I'm Fine...And Other Lies

by Whitney Cummings

  Turns out my eating disorder was also about having incredibly low self-esteem, which may not be a surprise to you guys, but for me it was straight-up breaking news. When I first heard that I had low self-esteem, I was flabbergasted. Shocked, I tell you. Downright stunned. Everyone always told me I was so “strong” and “confident.” I found out that many people, including myself, conflate being loud and talking a lot with having self-esteem. However, I’ve learned that the loudness of your voice is not an indicator of your feelings of self-worth. In my case, the two are actually antithetical: The louder I’m talking, the less faith I have that someone is actually listening. I became loud because as a kid I didn’t feel heard, so I developed the habit of overcompensating and talking as if I’m always hailing a taxi. Once Vera explained this to me, it all made a lot of sense, given the paradigm I was living by was that my external appearance was more valuable than my health. Of course this assumes anyone even finds an emaciated girl with thinning hair attractive, which I certainly don’t. My disease distorted my reality to the point that I lost the plot on why I was even starving myself in the first place. It went from a logical way to get attention as a kid to a mindless habit to an insidious disease that cost me a lot in dental bills and God knows how much in bone density.

  Vera had me do some “inner child work.” I heard people talk about their inner child, but to me it sounded creepy and perverted. I came to therapy to learn how to act like an adult, so why are we talking about being children? This sounds—I don’t know—kinda childish? I learned the key to being an adult may just be honoring the young part of yourself—your basic emotional needs, insecurities, and the mental conditioning that was done at a young age. Through connecting to your inner child, which you can call whatever you want if inner child weirds you out: your source, your gut, your inner fetus . . . I really don’t care. Through this connection you honor the defense mechanisms you developed as a kid in order to survive your family system and start to deactivate them. Essentially, you start to parent yourself the way you wished you had been parented: with patience, sensitivity, forgiveness, and butter.

  Vera gave me an exercise to do where you write to your inner child and ask him/her a question. If you’re struggling for an answer to something or if you aren’t sure about what to do in a situation, you write out a question in your dominant hand (you) and write the response with your nondominant hand (your inner child). Initially I thought the whole idea was ridiculous and probably for narcissistic pedophiles. I hardly respond to e-mails, so how was I going to make time to sit down and write a letter to some needy imaginary kid?

  I resisted doing this exercise for a very long time, but one day I was overwhelmed with anxiety and frustration and was all out of ideas on how to soothe myself. Eating wasn’t working, not eating wasn’t working, texting guys wasn’t working, working wasn’t working. Weed wasn’t even working, so you know it was bad.

  I figured if I did the stupid exercise, I could at least end up writing some jokes about how ridiculous the whole thing was. I wrote a couple questions out with my right hand. The first one was pretty passive-aggressive: “What do you want to eat?” I switched to my left hand as Vera instructed me to do. Look, I’m not big on ruminating about the metaphysical because I’m still trying to figure out the physical, but something I can only describe as magical happened akin to what people are apparently experiencing when they use a Ouija board: A force flowed through my left hand and it started moving the pen across the page. My left hand scribbled “peanut butter smiles.”

  I knew it! Ridiculous and stupid. This whole thing was a pointless sham.

  I stared at the oblique, strange handwriting. It looked like the writing of a child who was trying to get down a grocery list during an earthquake. As I started knocking stand-up material around in my head, suddenly I got a pang in my stomach and my chest got warm. My eyes welled up. I suddenly remembered that when I was a kid, my dad and I used to spread peanut butter on pieces of bread and draw smiley faces in the peanut butter. Then we’d fill the smiles and eyes with honey from one of those honey bear squeeze jars that always has a shockingly sticky cap. I had completely forgotten about this until now, but clearly it was at the top of my subconscious mind. This little girl was right there, so present in me, and I had been ignoring her this whole time. The only thing that ended up being funny about the situation was that I was using a Hustler store pen, which felt very lascivious, so from then on, I used colored pencils when I did the exercise.

  It’s above my pay grade to explain why tapping into the five-year-old version of yourself actually makes you act more like an adult, but it’s been a game changer for me. Since developing a connection with my inner child, I keep a photo of myself at five years old on my phone in a folder called “get better.” In that folder I have all sorts of meditations and screen grabs of things that basically remind me to stop being crazy. Honestly, I’m way more afraid of hackers getting this folder than my nude photos, given it’s chock-full of screen-grabbed inspirational quotes like “don’t ask for a light load, ask for a strong back.” When I’m tempted to abuse myself, criticize myself, or date a stupid idiot who has a tinted phone screen, I go into the folder, look at the photo of myself as a kid, and try to make the decision that’s best for Child Whitney, since Adult Whitney always seems to go for the most masochistic, expensive, and intestine-ravaging choice.

  Since I’ve nurtured my relationship with Child Whitney my life looks very different. I treat myself with respect, I have more dignity, I eat at a table instead of in the car, I wear bras without wires in them, and my house is essentially a dog kennel. The more mature I get, the more my child runs the show. I eat when I’m hungry and I buy food that actually comes from the dirt, not from some factory in China. If I can’t pronounce all the ingredients, I try not to put it in my mouth, but if I do, I don’t beat myself up either because that would be counterproductive. I wouldn’t yell at a child if she ate something indulgent every now and then, so I don’t yell at myself if I’m craving something that isn’t kale. A doctor once told me that stressing about eating something unhealthy releases cortisol in the brain, which can actually be just as bad for you if not worse than the chemicals in whatever food you’re eating. If you’re stuck in an airport and your only options are neon-yellow pizzas or candy from Hudson News, you might as well eat the crap and enjoy it so you’re at least not compounding the damage by shaming yourself. I mean, please don’t eat neon food every day, and in general don’t take nutrition advice from a comedian.

  Coming to terms with the fact that my mind is being steered by a five-year-old peanut butter addict has also helped me to be more patient with other people’s behavior. When someone’s acting a fool, I remind myself what Vera says: “We’re all five.” If someone is angry, I respond the way I would respond to a child having a tantrum: “Do you want something to eat? Do you want to lie down for a minute?” Sometimes this makes people angrier because they think I’m mocking or patronizing them, but for the most part they’re, like, “Yeah, I’d love something to eat, actually.” In my experience, about half of all conflicts are a result of low blood sugar. You’re mad at someone? Have a banana. I’ve never met a piece of phallic fruit that couldn’t fix petulance.

  Looking back on my war with food, I know now that with all my eating demons, I wanted my body to have the equilibrium on the outside I didn’t know how to attain on the inside. Having grown up learning that appearance was everything, I thought if I was perfect externally, my internal state might have a shot. Now that my insides are acceptably copacetic most of the time, my outsides are no longer a priority. I accept the limitations of being human and the dysmorphia that comes with living in the time of ubiquitous models, pervasive Photoshop, and Cate Blanchett’s face.

  I hope, if anything, in addition to humiliating myself with this chapter, I can maybe make a dent in removing the stigma of body dysmorphia. Usually when a girl is too thin, works out a lot, or wears
too much makeup, we tend to roll our eyes and label her as shallow, dumb, or narcissistic. And look, she may be those things, but in my experience, usually that kind of behavior is coming from a place of tremendous pain and deep insecurity. When I’m feeling judgmental about other people’s choices, it helps to remember that the engine of these behaviors can be a deep fear and disconnection from oneself. I try to remember that nobody wants to have an eating disorder; nobody aspires to that. Nobody wants to hate her own body. Nobody wants to feel like they can’t leave the house without makeup. I didn’t write “reading nutrition information on boxes for half an hour a day” on my vision board. It wasn’t my dream in life to spend half of it obsessing over how many calories are in fuckin’ mangoes.

  Today, when things get hectic in my life and I feel like I’m losing control, my brain still wants to get weird with food. If my flight is delayed by three hours, I sometimes think it’s a good idea to eat only pretzels at the airport instead of an actual lunch. If my schedule is insanely packed, I find myself thinking it’s a good idea to drink nothing but coffee and chew gum all day. But I can usually course-correct pretty quickly because I now know how to prioritize that little girl who just wants to be loved and fed. If I just keep treating myself as if I’m parenting a five-year-old, what I should be doing becomes very clear: I have to eat fat, drink water, and avoid reading mean Twitter @replies.

  If you glean nothing else from this chapter, the other good news about my overcoming an eating disorder and putting some weight on is that it makes you look about ten years younger. People keep asking me if I’ve gotten a facelift and I’m, like, “Nope, just got that extra side of guac.” If it takes vanity to cure your insecurity, so be it.

  So, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m completely fixed forever, but for the most part I’m fine, you guys.

  THE BOOBS CHAPTER

  As a kid, I don’t remember being much into toys, but I do remember seeing my mom’s bras around the house, which were always way more fun for me to play with than My Little Ponys. That said, there was something very morose about these bras. They had giant wires and shiny stretchy lace fabric that went all the way up to the shoulder and not one, not two, but three clasps in the back. It looked less like a bra and more like a harness used for bungee jumping. I was always desperate to make the adults in the house laugh, so I used to put Mom’s bras on and dance around. I’m now ashamed at how juvenile and corny that bit was, but for a six-year-old, it was pretty cutting-edge.

  My education about breasts was an episode of Who’s the Boss? where Tony Danza had to buy Alyssa Milano a bra. God, I miss the days when a sitcom title could be a rhetorical question. Anyway, the first breasts I ever saw in person that weren’t mine belonged to Barbie. So when later I first saw my mom’s boobs, I was horrified by how mushy and pendulous they were and that they had two giant moles on them. I later found out these “moles” were nipples and Barbie was the deformed gimp—not my mother. But as I said earlier, I was never too into Barbie. I didn’t even enjoy putting Barbies in microwaves because the aftermath always made my Hot Pockets taste like synthetic chemical-y plastic, and I preferred them to taste like synthetic chemical-y meat and cheese. I hated Barbie’s hard nubby boobs. They seemed so stoic and aloof. They were impossible to play with. They were like the mean girls in middle school who refused to hang out with you. I was more of a Rainbow Brite kind of kid anyway. She was cute but not distractingly sexual. And she had already achieved my dream of having a talking horse.

  In terms of other kinds of entertainment, we weren’t a big Disney family. I remember watching The Little Mermaid and Snow White and being very underwhelmed by the whole princess rigmarole. They all seemed whiny and victimish to me, always waiting around to be saved by a handsome white blond guy Hitler would have jerked off to. The princesses always needed men to rescue them even though they seemed to be perfectly fine in their fancy castles and cottages. I felt like they had amazing lives and fake problems. Snow White was living the ultimate fantasy with seven hilarious dwarves who were obsessed with her, but she let some lame Ken doll come along and ruin it. As far as I was concerned she was an ingrate.

  I didn’t watch a ton of cartoons, but in retrospect, it’s clear that I gravitated toward the more androgynous characters. I loved the Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and my all-time favorite, albeit short-lived, Animaniacs. Betty Boop always annoyed me: her over-the-top femininity felt forced and desperate. Maybe I was projecting because I myself felt forced and desperate to be feminine. Or maybe I was just pissed because I secretly wanted to be her. Despite her obvious charms, Betty Boop wasn’t for me. Even as a kid I knew there was something dark about a sexy cartoon. To this day I don’t understand why animators would make people want to have intercourse with pixels. That said, I had a pretty serious fascination with Jessica Rabbit. She was more self-possessed, with ample side-eye and an attitude like she would cut a bitch if they acted a fool. Even though her ankles were drawn in a way that made them look broken from her high heels, I saw her as powerful instead of just a sex object. She somehow exuded control of her objectification, even though I’ll bet she was being drawn on a piece of paper by a man who was into that weird porn where people have sex through a pizza.

  I also liked that Jessica Rabbit was a grown woman, unlike Boop, who infantilized herself with impish sounds and childish mannerisms. Conversely, Jessica Rabbit seemed very bored of sex. Regardless of my psychoanalysis of them, they inculcated me with one very crucial fact: Boobs mattered. Every story they were in was about men getting hit by cars or their jaws dropping when they walked by, anything to get a glimpse of their impossibly perky breasts. Men were literally dying to see them. My hippocampus took note.

  My theory that boobs were the ticket to happiness was confirmed when my dad married his third (I think) wife when I was (I think) ten. I was not thrilled when my dad started bringing his new girlfriend around the house, but I was fascinated by her ethos and body. She drove a tomato-red Mercedes-Benz 450 convertible. I had to Google the model just now, so don’t think I all of a sudden know about cars. I don’t. But this one is burned into my memory because of how sexy it was. It’s the one that has a cherubic front and an almost cartoonish body, just like hers. Her waist was tiny and she was impossibly tan. Not that you would have noticed any of this, given how distractingly bulbous her breasts were. She was part pretty alien, part Dolly Parton. But as a kid, I saw her as a real live Jessica Rabbit.

  Since I basically thought she was my cartoon hero in the flesh, let’s just call her Jessica. Jessica was the most confident woman I had ever met. At the time I didn’t understand the concept of having confidence, I just thought she was the bitch trying to replace my mom and ruin my life. By the time Jessica came around, my older sister had started developing boobs. My sister is beautiful and blond, so between her, Jessica, and my mom, I was constantly surrounded by buxom blond women who got a lot of attention. Not sure if my genetics had just taken a couple years off or if my pituitary gland had mono, because I was flat-chested to the point of a possible inversion. I also had a knee condition that made me limp and unable to cross my legs or walk in a ladylike way. Later in life I learned that it’s a pretty common condition called Osgood-Schlatter disease. It’s caused by a growth spurt and probably GMOs or some shit we eat in mass quantity our government refuses to acknowledge or do research on.

  At around nine, I developed a nubby bump poking out from beneath my right kneecap. The universe was being particularly cruel because it looked exactly like that hard nubby Barbie boob I always resented as a child. After all, they do say you become what you hate. Worse than having my nemesis’s chest on my leg was the fact that this bump was filled with nerves, so every time I hit it on something, which was often, I could only find solace by screaming for hours in a fetal position in the school nurse’s office. To boot, it would cause a giant black-and-green bruise, which made it look like I had a moldy knee. I was never able to wear a skir
t or, even more heartbreakingly, a skort. For a couple years I went to a school requiring a uniform that involved a plaid dress, so I had to wear opaque tights underneath. I looked like a gimpy Wednesday Addams. A slut for symmetry, I developed the personality to match.

  When I was eleven, the shit hit the fan in my nuclear family and my mom sent me to Roanoke, Virginia, to live with two of my aunts. They had all my favorite things: horses, dogs, and boobs. According to some online test where I spat in a tube, I am of Irish-Welsh mutt descent, but strangely my aunts are olive-skinned with perfect teeth, big lips, and even bigger boobs. The more time I spent with them, the more entitled I felt to a body like theirs. I counted the days when my DNA would take the stage and turn me into the kind of girl that cartoon men would get hit by cars just to get a glimpse of.

  Unlike everyone in my family, I went through puberty oddly late. When I was twelve, I remember walking into my bedroom in Roanoke and finding a giant plastic box-shaped bag filled with maxi-pads. These were more like diapers than maxi-pads, the ones that look like an inflated safety vest, only made of layers upon layers of perfumed, bleached cotton with tiny roses emblazoned on them. The maxi-pads had a giant sticker on the bottom so they could attach to your underwear, and when you wore them with tight pants, they augmented your pelvis with a very conspicuous gender-neutral hump, like that weird thong situation sumo wrestlers wear on their undercarriage. I wanted to look like a Barbie, but these made me have the pelvis of a Ken doll.

  I stacked all the pads in my bathroom, placing them one on top of another like I was playing a game of Tetris. The saddest part of the giant Jenga game of maxi-pads I made is that I didn’t even need them yet. The stack sat there for what seemed like forever. I was so ashamed of not having my period yet that I did what any insecure tween who didn’t get enough eye contact as a baby would do: I pretended I did. I peeled off the sticker coating of the pads, attached them to my giant Jockey underwear, and wore the colossal pads every day to the chagrin of my inner thighs, which retaliated with many an angry rash.