The Hungry Mirror

by Lisa de Nikolits

  Screw Thin Shots, and screw the newsmagazines of the world for not taking the time to ask the right questions.

  I march to the subway, raging, and hungry.

  Beyond the birthday

  IT COMES AND GOES, MY BIRTHDAY, and I don’t get fat. In fact, I seem to get some kind of weird control and even manage to drop a couple of pounds.

  The feeling of control is a bit alarming because it is usually the herald of a major binge of some kind. But maybe I feel better and more in control because everybody else seems to use my birthday as an excuse to binge. Even Meg has been pigging out largely.

  Mathew lets me down in a big way on my birthday. He buys me expensive old lady clip-on earrings – large golden flowery things with a pearl in the middle. They are so far from my style that I don’t know what to say. So, I ask, in a kind of strangled voice, is there a card? He says no, sorry, he hadn’t had time.

  I wonder if his secretary has bought my gift.

  So, on my birthday, I go to bed and cry all day. I cancel our dinner reservations and I don’t want to talk to anybody. My mother phones and he tells her I am a bit miserable.

  I am glad my birthday is on a Saturday and no one can see me cry. The next day I go to a mall and sit in a coffee shop and read books on yoga.

  On Monday, Colleen, our new sales girl, finally arrives. She is, as the term goes, “big-boned,” but she has the most beautiful long shapely legs. I think she has a stunning figure from top to toe until the day she wears a form-fitting outfit and I see she is thick-waisted, boxy-bottomed, and big-hipped. I immediately wonder if I too have some dreadful faux pas trousers like Colleen’s, trousers that highlight all my weaknesses in one fell swoop. I thank God for my floaty disguises.

  Colleen, I quickly realize, is just as obsessed as I am about food and weight. She knows the fat and calorie counts to every single item of food that exists. She is different from me though in that she spends hours and hours in the gym but she has to, because she likes her wine. So, she drinks, adds the numbers, and then works them off.

  Also, she has an appetite for unthinkable food. She eats fried chicken and baked potatoes covered in sour cream accompanied by large glasses of white wine. So she has to go to gym while I just eat less and less. And less and less it seems.

  In the elevator, on the way back up to our office, Colleen is bemoaning the lunch she has just eaten.

  “We can do a cleanse next week,” I tell her. “We’ll do only fruit and herbal tea.”

  “I want to join you,” Brit says, “but it can only be after the long weekend because I am having a binge with Cecile.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Well, we get a whole lot of movies and then we buy all the food we really love. Popcorn, chips, cake, wine, chocolates, sweets, pies, pizza, pastry, and whatever else we want. Then we sit and eat it all while we watch our DVDs. We do feel a bit sick the next day but it’s fun at the time.”

  I am speechless with horror. I can hardly look at her.

  I mean, that might be our collective fantasy, but who really does it? Admittedly I have a small binge party of my own planned for when Mathew goes away, but I am going to do it alone. And I am not going to eat nearly as much as that and most importantly, I am not going to keep any of it down. I am taken aback by Brit’s admission. It seems so gluttonous, so wrong.

  She deserves to be much fatter than she is, I think viciously. You’re not allowed to do things like that and still feel entitled to be thin. It’s not fair.

  I guess a large part of me is deeply envious of a friend-accompanied, sanctioned binge, complete with movies.

  And, she won’t have to go through the horrible discomfort of the purge; getting sick like that really hurts, even if one is as practiced and prepared as I am. I lose all kind of feeling and taste for hours afterwards. My tongue feels like it is burnt and swollen. My throat hurts. My stomach feels bruised and punished and tender. My eyes are swollen nearly shut, and sometimes I even burst blood vessels in them. My face gets all puffy and blotchy, and my whole body feels exhausted. My fingers feel thick and sticky, and are covered with little cuts and sores that sting. But more than anything I hate the smell.

  And the shame, to witness my betrayal in such a debased way. To look in the mirror and see my truest, fear-filled, ugly self looking back. Nothing to be proud of let me tell you. Every careful achievement obliterated. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most disgusting of them all?

  Then you pick up the pieces and start again.

  “But you cleanse all the time anyway,” Colleen interrupts my thoughts. “It’s not like you would have to do anything differently.”

  She is right. My mission is to eat purely, cleanly, and minimally all the time and I think I might be winning the war.

  I read somewhere that Faye Dunaway only ate fruit and vegetables, never white flour, or oil or fats. Audrey Hepburn admitted thinking she was ugly and she accepted that she would have to be hungry for most of her life. So who do I think I am that it should be easier for me? If they had to suffer to be beautiful, then it is reality.

  My father says it’s okay if your weight yo-yo’s up and down. He says at least it shows you are trying. But if you just stay fat, then you have admitted defeat and you are never allowed to do that. Never surrender, never say die. Act like a lady, look like a lady, eat like a lady.

  Be nice like a lady. Be nice and thin.

  I am still reading Women Who Run With the Wolves. I sneak pages at night when Mathew is in his study. Its unlikely he’ll notice what I am reading but I am careful because I don’t want him to catch wind that I may be resorting to anything that could be considered “self-help” as this would label me, in my mind, weak and incapable of solving my own problems.

  So, all senses tuned for movement in the hallway, I lie tucked up in bed and read about a malignant kind of niceness that puts a woman in a position of grinning and bowing so that others will be nice to her, support her, not betray her.

  I feel shamed when I read this. I know I do this; smile and court the outside world, faking pleasantries and false enthusiasms.

  Lost in thought, I have forgotten to listen for Mathew and I am startled when he pokes his head around the bedroom door. I slam the book down and cover it with my hands.

  “Tea?” he asks and I smile.

  “No, I am fine,” I say and he leaves. I return to the book and further discover that my camouflage of feigned niceness does not, as I have tried to tell myself in the past, make me a better person than your average Joe, but rather, is evidence that I have relinquished my main source of power; that of speaking candidly on my own behalf.

  That makes me laugh out loud. Right, like I am ever going to say what I really think. We all know from experience what happens then. My father tells me I can be far too aggressive; both he and my mother are in agreement about that.

  “We know how you can be,” they have repeated over the years. “It’s not really what you say but how you say it.”

  What I say, how I say it, how I look. No wonder I need this camouflage. The situation is dire; it is called survival. And, because the real me is not a good fit with the world, I have to carve it, starve it, stick a smile on its face, and make it step out, right foot forward, all systems on high alert for success versus failure.

  Fat Janet is getting bigger and bigger and she tells me it’s because her job is terrible over at their magazine, even worse than ours. Kenneth tells me they want to make Fat Janet my assistant and she even asks me too but I say no thanks, I can do it all myself. It would be too much for me, to have to listen to her talk all day. I like her a lot but she never shuts up.

  Thin Lisa, the Miss World Contender Number One, fun-seeker extraordinaire, says she’s so stressed she can’t keep anything down. She eats, she says, and up it comes. She is getting thinner and thinner while Fat Janet is getting fatter and fatter. I am Fat Janet you see, not Thin Lisa and that’s why I can never let down my guard.

  I mu
st be vigilant at all times.

  The myth of Hollywood women

  “I WANT TO READ SOMETHING to you,” Brit says, and as always with Brit, I have no idea what is coming.

  “‘Wear the clothes you like not the ones that fit you. You are ashamed to take off your jacket because of your obesity? Get rid of extra inches on your waist once and forever. Being even a little overweight today can be extremely difficult and is embarrassing for so many people. Today’s society expects men and women to look lean, toned, and hard at all times. Tough standards to live up to! And mostly unrealistic. However, steady weight loss and improved self-image are not unrealistic, at all! In fact anyone can do it, quite easily, including you!’”

  “I am reading my junk email,” she explains. “One of my characters in my screenplay is going to go on this rant where she says a bunch of this kind of stuff in one long monologue.”

  “I wonder if those ads are written so badly on purpose, to attract an unintelligent demographic?” I say.

  Brit shrugs, uninterested in my target market observations.

  “I wonder if this one has any merit,” she says. “This product I mean. Listen. ‘IncrediTrim,’ trademarked mind you, ‘is an amazing new product aimed at helping men and women of any age and size lose weight and rapidly tone their bodies. IncrediTrim has been called a ‘miracle herb’ on such respected media outlets as CNN, OPRAH WINFREY, ABC NEWS, 20/20, and many, many others! It has already helped millions of overweight people shed pound after pound of unwanted extra weight. Why not add yourself to the growing number of people benefiting from this amazing product!’”

  “I can always tell when there’s an exclamation point when you read to me,” I tell her, “because you grin at me, raise your eyebrows, and your voice goes all high. But please Brit, you can’t be seriously thinking of trying that?”

  “Well, Michelle said her husband said she looks like a goddess, Jennifer from Tuscon, Arizona, lost thirty pounds in three months, and Harry D. from California shed twenty pounds, has new enthusiasm for life, and a special lady friend.”

  “Most likely a blow-up doll that came with the pills,” I comment and Brit laughs.

  “I was only joking,” she says, “about trying it. Anyway, you must never reply to spam because then they know you exist and you have to get a whole new identity. But I might check out the health food stores, see if they stock it.”

  “Only go into a health food store if you are ready to drop a couple of hundred dollars,” I say. “They’ve got it all, let me tell you. But not much of it is healthy or cheap. But all of it is guaranteed to make you thin.”

  I decide to share an observation with Brit, one that has been bothering me for some time.

  “Hey Brit,” I say, “I want to run a theory by you. Well, not so much a theory as an observation.”

  “Let her rip,” Brit says cheerfully, as she lines up a dozen or so bottles of nail varnish.

  “Women in movies never eat. Have you noticed that?” I say. I want to talk to her so badly but I am anxious I’ll reveal too much about myself.

  But I take a chance and continue. “I have always wondered whether it’s a decision made for them by the director or if it’s their own choice. I mean, we all know actresses starve themselves, unless they are bingeing in private. And if they are bingeing, eventually it becomes common knowledge and we all get to exclaim in delight at how fat and weak they really are. And without fail, shortly after news of their chicken-wing pigouts hits the tabloids, the ones who have gained weight and fallen off the thin-wagon are taken off to be starved, injected, and pummelled. All their fat gets sucked out. They are punished for hours in gyms, they are left to sweat in saunas, they are fed pills and protein shakes instead of food. Dehydrated and emaciated, they are decked out in this season’s finery and their publicists haul them out to be displayed. Barely able to stand, they are supported by corsets and spandex and they lean heavily on the arms of their assistants or fake dates who finally let go of them so that like grownup babies they can take tentative, tiny, sucked-in steps up the red carpet while we all admire in wonder and exclaim, wow, why can’t I look like that?”

  Brit is laughing. “Can I borrow that for my screenplay?” she asks. “Pretty much sums it up. I don’t like this colour,” she waves a hand at me. “Do you have any nail polish remover?”

  I tell her I don’t.

  “I’m going to ask the Namaste girls,” she says. “Hold that thought. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  She leaves and I decide I won’t say anything else when she comes back, it is too risky. But the evidence is there, telling us not to eat. I have seen it while watching my hundreds of lonely movies. I know I am right. Directors put ignored food in front of women thereby acknowledging that the need to eat exists, and yet the director sends a clear message: pretend you eat but don’t ever really eat. This isn’t even about fat; it is about eating.

  Why are we supposed to not eat? Why is eating the crime of the century? Is it a sign of aristocracy or supremacy to not eat? Do we live in an age where denial, sacrifice, and abstinence are considered good things? Perhaps that is nothing new but why is lean and starved the ultimate look? What nihilistic tendencies are we buying into?

  I guess it’s like Swarovski crystal – the more fragile and breakable it is, the more value it has. And, if it’s unbearably breakable, while also being inhumanly strong, well, it’s the most valuable of all, because it defies reality and it transcends the physical.

  Thin transcends; it is the prism through which God’s light can shine because nothing can shine through concrete or fat. That’s not my theory, by the way, but one the old saints and martyrs bought into years ago. So even God loves a thin person? We fatties are abandoned, even by God?

  We live in a time when we have so much in the way of careers and possessions and creative outlets. And yet, fragile and insubstantial is the look we are supposed to crave?

  I’ve been brainwashed and I have to say, they’ve done a good job. I’m bound and chained. And while I can see my shackles for the evil they are, I fear that without their support I will fall. Will I be able to stand if I am not trussed?

  Though I acknowledge that my concerns are belittling to my entire self, I cannot help but bow to my captors. Like Patty Hearst, I want them to like me. I don’t want to see myself as a victim, so I need to be accepted by my captors as one of their own. If I could just beat them at their own game by getting thinner than thin … but I can’t beat them, no one can. No one can win except by genuinely refusing to play, by staring the game down for the sham that it is.

  A high percentage of women don’t end up having eating disorders and I wonder how they escape. It’s not like they are out of the line of media fire, so they must have some kind of immunity – the virus invades but gets spat out. Why does it take hold for some of us and not others? Maybe it has got to do with a need for meaning? Something that gives us a purpose in a purposeless world?

  I wonder, is dieting the new God? I can’t help myself. I simply have to run this past Brit. She has returned and is repainting her nails.

  “So, here’s the thing,” I say. “We live in a society where consumption fills the void. I spend, therefore I am. Somewhere in all of this getting, this must-having, we have lost our traditions, our religion. Think about it. The church doesn’t mean the same thing as it once did, Christmas has been watered down to the Festive Season, and Easter is only about bunnies and chocolate. Things only count when they are marketing spendfests, like Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day, and the real meaning behind them is gone, the genuine do-it-all-for-God ethos has gone.”

  I pause.

  “Carry on,” she says, blowing on her fingertips.

  “So … we’ve lost sight of God. We can’t instinctively turn to the Creator of heaven and earth like we once did, like we were once expected to. Back in the old days, religion was all there was, pumped through the channels of law and church. It was all God, God, God. Now that’s been superseded
and what may I ask, will save you now? What will save you from loneliness? Despair? What will save you from those terrible dark nights when you are home all alone? What will save you from financial ruin? What will save you from being a failure?”

  I get out from behind my desk and pace the room, pretending to be a fire and brimstone preacher.

  “I’ll tell you what can save you, sister,” I point a pencil at her. “I’ll tell you the secret to real long-lasting happiness, all you have to know is what to pray for and who to pray to. Pray to the diet gods of the world to help shed the weight. Oh, help me Jenny Craig! Help me Weight Watchers! Help me all of you, every diet-focused one of you! Because if I can only drop these pounds girl, the kingdom of heaven will be mine. I’ll be loved, feted, courted, admired, emulated…”

  “Postulated, promulgated, elongated…” Brit is laughing, as am I.

  “But Brit, seriously,” I say, “think about it. I am telling you, dieting, gaining, losing, worrying, wanting, trying, failing, it’s the new religion. And the pot of gold is happiness forever, not in the afterlife because who cares about that, but in the here and now. This whole living in the moment thing, they’ve turned it sideways, it’s all about how you look in the moment, how thin you are in the moment, which all links to how successful you are in the moment. Nothing matters except the now, the superficial, materialistic now.”

  “I see,” Brit says. “You’re right. It’s like, who cares about my soul long term? I don’t. I just want to be happy now and the promise is if I am thin, then I will be happy.”

  “Exactly. And no one wants to admit that the promised land of thin is just a myth. No one wants to hear that. No one wants their dreams taken away because then what?”