Day by day, inch by inch, it’s gotten to the point where I can mostly live my life in the body I have, and, for the most part, enjoy it.
Not that it’s perfect. I have days where I catch a glimpse of my face reflected in an iPad’s black screen and shudder. I still spend too much time and money trying to look, if not like a model in a magazine, then at least my best. I’ve tried Botox. I color my hair and wax my legs and pay for someone to paint my toenails and glue fake lashes to my real ones (my argument is that they make it look like I’m wearing makeup when I’m not, thus saving time, money, and effort). I resent the time I spend on my hair and makeup and the shapewear I squeeze myself into before television appearances and public events—men, I suspect, don’t require much more than powder and a comb—but I do it anyhow. I can’t walk into a Sephora without dropping at least fifty dollars on whatever miracle serum or lotion or anti-aging crème they’re promoting, and when the Cape Air representatives ask me how much I weigh so they can balance the passengers on the nine-seat plane, I rapidly run through the benefits of absolute honesty versus the potential of the plane going down if I shave fifteen (twenty) pounds off the number.
But most days I’m, if not happy, then reasonably content. What I’ve learned will be familiar to any woman who’s ever worried about her weight—which is to say, all women. There’s nothing revolutionary here . . . but my daughters’ pediatrician once told me that, sometimes, to get a kid to eat a vegetable, you have to put it on her plate ten times. Ten times, before she’ll consider taking a bite. Maybe it’s the same with self-acceptance—you have to see the same chestnuts and platitudes repeated over and over before they land.
Maybe this, right here, will be someone’s tenth time. Maybe there’s some eighteen-year-old who will read this and not have to waste the next decade of her life hating herself . . . or a new mother who will decide to focus on her new baby and her growing family instead of her stretch marks and her belly . . . or a woman somewhere who will decide to go for that bike ride, take that new job, smile at that cute guy, because maybe, just maybe, she’s fine, right now, just as she is.
A Few Words About Bodies
Weight and Diet
You are never as fat as you think you are.
Seriously, you’re not.
Ten years from now you will look at pictures of yourself and think, “God, I was so thin.” (You will also wonder what you were doing with your hair and clothing, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Nobody is judging you as harshly as you’re judging your own body. Wartime tribunals do not judge murderers and spies as harshly as you’re judging your own body.
The phrase “horror show” can properly be applied to a late-night airing of Saw. Not to your thighs or anyone else’s.
When you feel insecure, follow the money. Which people and industries profit when women hate themselves?
Every time you judge another woman’s appearance, an angel gets a gallstone.
Every time you think evil things about yourself, your daughters can hear.
Yes, even if you just think it.
Yes, even if you don’t have daughters.
Unless you are an actual supermodel, it is not your job to look like a supermodel. Similarly, unless you are a porn star, you need not devote hours of your time and thousands of your dollars to looking like one.
Thinness is not a job requirement. Nor are perfect beachy waves, poreless skin, or a jiggle-free midriff. Can you do your work? Are you hurting anyone? Are you as present as possible for the people who need you? If the answers are yes and no and yes again, then you’re just fine, as is, right now.
Understand that being out in the world, with billboards, magazines, and the Internet bombarding you with hundreds of images of artificially perfected women, is like exposing yourself to an ongoing low dose of radiation. It will eventually make you sick. Take preventative steps: look at real women, either in real life or online. Follow athletes and activists on Instagram, not just models and actresses. Teach yourself to see beauty in the unconventional . . . and in the women you love.
Give other women compliments. Learn to accept compliments with grace, not self-deprecation.
When you start in with the I’m-a-disaster-oh-God-look-at-my-ass, ask yourself: Would you talk to a friend that way? To your daughter? What would you say if you heard a friend talk to herself like that?
Remember Naomi Wolf’s lesson: “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
Hungry women are easy to lead and easy to fool and extremely easy to sell stuff to. Diets are the tool of the patriarchy. Also the devil. And they don’t work.
Remember the way you lived in your body before you learned to see only the wrong in it. Remember being a girl and how it felt to float in the bathtub, jump in mud puddles, race around the block, climb trees, lie in bed on a hot night with a crisp cotton sheet on top of you. Think of your body as a mansion that houses your spirit, not as an unruly hedge you’re constantly pruning and tending and trimming, or a bonsai tree you’re trying to keep small.
Consider the money you’ve spent on concealer and hot rollers and SlimFast and Spanx, on paid diet programs and hair extensions and diet frozen dinners that tasted like thawed cardboard. Consider the time you’ve spent in step class and nutrition seminars, watching your Fitbit and cooking steamed vegetables. Imagine how you’d feel if you’d donated that money to some worthy group or cause and spent that time taking a painting class or writing poetry or adopting a dog or going for walks in the woods.
Think of exercise as a vitamin you take to ward off unhappiness. Find a sport or activity that you enjoy that gets your heart rate up, and try to do it most days of the week. Bonus points if it’s something that lets you be with your friends, train toward a goal, be out in nature, or practice patience and kindness toward yourself. Try yoga, or a mud run, or open-water swimming, or riding your bike—and if none of those are for you, try something else.
Dig out all of your favorite pictures—of yourself, of your mother, your grandmother, your best friend, your bridesmaids, your sorority sisters. Please note that “favorite” does not mean “the ones where you look the thinnest.” Find the shots where you look happy, put them in the prettiest frames you can find, and put them where you can see them, every single day.
Do not postpone life until ten pounds from now. Go on the trip. Wear the strapless dress. Go ziplining, or water-skiing, or swimming with the dolphins. None of us are guaranteed a future. Even a supermodel who’s finally hit her goal weight could step outside and be hit by a bus. Putting off joy until you’re the right size could mean you’ll never experience it at all.
And remember—no woman ever said, on her deathbed, I wish I’d eaten less cake.
Food
There are many things that taste as good as thin feels. A partial list includes cannoli, canelés, fresh doughnuts, homemade Toll House cookies, Korean fried chicken, samosas, saag paneer, Korean barbecue, o-toro sashimi, that brisket with the onion-soup mix that my mom makes for Passover, chocolate birthday cake, English muffins with apricot preserves, mashed potatoes, pommes frites, and the apple dumplings with condensed-milk ice cream that they serve at the restaurant down the street.
Learn to tell the difference between hungry and sad and angry and bored. Honor each feeling with what it requires. Eat when you’re hungry, cry when you’re sad, deal with your anger and boredom, but don’t stuff them down with food, or booze, or men, or pills, or whatever else might be available.
Look at what you’re eating for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. Is that what you’d feed someone you love?
Every time you choke down a protein bar in the car or eat freezer-burned ice cream over the sink, an angel picks a fight with her neighbor.
Use food to take care of yourself. Treat yourself like your own
guest. Boil an egg. Toast some bread. Use an actual plate. Sit in a chair. Slow down. Taste what you’re eating. Enjoy it.
If you want to eat ice cream, eat ice cream. Buy your favorite flavor. Let it thaw to the proper creamy consistency. Scoop it into a bowl. Sit down. Eat it with a spoon. Yes, the calories still count if you eat supermarket-brand rocky road straight out of the cardboard container standing in front of the freezer, so why not get the good stuff—your favorite stuff—and really enjoy it?
Spices, like mascara, should be replaced every six months.
Always buy the best-quality chocolate that you can find.
In fact, always buy the best-quality everything that you can find.
Learning to cook is not hard, and you don’t need a ton of fancy tools or exotic ingredients to feed yourself well. A few pots and pans, good knives and a cutting board, and you can put a meal on the table.
Eat as much real food as possible. If you’re craving a treat and you have time, make it yourself. Want cookies? Bake your favorite variety. Enjoy the smell of the chocolate chips, the tap of the eggshells on the rim of the bowl, the slippery slide of the egg separating from the yolk, the sensation of pushing a wooden spoon through butter and sugar, the smell as the cookies bake. Put the cookies on a rack to cool, then put them on a plate, and serve with milk and a napkin. Sit, and enjoy.
Fashion
In order to look her best, every woman needs two things: good bras and a good tailor. Bras first: go to either a specialty lingerie shop, if your town or city has a good one, or a good department store (Oprah and I recommend Nordstrom). Get yourself measured. Yes, there is a bra that will fit you . . . and your clothes will look better when you’ve got the right bra.
A good tailor can turn your T-shirts into bodysuits so they stay tucked in; can rip out seams and sew in lace panels so the floaty white lace shirtdress that looked beautiful on the flat-as-a-board model will fit your chest, too; can shorten your jeans so you’re not stepping on the hems and add snaps to wrap dresses so they’re alluring without being indecent. When your clothes fit you right, they look 100 percent better.
Don’t wear anything that pinches or itches or makes it hard to move or breathe—at least, not on a regular, non-special-occasion basis.
Wear what makes you happy and what feels good against your skin. If that includes busy patterns or horizontal stripes or bright colors or any of the hundreds of things that you’ve been told not to wear, wear them anyhow if they suit you and make you feel good.
Anything that doesn’t—donate it, sell it at a consignment shop, or give it away.
No, I don’t care how much you paid for it. If you haven’t worn it in over a year, it needs to go.
If you don’t know what makes you look beautiful, take pictures. Ask a friend. Consult the Internet and find fashion bloggers and Instagrammers with your body type. Check out their outfits of the day, how they incorporate trends, how they accessorize, what their hints are for looking your best. Look at their pictures every day, as an antidote against self-loathing, to inoculate yourself against the images you’ll see all day of women who don’t look like you, and the hundreds of messages you’ll hear saying that your body is wrong and flawed and shameful.
Take care of yourself. Wear sunscreen, every day, on your face and your hands (one reality star whose Twitter feed I follow recommends keeping a bottle in the car so you won’t forget and subject your skin to the sun that comes through the windows). Always take off your makeup before you go to bed; get your hair trimmed and colored as often as it takes for it to feel good.
Find a scent you love and wear it every day. Even if you’re hanging around the house in leggings and your favorite old T-shirt (your flattering, well-made, non-holey, non-stretched-out leggings and your cute, well-cut tee), smelling delicious can make you feel well dressed.
Tell yourself you’re beautiful. Even if you feel stupid saying it. Even if you can’t say it out loud. Act like you believe it, even if you don’t. Keep your chin up and your shoulders back, as if you are the ruler of all you survey. Carry yourself with confidence, and that’s what the world will see.
The F Word
Allure, October 2012
Okay,” I said to my daughter as she bent over her afternoon bowl of Cinnamon Life. “What’s going on with you and J.?” J. is the ringleader of a group of third-graders at her camp—a position Lucy herself occupied the previous summer. Now she’s the one on the outs, and every day at snack time, she tells me all about it, while I offer up the unhelpful advice I’ve been doling out all summer long. Find other girls to sit with. Ignore them. Be yourself. Be patient. It does get better.
“She’s bossy,” Lucy complained.
“Mmm-hmm,” I said as I returned the milk to the refrigerator, thinking that my daughter can be a little on the bossy side herself.
“She’s turning everyone against me,” Lucy muttered, a tear rolling down her cheek. “She’s mean, she’s bad at math, she’s terrible at kickball. And . . . she’s fat.”
“Excuse me,” I said, struggling for calm, knowing I was nowhere in calm’s ZIP code. “What did you just say?”
From the way her eyes widened, I knew that she knew she’d done what her sister, four-year-old Phoebe, called a Big Bad. “She is fat,” Lucy mumbled into her bowl.
“We are going upstairs,” I said, my voice cold, my throat tight. “We are going to discuss this.” And up we went, my blithe, honey-blond daughter, leggy as a colt in cotton shorts and a gray T-shirt with Snoopy on the front, and her size-sixteen-on-a-good-day mom.
I’d spent the nine years since her birth getting ready for this day, the day we’d have to have the conversation about this dreaded stinging word. I had a well-honed, consoling speech at the ready. I knew exactly what to say to the girl on the receiving end of the taunts and the teasing, but in all of my imaginings, it never once occurred to me that my daughter would be the one who used the F word. Fat.
I am six years old, in first grade, and my father is hoisting—that’s really the only word for it—me up into the backseat of the family’s Chevy Suburban. “She’s solid. She weighs sixty-five pounds,” he’s telling a friend. I have no idea why he brings it up, what it means, if sixty-five is a little or a lot. It is a number, two digits, out of context. It means nothing. My father’s arms around me, the bristle of his beard against my cheek, the smell of his soap, the starch of his shirt—that means everything.
I am eight years old, sturdy bare legs dangling at the end of the padded plastic examination table while my pediatrician, a woman with short, dark hair, a soothing voice, and disconcertingly cool hands, tells my mom to stop packing me two sandwiches for lunch. “One should be fine,” she says. And my mother, overweight herself, nods and says nothing. I know—and probably my mom does, too—that one would not be fine. The hunger pangs would start around ten a.m., and by lunchtime I’d be bolting my sandwich, gobbling the cut-up carrots my mother dutifully packs and eyeing Roseanne Webster’s Hostess cupcake, offering to trade my apple for someone’s squished half peanut butter sandwich. Hungry, always hungry.
I am ten, watching my sister poke at her peas and nibble a forkful of meatloaf before pushing her plate away. “I’m all done.” It’s like watching a magic trick, and I don’t get it. How do people do that, I wonder, cleaning my plate, wheedling for seconds, accepting, instead, a bowl of the dietetic Jell-O the well-meaning pediatrician had prescribed, a red goop that tastes like chemicals and shame. How can anyone say no to food? I’m beginning to recognize that there are people born with an off switch, people to whom food, even the most delicious, is simply fuel.
Then there are people like me, who eat every bite and still want more, who sneak into the kitchen when the house is dark for slices of white bread slathered with margarine, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. I have no off switch. Happy, sad, lonely, content—the one constant in my life is hunger. I will never be able to take food or leave it; instead, I’ll take it, and then take more.
I am incandescent with shame, knowing that fat is by far the worst thing you can be. Fat is lazy, fat is gross, fat is sloppy . . . and, worst of all, fat is forever. Michelle has a full-on Frida Kahlo mustache. Kim has terrible skin. But Michelle could wax and Kim could go on Accutane; I am going to be fat—and, hence, undesirable, unlovable, a walking joke—for the rest of my life.
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