Chapter Text
One would think that a girl like Jane Crocker, who’s gotten everything she’s ever wanted and never has had to go without, would be completely spoiled rotten. Always needing more and more, never happy with just enough, willing to dry the world of natural resources until there was nothing left to squeeze out of the planet for her hand.
Except she’s not like that at all. Dad may never immediately cave to her demands, but she still got her wishes granted eventually. Dad just preferred to do it in other ways, teaching the importance of hard work and patience. Virtues that aren’t always easy for a child to learn.
But Jane has always been a bit of a curious mind. She likes learning, taking in more of her sheltered world, because there is simply so much to see and do. New things are like shiny images and she is but a crow, drawn in by their glimmer and novelty.
Of course, she contributes her fair share to the baking empire as well. She may not directly be in the line of business yet, but she’s always had a knack for baking as soon as she could reach the countertops and she’s always gotten the highest math score out of everyone in her class. Once she hits high school, electives like business and statistics and home economics just flow so naturally as if they were written into her blood.
Once she hits high school…well…
Jane Crocker goes from a big fish in a small pond to a single bubble in the middle of the ocean. Gone are the days of knowing every single classmate of hers as they all trudge her the same daily monotony together. Faces blur and she does pick up names, but try as she might she’ll never know everyone.
Except everyone seems to know her name, though.
How could they not? Betty Crocker cake mixes line the shelves of practically every single grocery store in America. The fact that Jane occasionally takes baked goods to school to share with others doesn’t really dissuade anyone from connecting the dots either. She learns to be open and honest about it, which is easier said than done.
Most people are nice to her. But they’re not friends. A few openly recite their proclamations of jealousy, a desire to give up their middle class standing for the glamour and luxury of an heiress’s life. Jane, who is no stranger to dreaming herself, tries to shrug it off.
One comment in particular makes her twitch.
“Do you eat cake for dinner every day or something?” An innocent joke, and its variants. Never intended to be cruel, she thinks. She laughs along with the crowd and insists that she doesn’t, because that is an absurd amount of cake and very unhealthy. She won’t deny she doesn’t enjoy the treat; after all, she needs to know when her baked goods are in fact good! But she doesn’t eat desserts every day.
And she says as such. Most people believe it. A select few have more to add.
“Couldn’t tell,” an older boy says sarcastically one day and his posse bursts into hysterics. His girlfriend gives him a shove and Jane’s face suddenly goes red. She tries to carry on with the rest of her day pretending that those words don’t carry a bite.
It isn’t until nightfall when she strips off her clothes and stares at her body in the mirror that she allows herself to sob.
The dust clears, the ragtag team of Crocker-Lalonde-Strider-English makes its way into SBURB, and only then does Jane get a good look at Roxy.
And Roxy Lalonde is beautiful.
She’s slender and tall with fair skin, beautiful blonde hair whose ends just seem to want to naturally curl, with energetic pink eyes that Jane could just get lost in forever. She is a whirlwind of energy and cares just so much that it’s irresistible. She has curves in all the right places, the perfect example of peak femininity that she wears like a dress that fits just right.
Roxy Lalonde is beautiful and Jane Crocker is jealous.
Because Roxy is skinny and pretty and confident and Jane is just so…so…
It gets even worse when Jake of all people has to make a comment. “It’s quite bizarre to finally be meeting you all in person. I have to admit, Jane, you look quite different from the pictures you sent me.”
“What do you mean by that?”” Jane asks, unsure if she wants Jake to continue talking.
“Well, it’s just that you’re quite plump! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know. I-”
“Can it, Jake,” Roxy says quickly before pulling Jane into a tight hug. “Don’t worry about what he's saying, Janey. Boys are stupid. You’re so gorgeous! I mean it, you’re like a model off the runaways!”
Jane basks in Roxy’s touch and the group moves on. Jake’s words don’t ever stop playing in her head. Her jealousy grows when she meets the others and she realizes that she is the only one who could ever be called plump. It settles in her stomach as she eyes the bodies of Jade, Rose, Kanaya, and Vriska; none of whom have a single ounce of pudge to their middles. They hold themselves tall and proud, all smooth and angles, and it just makes Jane feel like a shapeless blob more than ever.
Aradia and Terezi’s presence make her feel only slightly better. Because they’re not plump the way Jane is. Nobody is. Even the boys. Jane is a lonely island adrift in a sea of perfection.
The isolation is only exacerbated when her friends start pairing off (or tripling off in John, Karkat, and Terezi's case), leaving Jane behind in the dust. The more she mulls on it, the more she realizes it just makes too much sense. Why would anyone want her when they could have someone else so perfectly thin?
She pinches her stomach in front of the mirror, trying to straighten her back and suck in her belly, but it never seems to work. Her fat is just too obvious. It makes Jane want to cry because girls are not supposed to look like this, are not supposed to be so plump and chubby and overweight. Dad assures her that she’s perfectly healthy, and that’s the important thing.
She doesn’t feel healthy. She has nightmares of turning into nothing but a giant blob of flesh, it being her true form that she unknowingly kept hidden behind black hair and red-rimmed glasses. Pointed at, laughed at, even by Roxy of all people. Roxy who is just so perfect in every single way, who has the weight slide off her like her skin is made of butter.
Jane wakes up in a cold sweat, tears still glistening on her lashes. It is then that she makes up her mind, that something drastic has to be done.