Not interested in a diet, thanks.

Cerise writes: 

Actually, I don’t want to lose weight, thanks.  Yes, I have noticed that I am fat, but I’m okay with that.  I am not on a diet, I don’t want to hear about the latest fad diet, and I don’t hate the way I look.  For me, at least, there are two ways to deal with the way I feel about my body:  accept it or hate it. I would rather not hate my body and try to starve it into submission. 

I tried that, when I was younger.  I was anorexic.  I was five foot eight and I weighed less than 100 pounds.  Actually, I sometimes weighed less than 90 pounds.  At 100 pounds, my body mass index would have been 14.8.  At 90 pounds, it would be 13.3  The lowest healthy body mass index for women is 18.5.  By the way, the online BMI calculator I just used told me that 90 pounds for a height of 5’8” was “healthy.”  Apparently it is not aware that a BMI below 17.5 is one of the criteria for anorexia. 

And I thought about food all the time.  I was always hungry.  Did you know that if you are hungry enough you get a buzz?  Sort of like a runner’s high.  I was addicted to that high.  Of course, I was still not happy with the way I looked.  I thought I was fat.  I despaired because my ribs and hip bones were so huge and stuck out so far that I could never be truly skinny.  I was just big boned, so I would never be as thin as I wanted to be.  That kind of thinking seemed normal to me.  Perhaps because it was reinforced by so many voices around me:  my mother, other girls, advertising, even the textbooks in school.  Thinner was better, they said.  Having a healthy appetite was unfeminine.  Being beautiful meant being skinny.  Always being on a diet was normal.  I didn’t come up with those disordered thoughts on my own, I learned them from the society around me. 

I hope you all realize how ridiculous this weight-loss ad image really is.  

Like many teenagers, I was shy.  I didn’t want to attract attention.  The thinner I got, the less space I took up, the closer I got to being invisible.  I wanted to disappear, and I got as close as I could.  Those of you who know I studied ballet might think that part of the problem was the cult of thinness in the dance world.  For me, at least, that wasn’t the source of the problem.  My dance teachers were pretty healthy in their attitude towards weight.  They urged us not to eat junk, but to choose real food.  And they also told me to gain weight, that I was too thin, that I would have more stamina if I wasn’t so skinny.  They are not to blame for my anorexia. 

When I look at photos of myself back then, I am horrified at how thin I was.  I looked awful, not beautiful.  I looked like I had some sort of disease.  I did, anorexia is a disease.  It is not a choice, it is not normal, and it can kill you.  Why didn’t anyone notice I was starving myself?  Well, I was very good at pretending to eat.  And my parents were pretty busy living their own lives.  I ate breakfast alone, and I literally took two bites of cereal and threw the rest away.  I often skipped lunch, unless my best friend could convince me to eat something.  She knew something was wrong, she was worried about me.  I did eat an almost normal dinner, because my parents were watching.  They were firm believers in family dinner time.  But I got really good at pushing food around on my plate, hiding food in my napkin or my pocket, and just pretending to eat. 

I think that I sort of wanted someone to notice, to tell me to stop starving myself.  But no one did.  In fact, I got a lot of positive feedback for being so thin.  Other girls were jealous.  And my mother made me beautiful clothes, elaborate things like prom dresses.  She dressed me like a Barbie doll.  When I got to a normal weight, she pretty much stopped sewing things for me.  I guess it wasn’t any fun to dress me when I didn’t look like a mannequin any more.  I suppose it just goes to show that fashionable clothes are made for unnaturally skinny people, not for normal-sized folks. 

It is very odd to me that my current state of obesity inspires total strangers to tell me to eat less.  It makes friends and co-workers tell me about this great new diet.  It makes my mother give me diet books for Christmas.  But why didn’t my pathological skinniness make people speak up?  Did they, like me, believe girls should look like Barbie dolls?  (I admit, I’ve never had Barbie’s breasts.  But then, again, who does?)

Notice Barbie's shrinking swimwear!

Future topic:  how did I claw my way up from self starvation to fat acceptance?