to picture yourself now, looking into a mirror. See what you see every day and just look for a moment.”
I almost winced, visualizing myself reflected in the bathroom mirror. I never liked to look at myself, not any more than necessary. You know, things like checking for misplaced hairs or spinach between my teeth were okay, but that was about it. This time, I tried really hard to see myself and all my imperfections without banishing the image.
“Good,” Dr. Brinkley cut in. “Now, imagine what it could be like if you reached your goal. What will you be proud of when you’re fitter and leaner? When you’ve trimmed away the excess and become the you who’s inside this person?”
I could see myself transforming. Miraculously, my arms became sculpted, my thighs toned, my middle slimmed away to a healthy size. Somehow, my hair grew longer and turned blonde… but still, I could see that it was still me in the mirror. It was a whole new version of Jennifer and she looked happy.
“Have you got an image of what you’d like to become?”
I nodded, suddenly motivated, and opened my eyes.
“Excellent,” she smiled. “The best way to get there is to make small, achievable goals. Break your weight loss down into five pound increments and
just move milestone to milestone until you get there. And give yourself a realistic timeline, Jennifer. You can’t expect to lose more than a couple of pounds a week at a healthy pace. No crash diets, nothing radical. And I’ll be checking in on you during the next few months, okay?”
I kept nodding, feeling like my head might snap off my neck with all the enthusiasm. I knew finally what I had to do, even if it wasn’t exactly what Dr. Brinkley had in mind for me.
Twenty minutes later, I left the clinic with much more paperwork than I cared to read. I had pamphlets with titles like Your Midsection & You, 15 Bad Eating Habits to Change Today, and Yoga for Plus Size Women just at the top of the pile. There were many more of these things, plus a list of recommendations from Dr. Brinkley. I resisted the urge to pitch everything straight into the trash barrel outside the door and shoved them into my messenger bag instead.
I was walking out of that appointment with much more than boring reading material. Inadvertently, Dr. Brinkley had solved my academic dilemma with her visualization tactics. Losing all that weight still seemed daunting, but becoming the image I’d seen in the mirror was as easy as a Photo Shop edit. I wanted to burst with the excitement of it all. Finally, an idea I could really be passionate about!
Still, it was really tempting to actually take her advice the way it was intended…
As I waited for the bus, I looked down at my midsection and frowned. Why did it have to be so big and frumpy? So squishy and unsightly? Why couldn’t I just flatten it with some Spanx every day until it went away? Why did my sister get all the skinny genes, and thus, the skinny jeans? It’s just not fair that I had to be Claire’s rotund sister, Dr. Brinkley’s at-risk patient, my parents’ chubby daughter. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Although I hated to admit it to myself, Dr. Brinkley was right. Sighing, I looked up to see the white and yellow T bus approaching. I dug into my pocket for my Charlie Card and paused, my fingers wrapped around the plastic bus pass.
No. No bus today. It’s not raining or snowing, and it’s actually kind of a nice day. You’re walking home, Lazy. Consider this the beginning of your midsection’s end.
****
At home, I sunk into my desk chair and tried to ignore how sweaty I’d gotten from my mere two-mile walk. So, I was out of shape, as it turned out. I didn’t need to dwell on this fact; I just needed to change it. So I Googled some workout tips, looked for a few nearby studios that had this plus-size yoga thing Dr. Brinkley was raving about, and settled on a course of action. Then I started tackling the diet part of my weight loss plan, got frustrated at the price of all the delivered-to-your-door meals available out there, and decided I should just close my web browser and eat a Hostess cupcake instead. Yes, that was much easier.
“Stop, stop, stop.” I shook my head at myself, and then contemplated getting a cat so it would be a little less weird when I talked to myself at home. Yeah, I’d just be talking to the cat… right.
“Jennifer Smith,” I continued. “Step away from the Hostess and get back to work.”
By sheer force of my suddenly iron-clad will power, I decided to back out of the kitchen and return to my seat. So the diet plan search was going to be an uphill battle. This was a good thing to be aware of because childhood public service announcements taught me that knowing is half the battle. I couldn’t let it throw me off course. I decided to give it a break for tonight and turned, instead, to matters of my education.
Or, rather, my social networking project.
Dr. Brinkley had inspired me with something good, a clear way to demonstrate how the internet allowed people to be hypocritical. And what effect anonymity played on social interactions on the web. If there was a way to do this, and have fun, I was willing to try almost anything.
I closed my eyes, trying to get back that image of the improved version of myself. The beautiful hair, the toned arms, the muscle definition. This new version of me that would exist (maybe someday) in reality, but could also exist (instantly) in the virtual world. But how to get her out there?
It was right about then that Claire burst through my front door, as she has been known to do from time to time. Living a town away seems to offer me very little protection from her sisterly drop-ins.
“Hey Jen,” she said, pulling me out of the brain of my imaginary identity. “How’s the project coming?”
“How do you do that?” I answered, a bit ruffled.
“What?”
“Always know what I’m thinking about?”
“Duh, I’m your sister.” Claire answered, with one hand on her hip. “Also, you’re sitting in front of your laptop on a Google search page for ‘social anonymity and the internet.’ Even John Edwards could read you right now.”
I filled her in on my idea in Dr. Chase’s class earlier in the week and my inspiration to “pretend” to be someone else. I clicked through a few of the Google search results links while I talked, but couldn’t find anything useful to back me.
“It’s probably hopeless, though,” I sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. “I can’t really find any other projects to support it. I don’t even know what framework to use for something like this.”
“Oh my God, Jen! I’ve got it!” she said, slapping my shoulder. “You should make a fake Facebook profile! You can be, like, a supermodel or something and try to friend random people. And then, with your real profile, you can try to friend the same people and see how their reactions are different.”
I had to give it to Claire. On paper, the premise was perfect. Her endless fountain of ideas, it seemed, had finally turned up a lucky penny. And that’s more or less how my final paper, The Effects of Social Media on Human Interaction, was born.
“Good title,” says my Mom, still paying loyal attention to my rambling story. “Is it finished?”
“We’re getting there, Mom,” I say patiently, trying to tuck my chilly toes into the fleece blanket. “The problem is, it’s a whole lot more than a paper right now. And that was never supposed to happen.”
CHAPTER THREE
I didn’t waste much time getting started after that. With only a few months left before my deadline, I couldn’t afford to spend any more time grueling over the details. So the next day, I dug into the creation of my new fake profile in earnest. I picked a random name that could belong to either someone totally normal or someone crazy famous: Olivia Saunders. I decided that, if I got to play pretend and be someone totally fake, then I might as well go all out. As I typed in my new name, I actually got chills. A whole new me, with full control over every single detail of my life. It was truly exhilarating.
Crafting a whole identity from scratch, I fashioned Olivia as an army brat with a diverse list of random skills, fluent in three languages, and with a career in modeling. To be totally cliché, I also made her an aspiring actress. I listed her current city as Boston, Massachusetts, but the hometown I left blank, due to all of Olivia’s family’s moves. I checked the box that she was a female and sure, I decided to “show my sex in my profile.” Do people really keep that a secret? Why?
I made up a random birthday for my new fake self. But then, given the option, I decided to only show the month and day on my profile, although I have already decided that Olivia is 27, just like me. In her line of work, she might not want people to know she was within throwing distance of age 30. I hardly wanted people to know that, and I don’t consider myself half as vain as I would expect someone like Olivia to be.
Next, I clicked that Olivia is interested in men and women. Why not? She might just be that kind of open-minded girl. At the very least, wouldn’t it attract a wider range of, ahem, interested parties? For her spoken languages, I entered English, which is a given, as well as Spanish and German. Perfect. I don’t speak anything but my native tongue, but I always wished I did. I just hoped no one would try to chat with me in Spanish or German, or I’d be spending a lot of time on Google Translator.
For the time being, I skipped the About Me sect
ion, deciding to wait until I had more time to make up something that sounded at least moderately interesting. Maybe Olivia was raised as a circus performer. Was she an award-winning country line dancer? No, too isolating, especially in New England. What if I trained polar bears? The endless possibilities were just too much to handle all at once.
Instead, I kept going, typing in exotic things like “gourmet French cooking” as one of my hobbies and interests. I just typed away until I got to Relationship Status. I thought for a minute, chewing on a hang nail, and decided to keep my options open. Olivia’s relationship status would be single. That was one thing the real me and the fake me could agree on.
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