Submitted by megan on Sun, 09/13/2009 - 19:25
When I reach a benchmark in my weight loss and get all excited and proud, or when someone compliments me on how good I look now and I get a little self-esteem-boosting thrill, it's hard not to feel like a traitor to my feminist roots, and to the fat women who fought so hard to liberate me from the rigid and narrow social constructs of female beauty.
I've written about my weight issues time and time again, so I won't bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say that my relationship to my body is about as complex as any other woman's.
Last month, I reviewed a book for Herizons called Purge: Rehab Diaries, a memoir about a woman with an eating disorder who spends three months as an inpatient trying to get well. Part of her reason for writing it was to give other people with eating disorders hope.
I really enjoyed the book, but hope? Eesh. I put that book down with a whole bunch of old unhealthy habits and thought patterns triggered.
Not that I've ever had an eating disorder, and believe me, I was checked. When you show up in a psychologist's office with all your bones poking out, they are on those bones like flies on shit.
It's true that my food intake was severely restricted, but it wasn't a conscious decision. I wasn't trying to keep myself under about 700 calories a day, I just couldn't make my body swallow enough to get past that. What made me plain ol' depressed rather than eating disordered was mainly that I had a very accurate view of how thin I was and just how big a problem it was.
And this part, I've said before, but I think it bears repeating: I don't think other women had a very accurate view of how thin I was.
My family did. They were horrified and worried sick. So much so that even now, just last weekend, my mom eyed me and said "You've lost some weight, you know?" That furrow between her eyebrows.
But other women? I'm sure that some thought the weight loss didn't suit me, I can't say. What I can say is that I got one hell of a lot of compliments on being able to lose weight, so many jealous comments telling me how lucky I was. From acquaintances, from co-workers, from strangers.
It was like not eating. I knew the comments and their self-esteem-boosting thrills were bad for me, hit home in a way that was bolstering crazy unhealthy behaviour. But I found it impossible not to store them up at the same time. To be satisfied that I was this one thing that people wanted at the same time that most of the rest of my life was an utter shambles.
When I started gaining weight again, I did not get one single compliment or any comments on how lucky I was to have some padding. Not. One.
It still infuriates me.
So this has all been on my mind lately, after Purge, after being reminded of how easy it is to get so fucked up, how much cultural support there is for that particular brand of fucked-up-edness. After spending a few days unconsciously limiting my caloric intake, after a few days of consciously not.
In the Change Room of R&W
I try on the 6s and the 4s I've brought in. They don't fit quite right. The nice sales girl gets me a 2. Parts of it fit, parts of it don't. In my underwear, I stick my head out of the change room and ask the nice sales girl can she please go get me a 0, just to check.
I turn around to face the mirror.
First thing my mind says: "How did your inner thighs get so fat? When did you get cellu-"
Second: "Shut. The fuck. Up. We just asked for a zero, jackass. You will go home and you will get on the scale and you will see that you are pretty much the same weight as you were last week."
Johns writes in Purge that fat is a feeling, and oh, is it ever. She writes that it is "code for feeling scared, angry, ashamed, hurt and sad all in one." Fat is the container in which we store all the derision aimed at us, our imperfect and ungainly bodies; the hatred sometimes too, the violence we are almost always looking out for. It is what spills off the shelf onto us when our defenses are down.
Third: "Not this. Not on my watch."
This vigilance, it is sometimes exhausting.
Comments
8 comments postedWeight issues suck. I've got three little sisters, all of whom are beautiful and insanely intelligent women, and all of them have body image... difficulties. Back in early high school two of them became convinced they were too heavy, and inevitably grew into the image they had of themselves. My youngest basically starved herself through high school because she was so frightened of ending up round like her mom.
I'm starting to think there must be some genetic component to eating disorders, surely it can't be entirely cultural. Obviously there's genetics involved with things like body dysmorphic disorder, but just the general way people (girls) attack each other over weight seems like it would be driven by more than just cultural factors. Like the way little boys will beat the shit out of each other with sticks, then isolate and alienate based on size and strength and ability to get along inside the group.
Weird thing is, I was targeted by three girls in my early high school years. They had me convinced for years and years that I was grossly overweight, but when I look at photos of myself from that time I'm basically carrying five pounds of babyfat.
Anyway... issues suck weight. Or something.
Your comments about other women's perceptions really struck me, as I lost some weight very quickly some years ago (like 5 to 10 lb within a month), and when I told about 12 people that I was losing weight, 10 of them said "oh, that's great." I'm quite sure most or all of them were women. Luckily my mom was not one of them - she instantly asked what was wrong - the other friend furrowed her brow and asked "Did you *want* to be losing weight?" The thought that I might be confiding this piece of information because I was concerned about the weight loss seemed not to enter the heads of ten people. Because they were used to such announcements being proud ones, and they didn't stop to think about the already-slim body shape of the person announcing it? Because they thought I looked better without that weight? I still haven't figured it out. It still bothers me when I think about it.
Gabriel: There probably is some genetic component - there is with depression and addiction, so it would make sense. But yeah, weight sucks issues.
Sam: I think part of it, yeah, is just that we're so used to losing weight being automatically a great thing. It makes sense, I guess, considering our current cultural mores, but it's too bad.
Mom got this audio book out for me called "buyology". In it the author describes something called "mirror neurons" which are responsible for a good portion of the reason we buy a particular thing or even act a particular way. It has been shown through MRI that seeing cigarette warning labels actually trigger the area of the brain that controls nicotine cravings.
I'm starting to learn that the "ideal" body image is being pressed on us at an early age. Immy got a pack of playing cards from a friends birthday party recently. They have Tinkerbell and all her friends "Posing Out" and in a few cases rather suggestively. And they are all drawn like Barbie. So I've hidden the cards. Which, in the grand scheme, is like taking a cup of water out of the ocean to change the level. What else can I do?
It is an ocean indeed. I think the only thing you can really do is expose her to women who are interesting and successful for stuff that has little or nothing to do with how they look, which in our culture is tantamount to how much they weigh.
Hey Megan,
I think they've changed how they diagnosis ED and not being able to swallow counts. The anxiety that's present to have to make it so you can't swallow is under that umbrella now. I see a lot of people with this issue in the hospital and I'm no doctor, but I do see that symptom and those people are in the ED unit. It may be worth checking again?
Thanks for sharing about this issue.
Huh. Wow.
I don't have it now, thank christ, and hope it won't ever come back, but I will keep that in mind if it does.
Thanks for letting me know!
My weight fluctuates slightly over period of months. It all depends if I am eating a lot of junk food or am in a phase where I eat better and am more active. Whenever I loose weight (5 pounds or so) people always comment on it. I can see it in their eyes that this is meant as a compliment. I always refuse to say thank you. I usually just agree that yes I have lost weight and then change the subject...and they always seem a little dissappointed.
Post new comment