College Reinvention? (Thin Enough)

(Thin Enough Book Excerpt)

…Diet and defeat, attempts and failure had become my way of life. That is, until one day, when diet became Victory for me. And little by little, attempt by attempt, pound by pound, inch by inch, I succeeded at cutting away the excess weight. But more than that, I found control, victory, accomplishment, perfection, and worth.           

Question: Do you feel you must be perfect at everything you do?

 

I took control. “All right,” I said to myself, “if I can’t have the love, the worthiness, the me that I want, I’ll make it on my own.” Control became the name of the game now. Even though I thought it was the beginning of my promised land, this was when the real danger, the real wilderness began.

 

Question: Do you feel in control of your life when you control your food and weight?

 

The summer after my senior year of high school became my “put up or shut up” summer. As I prepared for college, I had a lot to prove—to myself, to the haunting jeers of classmates, to the boys who had not been asking me out. I had to prove that I was a worthwhile, beautiful girl. During my entire adolescence, I had been the fat girl, the “good friend,” the funny sidekick to the beautiful girls. But that would all change this summer. So I started another diet. At eighteen, I’d had years of failure at diet and exercise programs. But this time I was determined—determined to re-invent myself for my new life at college.

I started looking for role models I could pattern myself after. I chose Audrey Hepburn for her thin, delicate beauty. I chose Madonna to be my fitness and female empowerment guide. She was a beautiful, lean, muscular version of what I’d deemed a woman “having it all” was like. I thought they had perfect lives, and mine would be perfect too if I could be as beautiful as they were. I coveted who these women were. So much for the “no other gods” commandment. I was breaking that one daily... I pursued my own idol of perfect, thin beauty and self-obsession.

 

Question: Do you compare yourself to other girls and women regarding your physical appearance?

 

Idols are still around for the coveting and worshiping. That hasn’t changed. I found my idols in Hollywood.

In Hollywood, there is a trend for actresses to be an unusually thin size. It seems to be a competitive “who’s the thinnest one of them all” scenario, pressuring actresses to slim down to not just a size 8 or 6 dress, but to even go as low as a size 0. Size 0! Since actresses sell, in part, their physical appearance, unwillingness or inability to whittle down to a tiny size automatically translates into being “less marketable” and “difficult.” They can lose anything from their popularity to actual work in film and television.

Take for instance, the female cast of the television show “Friends.” When the show began ten years ago, the actresses were at more normal, healthy weights. However, the more popular the show became, the more weight the cast lost. Media controversy swirled around their thinning bodies. Whether or not they were anorexic or bulimic, it still sent a dangerous, confusing message: the thinner you are, the more successful you will be in your life and career.

            I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I had watched the series at 19, the thin, female cast members would have been my personal standard of what women should look like and be: a size 0 in all of its glory…

 

“40-60% of high school girls diet.”

—The Renfrew Center Foundation for Eating Disorders: Eating Disorders: A Summary of Issues, Statistics, and Resources. http://www.renfrew.org.

 

…Question: Do you feel you are worthy of love only when you are thin or look a certain way?

 

Unfortunately, I bought the wrong product; I bought the lie. With my role models in place and my mind made up, I plowed straight ahead with my goals. I drank diet drinks that tasted like chocolate-flavored chalk. I started exercising on a stationary bike, a real bike, and a mini trampoline. The exercise sped up my success. I started losing weight and keeping it off! I felt exhilaration and power. I started exercising an hour every day, pedaling on my bikes or jumping up and down on the trampoline to music in my family’s basement.

For the first time in my life, people appreciated my body, my looks. People now referred to me as “tiny” and “cute.” People were now coming up to me, saying things like, “Keep it up,” “Keep doing what you’re doing,” and of course, (with a happy smile on their face) “You’ve lost weight!” I’d had years of people complimenting me for my talent, mind, “good personality” and “sense of humor,” but these new compliments were intoxicating! I realized the truth of the statement: “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” For me, being thinner qualified me to be loved and accepted by others.

Guys were now approving of me, flirting with me. They now hugged, touched me—they even picked me up and carried me around. I was thrilled. My whole life, I’d not been held like this, picked up like this, not even by my own father. And now guys were physically and emotionally whisking me off my feet.

I also loved the fact that I could wear clothes that were stylish, whose design wasn’t to camouflage, to hide, to deny “unsightly” lumps, bumps, rolls. I could go in and try on a size six dress and find it too big for me! Yesss! I could step on a scale, fully dressed, including shoes and a coat, and only register 120 lbs.

Each comment, lost pound, and lost inch gave me more of an incentive. As I lost weight, I found myself always in need of a new goal. If 115 lbs. looked this great on me, why stop there? I eventually became convinced that death—at least the look of starvation—was beautiful.I was envying the “beauty,” the look of the malnourished, the tortured—even those in concentration camps. I now went beyond looking to Audrey Hepburn and Madonna as role models and influences. They were now competition for me. If I could be thinner than these women, then I’d be better than they were as well.

Ah, at long last, control over something in my life. I couldn’t control who loved me or what was going on in my family, but I could control this! I could control my body! And soon this control did turn into something I’d hungered for, craved my entire life: power, power in the beauty, the newfound thin beauty I was discovering. College would be a new beginning for sure, I thought. I was the Sheryle I always thought I wanted to be…