T he scale in my gyms’ locker room is gargantuan, hideously oversized, like something you’d find in Alice in Wonderland. It lurks in the far back corner of the locker room, a menacing, six-foot tall beast of a Toledo. It’s the kind of scale found at fairs; only a brave man would dare climb it as a challenge to the carnival barker to guess his weight so he can win his lady a stuffed animal. Gunmetal gray, it has a two-foot-by-two-foot rubber platform and a huge round register. When you step on it, the slender blood-red needle slowly rises like a psychological odometer, bobbing back and forth for a few excruciating seconds as it deliberates its final sentence.

Nearly everyday for five years, I have watched—and, admittedly, joined—women as they prepared to climb this scale, almost all of us programmed with an eerily similar routine.

It begins when a woman of any given size or shape approaches the steely monster. Typically she’s clad in just a towel and flip-flops. Actual clothing? Forget it. And shoes? Out of the question. What are you trying to do, add two pounds?

After a quick scan of the room to see whether anyone is nearby, the woman turns back and attempts to scale Mount Toledo. Stepping onto the platform, she takes a deep breath, imperceptible to all but the most attuned gym-goers, and gazes up at the number, her eyes at once hopeful and dreading. The needle settles eventually, and one of two scenarios ensues.

If the number is favorable, she immediately hops off, as if hot coals were underfoot, just in case the needle is feeling fickle and decides to creep up a few more increments. Off she struts satisfied, as if she were on the receiving end of a one-hour massage—happy ending included.

But more often than not, the number is a disappointment. The woman is launched into a sort of weight loss strip tease—and I don’t mean the kind that Carmen Electra might perform. First, she untucks the corner of the white towel from beneath her arm and lets it slip to the floor. That shaves off another pound, especially if its wet. Next, her flip flops might be kicked away; then her wrist watch goes, placed atop the nearby payphone. Another ounce or two. After that, with nothing else to remove, the woman stands there, naked, soaking in the final number, and what it all-too-often represents: her self-worth.

It’s just as my friend Debbie said to me one morning as she came into work: “I decided to be mean to myself this morning, so I got on the scale.”

Reprinted with permission of the publishers. © Da Capo, 2007

Leslie Goldman can be reached at www.lrdiaries.com

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