Godammit, I’m Mad!

This photo in the Daily Mail is accompanied by the tragic story of twins who have suffered from anorexia for twenty years.  It’s a disturbing story that touches on sibling rivalry, parental enabling, and the failure of all mechanisms to heal the victims of our culture’s obsession with beauty.

If you read the story, you’ll notice images on the right-hand side of the page, mostly celebrities chosen by the Daily Mail to ridicule for their weight gain, plastic surgery or cankles.  The message is clear: There is no escape from the search for physical perfection. No escape and no winning either.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a photography exhibit called Beauty and Culture that examines the many ways that images work to influence our concept of beauty. The exhibit featured a short documentary that was truly devastating. Five year old beauty queens, cancer survivors, ancient women still trying to look young, and a history of evolving thinness in fashion models…it leaves you sickened by the shit we go through to measure up to a stupid restrictive ideal of beauty.

The documentary points out that only 2 percent of women are built like fashion models. Why do these models have so much power over us?!

You know the “It Gets Better” campaign for gays? We also need a campaign for women that says:YOU LOOK FINE! Maybe if we were reminded 100 times a day that we are okay as we are, we could forget about the size of our butts.

When we left the exhibit, my friend and I looked for somewhere to have coffee. We found a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, where they display calorie counts with their pastries. Naturally, I freaked out and ordered a reduced-calorie muffin, because no matter what I know intellectually, deep down in my psyche I’m an unlovable fat pig.

I would like to thank Vogue, Glamour, the fashion industry and most of all my dad, who loved to drive around shouting “Look at the fat ass on that one!” I can relate to those poor emaciated twins, even though I’m a normal size. Accepting yourself can be a lifelong project.

Alexa Chung is rocking some fierce and super-coveted Acne wedges, but nobody seems to notice that she’s starving. Why won’t Alexa eat?

The question is rhetorical. I know why. Been there, refused to eat that. Alexa probably looks in the mirror and sees nothing but fat.

On the other hand, in Mauritania, girls are still force-fed in order to procure a husband in a culture that regards obesity as socially desirable. This tradition, called leblouh, is literally torture.

This is some fucked up shit, isn’t it?  Two cultures, two ways to subjugate women.

Last week, it was Oprah. Now, it’s Rachel Zoe.

Oprah has gone public with her weight gain, revealing that she’s addicted to food.  I certainly sympathize with Oprah; I feel that inside the Slim Me, is a Fat me, who will take over if I’m not vigilant. I’ve never been fat, but I know that fatness is a state to be avoided at all costs. In our society, prejudice against fat people is so deep-rooted that even those seen pictured with fat people are judged more harshly, ‘according to studies.’

Poor Oprah can’t keep anything secret, so she might as well use her own weight problem as a means of connecting with her audience. But is she an addict, do you think?

Everyone has an opinion on Oprah. Some New Agey woman wrote a piece about Oprah’s weight gain at Huffingtonpost.com, explaining to us that Oprah’s eating stems from “shame.” She even went on to point out to Oprah which chakra was messed up.

Which chakra of Rachel Zoe’s is messed up? She insists that she’s thin by nature, but surely no one can look at her and see anything normal. This woman is starving, but she doesn’t believe it. When she looks in a mirror, she probably sees the weight she still needs to lose. Rachel Zoe has probably struggled with anorexia all her life. Is she addicted to not eating?

I’ve only known two or three women who didn’t have a screwed up relationship with food, and one of them was probably lying. Food is our enemy, much of the time. At best, it’s an enemy we’ve called a truce with. I don’t believe that eating too much is an addiction, although it is clearly a compulsion for many people. Food equals comfort, and eating helps to stuff down feelings we don’t want to experience. Oprah could stop eating without undergoing withdrawal. She could eat less if she decided to!  Just eat less, Oprah!

Rachel Zoe is another story. She is so afraid of ending up like Oprah that she’s developed a pathology. She probably won’t be able to help herself. She needs clinical care but she will resist getting it. I’ve seen girls who are perilously thin but still terrified of eating an apple. Nothing gets through to them; their brains aren’t processing correctly.

When I was a kid, my father would point out overweight women and express his contempt for them. I knew early on that I didn’t want to be fat. Being fat meant being unlovable.

Eating is a loaded issue for women, more so than for men. To simplify: Our loveability is linked to our physical appeal. For men, it’s linked to their achievements.  If you had a daughter, how would you help her avoid a conflicted relationship with food? And who do you most identify with, Oprah or Rachel Zoe?