Another project in the hopper is Fat Bottomed Girls a well-rounded family legacy.  Here’s a sample:

Even as Americans went without and Florence Owens Thompson (that ubiquitous Depression Mother from a Life Magazine photo) was flanked by her hungry children, Nettie Bell Rhone Dobson was fat.  Nettie, who didn’t survive to see the start of WWII, once stood in a field with my great-grandfather to pose for a picture not long before they both died in 1939, Great Grandma Nettie looks somber but sated, and the couple looks like they’re channeling Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt.

On the East side of the South Dakota/Iowa border another of my great-grandmothers, Violet Olive Dickinson Ross, was a also round woman with a thin husband.  Each great-grandmother  had nine children.  Nettie’s fourth daughter bore my father, Violet’s third daughter bore my mother.  For more than a century, women of each generation have born a heavy burden on their hips.  It’s almost as if I was fated to be fat.  But then again, I don’t believe in fate.