The Perfect 10

by Louise Kean

  ‘So, why did you decide to diet?’

  ‘I don’t know really. It just started one day. I was bigger than I’d ever been, and bordering on depressed. And I just decided.’

  ‘Why do you think you stuck to it, this time?’

  ‘I ask myself the same thing. I’d tried before, but it never worked. I think I just found my willpower. It became like a cause or something. My cause. And my cause wasn’t, you know … overseas work in Africa, or … helping the homeless – any of the good causes. It was to be thin. How’s that for shallow?’

  ‘“Cause” is an interesting word: why would you put it like that?’

  ‘Because it suggests … a painful process. What’s that quote: a cause is like champagne and high heels – one must be prepared to suffer for it?’

  ‘And how did it take shape? How did you manage to keep focused? Remind me again how much you decided to lose?’

  ‘Nine stones. I don’t like saying that bit. It makes me feel like a freak.’

  ‘And do you mind me asking how much further you have to go?’

  ‘A little under two stones now.’

  ‘Still that much?’

  ‘I know it seems like a lot. But you haven’t seen me naked.’

  ‘Right.’ My therapist gives a little cough. I have embarrassed him. It’s the kind of reaction my dad would have to a young woman saying that to him. It makes me like him a little more.

  ‘So how do you stay focused?’

  ‘Well, to begin with, in the first couple of months, I don’t know, it was hard. I just stopped myself from eating, somehow. I mean I didn’t stop completely, I just changed what I ate. And the weight started to come off. Then I joined the gym. Nobody really noticed at first. I guess it was when people started to notice that I got really focused. I felt like I was winning.’

  ‘What did people say?’

  ‘It’s not even what they said, it’s how they’d look at me. As I got thinner, well, it’s like silent applause as you walk down the street, or run at the gym. These are things we are told to be proud of. And so I started to feel proud of myself, I suppose.’

  ‘But what about your relationship with food – how did that change?’

  ‘It didn’t really. I was still thinking about food all the time. I am now, as we sit here. I’m thinking about what I’ll eat for lunch, what I ate for breakfast, how long I spent at the gym this morning, which muscles I worked, how many calories I burnt, when I’ll next go to the gym, what I’ll weigh this week, what I weighed last week, what I’ll weigh in a month’s time, what I’ll be able to wear then that I can’t wear now …’ My words trail off in embarrassment. It’s the first time I’ve admitted this to anyone. ‘So I am still obsessed with food. Just in a different way.’

  ‘It sounds as if you find this shaming.’

  I sit up straight. ‘I do. It is, isn’t it? So many people don’t even think about what they eat. Why do I have to be constantly preoccupied with it? Do you know what is horrible – I mean this made me feel like … the lowest of the low. On Sunday, after the “incident” – ten minutes after it had happened, sitting in a police car going down to the station, to make a report on a big thing, a big, big deal that I had been involved in, do you know what was going on in my head? I was calculating the calories I had burnt chasing the Stranger down the alley.’

  ‘How does that – sorry.’

  ‘How does that make me feel? No, it’s fine.’ I can feel the tears in my eyes. I take a deep breath to try to stop myself from crying, but my voice still breaks when I say, ‘It makes me feel like a bad person. Losing weight is all I care about now. I don’t care any more about people, about things. I don’t care about Adrian. I don’t care that he says “you and me”, about me and him, and that is huge! That is what I’ve actually prayed for! I’m not even considering his feelings. Is that all in the past now? Have I become that shallow in a year? I don’t care that I saved that baby …’

  I can’t stop myself crying, and I look down and away from my therapist, anywhere but at his eyes. If I see any kind of sympathy, I’ll lose it.

  ‘Are you scared, Sunny?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t make myself stop now. I’m scared that I am addicted. That it’s taken over me. That it’s out of my control now. I have to have my weekly weigh-in; I have to hear encouraging remarks from near-strangers – the woman who serves me at the tube station, the man in the newsagent’s where I buy my magazines: you’ve lost weight, yes? Lots of weight? It was intentional, yes? I’ve never known approval like it and … what if it goes away?’

  ‘Do you think that other people, other women, might feel like this? Have you considered that it might not be so scary if you realise you are not the only one?’

  ‘But surely this isn’t how everybody else lives, all the thin people, obsessed with themselves?’ My voice raises.

  ‘They might. How do you know?’

  ‘It just doesn’t seem right, to be this self-involved!’

  ‘What if you found out that they all were this self-involved, and that is what life will be like for you from now on? Would that make you stop dieting?’

  ‘No.’ I can barely hear my own voice and my therapist is straining to listen to me. ‘All I can think now is that I want to be thin. I’ve spent my whole life being “less”, being invisible to some men, horribly nastily visible to others, and their snide remarks, and their jeers. And I’ve faced it all on my own. I want somebody to look after me. When I was fat, nobody wanted to look after me.’

  My therapist turns round and reaches on to his desk for a box of tissues that I have never seen before. I am crying so hard that I need to mop my eyes and my cheeks and my nose.

  ‘Sunny, do you feel like you have to be perfect before somebody will love you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not. I know that getting healthy has fucked me up.’

  ‘You’re not fucked up.’ My therapist doesn’t sound strange saying ‘fuck’, which surprises me. Things don’t faze him. Words certainly don’t faze him. My dad would sound bizarre saying that word, or uncomfortable.

  ‘You could stop dieting tomorrow, Sunny. I am sure you are a very healthy weight now. I’m positive that you don’t need to lose another two stone. You could just decide to be healthy, and not to be thin. Anything is possible. It’s all within your control.’ My therapist hands me another tissue, and I blow my nose loudly.

  I look him in the eye, and with some composure say, ‘It won’t end tomorrow. I don’t know where it will end. I am addicted.’

  My therapist’s watch makes its familiar little bleeping noise.

  ‘We can carry on, Sunny, if you want to. I don’t have another session for half an hour. I feel like we’ve had something of a breakthrough. And I feel like we need to talk about this seriously. There are things I can tell you about, when you start feeling out of control, ways of monitoring your own behaviour … It’s called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Breaking cycles of behaviour …’

  I sit up and wipe the last tears away from my eyes. ‘No, I’m fine. I’ll still be here when you get back. I won’t have wasted away by then! I think that’s enough for now.’

  ‘One last thing, to go with all those other things you have to think about. I want you to consider that maybe it’s not that you won’t find anybody who will love you until you are “perfect” in your own eyes. Maybe it’s that you won’t allow yourself to be loved until then.’

  ‘OK, well, I don’t even understand that, but I’ll try.’

  I walk home past Kew Gardens’ wall, looking at the branches of the trees that hang over the sides. They don’t seem to want to break out, they are just curious, wondering what’s going on outside of their little vegetative paradise. They seem to have realised that in their case at least, the grass is always going to be greener on their own side. Cars stream past me, heading towards Richmond, and I remember that I have two dozen boxes of crystal whips waiting to be posted when I get home. It’s mild, and I tie my jumper
around my waist. A white van stuffed with builders sweeps past me and toots its horn, and one of the men – somebody’s husband or father, no doubt – leans out and shouts, ‘Nice tits.’

  I look away. I want to shout ‘Stop it!’ after them. I want to scream, ‘Leave me alone, stop looking!’ I used to be self-conscious when they didn’t toot their horns at me, but at some girl further down the road. Now I get the toots, and the shouts, and I hate it. I don’t need to know that they find me acceptable now. What does it matter? It’s just sex.

  I’m glad my therapist is going away. I don’t think I am ready to go where he wants to take me. The thing is, I already know that nine extra stones must be about more than just flesh – must represent something else, some deeper issue. It is inexplicable that fat cells, just excess body matter, can define a person. But that one word – fat – made me feel so worthless, my entire life.

  But I feel disloyal somehow for making my own life easier, for complying and seemingly agreeing with rules that I still judge to be unfair. And I’ve done it all just to be accepted, just to be let into the clubhouse, instead of standing outside in the cold, yearning for the warmth within, and the glass of brandy, and the cigar, and the slapped backs, and the love, and the respect.

  Sometime last year I chose not only to conform, but to try to be top of the class – not being fat isn’t enough, because thin, and beautiful, is the best! Beautiful wins the big money every time, especially for women. Now I know that soon I’ll have the right body, and I’ll need the right hair, the right tan, the right make-up, the right clothes to go with it. It’s like being offered a trip to the Maldives, when the only place I thought I’d ever get to was Margate. The possibilities are intoxicating. I’m drunk on the promise of being beautiful, and I don’t want to sober up, because I’m tired of fighting. I choose to fit in now, but believe me when I say I hate myself, just a little, for doing it.

  When Anna answers the door the first thing that I notice is that the right side of her hair is dry, and the left side is wet. Her eyes look tired, with creased black bags underneath spitefully dragging the rest of her face down. She looks like the Anna I have known since I was a child, but bloated, her belly and cheeks and thighs pumped full of seawater, as if she drowned in childbirth, but also survived. Her face looks like a balloon that needs some air siphoned out before it pops.

  She wears a maroon tracksuit that she has worn the last three times I have called round. It is simultaneously snug and loose over her newly bulked-up frame. I am wearing skinny jeans, high black boots and a raspberry Fred Perry polo shirt, and a thick black belt with an antique buckle.

  ‘Hi, Sunny, look at you!’ she says with half a tired smile. I hear the baby crying behind her and follow her in. He quietens down as I lean over his cot and widen my eyes. He looks like Anna, with dark hair and dark eyes, beautiful lips.

  ‘He is going to break a thousand hearts,’ I say with a smile.

  ‘I know,’ she says wearily, as if she is already dealing with the fallout of crying teenage girls on the phone and at her front door. She dumps herself on the sofa, resting her head on the cushion, closing her eyes.

  ‘Is Martin still at work?’ I ask, seeing that the clock reads half-past six.

  ‘No, he’s playing football. Lucky for some,’ she says, monotone, with her eyes still closed. She pushes her hands through her hair and feels the wetness on one side. ‘I got halfway through my first attempted blow dry in six weeks, and he woke up,’ she says, to herself more than me.

  I fish into my bag. ‘I brought you some walnuts, and some Green and Black’s Dark – it’s good chocolate, apparently!’ I pass it to her with a conspiratorial grin.

  ‘Great … thanks,’ she says, taking it and tossing it on to the sofa next to her. ‘Not that I should be eating for the next year.’ Anna opens her eyes, and glances down at her belly.

  ‘Oh, Anna, that will all fall off once the breast-feeding kicks in!’ I say it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and she shouldn’t give it a second thought.

  ‘The breast-feeding doesn’t work,’ she says flatly. ‘I can’t do it. We’ve given up. We’re on formula.’

  ‘Oh, well, wait until he’s crawling. You’ll be running around after him, and going to water babies, and pushing the chair down to the park – you’ll be back in your jeans in no time!’ I say.

  ‘Whatever, Sunny,’ and it is cold, as if it were my fault, as if had I had the consideration still to be fat, she wouldn’t feel so bad about herself right now. I see her eyes glaze over with tears, but it is Jacob who starts to cry. I reach into his cot and lift him out, rocking him to and fro as I watch my step amongst the soft toys and play mats and wipes and muslin and nappies on the floor. He stops crying, and I can hear him breathing quietly in my ear. His head smells wonderful, his little fingers curling and uncurling by my cheek.

  ‘But look at what you got,’ I whisper, and stroke Jacob’s head.

  Anna pulls herself together suddenly. ‘I know, of course, it’s true. I can’t imagine even wanting to make time for a manicure or a pedicure now – those things seem so shallow. My life didn’t have any point before. I really couldn’t care less about any of it – shopping, the gym – none of it matters, Sunny, once you’ve had a baby.’

  I smile at her but say nothing, turning my attention instead back to little Jacob, who is trying desperately to support his own neck. He is quiet, looking over my shoulder, around the room.

  ‘Jesus, that’s the first time he’s stopped whimpering all day.’ She pauses. ‘He must fancy you, Sunny.’

  Anna reaches over to the end of the sofa and retrieves a half-empty packet of chocolate Hobnobs. Through a mouthful of biscuit, she offers me the packet. ‘Want one?’ Some crumbs scatter from her lips.

  ‘No, thanks. I’m stuffed; I’ve just eaten,’ I say, and puff out my cheeks.

  ‘What, last month?’ she says, as more biscuit sprays out of her mouth. I look hurt, and she looks embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Sunny, you know I don’t mean it. I just don’t want you to get obsessed. You can have a biscuit, for Christ’s sake. One Hobnob won’t kill you.’

  ‘I just don’t fancy one,’ I say, and pull my head back to check on little Jacob as his head rests on my shoulder. His eyes are closed.

  ‘I think he’s asleep,’ I whisper, and Anna heaves herself up from the sofa, taking the baby from me with expertise, and laying him gently in his cot.

  We both move over to the sofa so as not to wake him.

  ‘So, any men on the go?’ she asks, picking out another Hobnob.

  ‘Kind of.’ I nod and shrug.

  ‘Good for you,’ Anna says as she notices a stain on her trouser leg that looks like tomato and starts to scratch it off. ‘You look great, Sunny, you really do, but don’t lose any more.’ She stops scratching and looks up at me.

  ‘Not much more,’ I say with a smile, trying to sidestep it.

  ‘You’re not meant to be skinny. Hell, I barely even recognise you now!’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it’s not me. It just means I used to eat differently. I just want to be healthy, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, obsessed isn’t healthy. Don’t just be all about the diet. It will get really boring really quickly, and men hate it when women talk about food all the time.’

  Maybe she means to be kind, but she is tired, and her words tumble out clumsily. Or maybe Anna is having trouble not being the most attractive woman in the room right now. Maybe being gorgeous is what has always defined her, in the same way that I let being fat define me. Maybe now we are both scrambling, a little desperately, for some other definition of ourselves, because we aren’t sure who we are if we don’t look a certain way. Maybe now we have to dig a little deeper.

  ‘How about the park next week? We could walk down to the common if the weather’s nice?’ I say, as I pick up my handbag and move into the corridor.

  ‘Lovely,’ she says, and I think I see tears in her eyes again, as she tugs open t
he front door, just as Martin pulls up in his company Audi.

  He waves, I wave, Anna looks away.

  ‘Wow, Sunny! You look great! Still going to the gym, I see. Look at your arms, fantastic tone!’

  ‘Thanks, Martin. Nice to see you,’ I say as I kiss an embarrassed hello. ‘Jacob is looking wonderful, so handsome!’ I speak before he can, I don’t want him to say anything else.

  ‘I know! Just like his father!’ Martin says with a smile and a wink.

  ‘Whoever he is,’ Anna says evenly, with a sarcastic smile in Martin’s direction. But he ignores it.

  ‘I know, isn’t he great, so big and strong. Between them they are eating me out of house and home!’ He gestures towards Anna and laughs, and I don’t say anything. ‘Seriously, Sunny, can’t you drag my wife along to a few of your classes, give her some of what you’re having?’ He laughs heartily again, but then the baby starts to cry, and he waves a quick goodbye before moving past Anna and darting inside to see his son and heir.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ I say as I give Anna a hug goodbye.

  ‘Of course he bloody does,’ she says quietly in my ear.

  I don’t want to be a tool for Martin to hit Anna with. I don’t want to be the thing that makes somebody else feel bad. I just want to be slim, for me. I would never wish the way I used to feel about myself on to somebody else.

  But I see that we need a shared definition of ‘desirable’ that isn’t based on looks, for me and Anna – and Martin, for that matter. Couldn’t it be that a ten out of ten for effort is the new Perfect Ten that we all aspire to? Being perfect shouldn’t have to be a dress size. What size was Mother Teresa? Although that’s a bad example because she was tiny. What about the Virgin Mary? Supposing that she was a size ten before she had Jesus, what are the chances that she didn’t put on some baby weight around her stomach during pregnancy, and that she wasn’t carrying a few extra pounds when the Three Wise Men turned up?

  And isn’t it interesting that a clothing size ten only relates to women’s sizes, and not men’s. Can a man ever be a Perfect Ten? Or are the deciding criteria just different?