Kristan Higgins was only 4 years old the first time somebody called her fat.
It was 1969 at a local children’s beauty pageant, where 12 young girls lined up to compete for the title of Little Miss Doolittle Park. “We had to go up, do a spin, and walk to the other side of the stage,” Higgins, now a best-selling author, tells The Post. “Then a judge walked up and down the row of us, pointed at me, and said, ‘too chubby.’”
Shocked, Higgins choked back the tears as her mother lifted her up and away from the group. She was the first one eliminated and says the experience paved the way for a lifetime of painful body-image issues: “Like most girls, I had no idea that I was not the ideal size or shape until I was told.”
Now 53, the Connecticut native channeled her own food anxieties and body insecurities into her 18th novel, “Good Luck With That,” out Tuesday. The book follows three women — Emerson, Marley and Georgia — who bond as teenagers at a weight-loss camp and battle various food issues into their mid-30s. But while Marley and Georgia eventually find peace, Emerson’s story takes a tragic turn, with the “true food addict” and incest survivor bingeing on rich comfort foods until she’s bed-ridden at 601 pounds.
“I really wanted to go there,” says Higgins, who at 5-foot-9 has swung between 115 and 180 pounds. “I’ve never had to physically struggle the way Emerson did, but I’ve felt isolated, I’ve eaten badly … her obsession with food comes from me.”
Tall and broad, Higgins says she was the “awkward” one in her family, with two athletic siblings, an equally fit dad and a mother she says resembled Grace Kelly. She spent her teenage years experimenting with an array of destructive eating habits, devouring slice after greasy slice of pizza or, at the other extreme, “eating five cherry tomatoes and calling it a day.”
Higgins says it wasn’t until she was married and had the first of her two children, at 30, that she finally freed herself from the bond of dysmorphia.
“It was the first time that I looked at my body as something wondrous,” she says.
She still struggles occasionally with negative thoughts, she says, but now she knows how to stop them.
“There are days when I still look in the mirror and sigh,” she admits.
“And then I just mentally slap myself.”
