ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270149
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHA GILBERT STAFF WRITER
MORE AND MORE, self-image is connected to body weight. Health spas have proliferated and society holds "thin" as the highest ideal. These Roanokers have worked hard to become happy with their own images - and some have had healthy self-images all along.
He dribbled the basketball down the court. In some games he played guard; in others, forward.
His efforts helped his team, the Rush, win eight games and a silver medal in Virginia's Commonwealth Games this summer.
Sports are a passion for Chaun Dooley, who has coached basketball at the local rec center and pitched in summer softball leagues. He also works two jobs - as a bus driver at Valley Metro and as a loading dock coordinator and driver for The Roanoke Times.
People describe him as active.
And Dooley says his weight - 412 pounds - has never gotten in the way of his active life.
"I always felt like I didn't want to let it hold me back," said Dooley, who stands 6-foot-2. "I was accepted growing up. My friends talked about other people being overweight in front of me like it didn't apply to me."
This fall, Dooley will marry his girlfriend of four years.
"When she met me I was large," he said. "We love each other for what's inside and out. Society has made people think that if they're overweight, they're not attractive. That's not true. It all has to do with how they carry themselves. Not to be conceited, but I think I carry myself well."
Dooley is an exception, though. Often, being large lowers a person's self-image. Television commercials and magazines are filled with pictures of thin people described as the "American ideal." Doctors see patients with eating disorders, convinced that fat - or even "normal" by medical standards - means "unattractive." And psychologists say that happiness is often tied to how people think they look and how they think others see them.
"You know the old saying 'If you don't look good, you don't feel good,''' said Sallie Noonkester, a licensed professional counselor since 1986. "Unfortunately, there's some truth to that for most people."
For years, it was mostly white women who were caught up in the weight image cycle.
But these days, "more black women are developing eating disorders, adopting the values of white, middle class society," said Joe McVoy, a counselor and director of the Blacksburg-based AHELP (the Association for the Health Enrichment of Large People). "Japanese women are now becoming obsessed with exercise and dieting ... We're making all women crazy now. It's even becoming an issue for men, though it's not nearly at the stage it is for women."
Nikki Agnew, 24 and a counselor at the Beverly Hills Weight Loss Clinic of Salem Inc., talks openly about the weight she gained in high school and how it made her feel.
"I was not happy with myself," she said. "I knew I had a pretty face when I was thin, but my face was even fat. My weight was like a roller coaster. In one year in high school I went from weighing 118 to 185. Then I was too ashamed to get on the scale."
Since seventh grade, Agnew had wanted to lose weight and have smaller breasts. She stopped buying bras larger than size 40DD because she was embarrassed to wear the larger size she really needed. One of the unwanted nicknames she endured in school was Mount Everbreast.
Agnew went on the weight loss clinic's diet in February, when she weighed 165 pounds. By the beginning of August she was down to 122 pounds. She says she will be happiest when she reaches her goal of 118.
Part of what helped her achieve her weight loss was learning to eat in moderation. Part of it was having breast-reduction surgery.
"I'm a different person," she beamed. "I used to be a doormat. I would put up with anything."
Had she not lost the weight, she might have stayed in a bad marriage, she says. "The better I feel about myself, the more outgoing I get."
Doris Guerrant, a licensed counselor since 1978, has heard similar comments from many of her clients. "My clients tell me, 'I hate what I look like because of what other people think of me and how I see myself,''' said Guerrant, who lost 50 pounds herself through Weight Watchers some years ago. "When they notice the weight come off they start to feel better about themselves. They feel if they can control their weight, then they can control other areas of their life."
But weight is not the only answer, McVoy warns, and self-esteem doesn't correlate with weight in the long term.
He tells his clients that if they can't accept themselves at 200 pounds, they can't accept themselves at 150. His goal is to help people find value in themselves, to live their lives so that they're not controlled by diets, "and by this drive for thinness."
"I've never seen a happy anorexic," he said.
He describes a healthy self-image as "when you don't worry about your self-image. It's a healthy acceptance of who you are. When you look in the mirror, you see you. You don't see weight and you don't see muscle or lack of muscle."
Noonkester's definition of a healthy self-image? "It sounds trite, but for people to like themselves and please themselves and not try to please the external world."
While hurtful comments made Agnew dislike her body, positive reinforcement helped Ann Skinner feel proud of her full figure. Her husband of 39 years and their four children and seven grandchildren tell her she looks just fine the way she is - at 5-foot-4 and 170 pounds. Skinner uses her extra pounds to her advantage in modeling, which is no longer just for the tall and thin. Women who wear size 14 or larger are a regular feature in most fashion shows, magazines and advertisements.
"I like the eye contact with the audience when I'm modeling," said Skinner, an assistant sales clerk at Mimi's Plus Ltd. in Roanoke. "They look like they're enjoying themselves. It makes them feel that they could look nice, too, even though they're a large size. It's all about attitude. I feel sorry for people who let their size dictate the way they feel."
It is a learned thing, McVoy said, to associate who you are with your weight, and unfortunately, society teaches us that lesson every day.
"That's what we want to undo," he said. And more. If a woman's old, she doesn't have to have a face lift, McVoy said. If she gains weight with age, she doesn't have to become obsessed by dieting. "Grandmothers shouldn't look like Twiggy, they should look like Aunt Bea," he said. "Women have to learn to fight this."
When people are ashamed of their bodies, the way they dress often reflects their low self-image.
One of Agnew's weight-loss clients, Leigh Reynolds, a former aerobics instructor, went from her regular weight of 155 pounds to 187 and tried to hide it in big, oversize clothes.
"I was so miserable and depressed in my clothes," said Reynolds, 36. "Everything I wore had elastic in the waistband. I found myself dodging people I knew from high school when I was out in public. Two people came up to me at a wedding and thought I was pregnant because I was wearing sack clothes."
She has lost 29 pounds since April 1 and gone from wearing a size 16W to size 12.
"I feel wonderful," said Reynolds, who is 5-foot-11. "I'm happier because I feel better about myself. I used to avoid outside activities. I just exchanged shorts and a one-piece bathing suit for smaller shorts and a two-piece bikini. I feel 100 percent better."
Dressing with flair and feeling good about herself comes naturally to Mollie DeBerry, who is 39, 6 feet tall and wears a size 221/2.
DeBerry, a Roanoke school teacher for 13 years, also serves large doses of self-esteem lessons to her students. Some of them are models in her Dee's Modeling Agency. All have been invited to sign up for her after-school charm classes.
"My models are short, tall, skinny and fat," said DeBerry, "Modeling helps them build their self-image. Heavy kids tend to have low self-esteem. They need to learn how to pick out clothes, put on makeup and do their hair."
DeBerry was in her first pageant in fifth grade at the Barn Dinner Theater. She was voted campus queen in her sophomore and junior years at Livingstone College in Salisbury, N.C.
"No one ever made weight an issue," she said. "I was always big-boned and large-framed. People have always said, 'You're such a pretty girl to be your size.' I carry it well."
DeBerry's positive attitude has even helped one of her thinner students learn to have a better image of her own body.
Jolina Goad was a shy, 13-year-old seventh-grader at Jackson Middle School when DeBerry convinced her to take part in a school fashion show.
"I was nothing to look at," said Jolina, now 18. "I didn't have a cute figure. My hair wasn't styled. I wore hardly any makeup."
Since that first shaky runway walk, Jolina has attended DeBerry's charm classes and gone on to win first-place honors in school and community fashion shows, been nominated as best-dressed in school, and had more than 20 modeling assignments this year alone.
"I like the attention," said Goad, who is 5-foot-7 and weighs 118 pounds. "Dressing up is easy for me now. It makes me feel better about myself. I used to want to be a secretary. Now I'm looking into working in fashion as a visual designer or a buyer, but my real dream is to be a model."
Susan M. Pollard, president of Personal Best Inc. and a personal trainer for the past five years, said the scale shouldn't determine how people feel about their bodies.
"I don't like to focus on weight, but fitness and health," she said. "I don't recommend diets, but making a life-style change to include eating nutrient-rich foods and drinking lots of water."
Dooley, though he has a positive self-image, agrees that being physically healthy is important. But having a healthy mind is important, too.
"Even though there are people who are overweight and may not have the desire to lose weight, it doesn't mean they have to be down on themselves," he said. "The Lord is very important in my life. They should be proud that the Lord made them. Everything he made is good."
LENGTH: Long : 186 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. Leigh Reynolds "was so miserableby CNBand depressed" in her clothes before a recent weight loss.
"Everything I wore had elastic in the waistband. I found myself
dodging people I knew from high school when I was out in public. Two
people came up to me at a wedding and thought I was pregnant because
I was wearing sack clothes." 2. ERIC BRADY/Staff. Chaun Dooley
doesn't let his 412 pounds get in the way of a good basketball game
(left). 3. WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Nikki Agnew (above) lost considerable
weight and now feels happy with herself. 4. Mollie DeBerry (above)
teaches at Patrick Henry High School and runs a modeling agency. "No
one ever made weight an issue.... People have always said, 'You're
such a pretty girl to be your size.'..." 5. ALAN SPEARMAN/Staff. Ann
Skinner (above) uses her extra pounds to her advantage in modeling,
which is no longer just for the tall and thin. color.