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T O D A Y
Drama Queen candidates: Contestant No. 1
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TABLE TALK
Share home birthing tales and experiences in the Mothers Who Think discussion area of Table Talk
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R E C E N T L Y
Breaking the surface This sorcery isn't just for kids Of magic and single motherhood Conned by a Jewish mother One big dysfunctional family - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mamafesto
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Altar of the porcelain god
I was diet obsessed from a young age. As a teenager, I was addicted to Tab and a frequent user of Dexetrim, the legalized speed of the '70s (known as dexies among my cheerleader pals). It was the beginning of the supermodel era; the ultra-thin Cheryl Tiegs and Farrah Fawcett were the beauty archetypes. We all yearned to look like the barely pubescent, 14-year-old Brooke "Nothing gets between me and my Calvins" Shields, despite puberty's betrayal, which replaced our straight girlish bodies with womanly curves. In affluent Marin County, where I grew up, every suburban upper-middle-class girl had weight issues. Thus, when I and my two close friends, who I'll call Anne and Susan, began hearing about the disturbing trends of anorexia and bulimia, we weren't horrified -- we wanted to know how it was done. Anorexia seemed glamorous. We fantasized about being so thin that our loved ones would beg us to eat. It would be the opposite of the pressure we felt to be model thin, pressure that came not only from society and peers, but also from family, friends and even physicians. When I was 13, 5 feet 3 inches and weighed 113 pounds, my doctor told me that I needed to lose weight. (He was concerned because I no longer was my pre-menstruation, skin-and-bones weight of 95 pounds. He admonished me that there was no reason for that kind of weight gain. After all, his 5-feet-4-inch wife weighed a mere 100 pounds.) We read everything we could find about anorexia and bulimia. Initially, our goal was to be anorexic; bulimia seemed too repulsive. Adopting anorexic habits, we'd cut plain leaves of lettuce into tiny bits, dipping them one at a time in mustard for flavor. We'd try and live on carrots, apples and plain pieces of bread. This starvation catalyzed out-of-control eating frenzies, which resulted in our gaining weight rather than losing it. One day, Anne called to tell me that bulimia was the antidote to the binge problem. She assured me it wasn't that revolting, and you could eat whatever you wanted without gaining weight. Intrigued, I decided to give it a try. At first, my attempts failed. The gag reflex didn't come naturally to me. I grew jealous of my friends who had mastered the art; after trips to McDonald's, I would be stuck with my Big Mac binge calories, while they flushed theirs away. The breakthrough came when I followed Anne's advice to try it with ice cream, a regurgitation-friendly food. I finally succeeded and was ecstatic when I sent that pint of Jamoca Almond Fudge packing. This started a new, sick bond between the three of us. While other teenage girls went shopping, we scoured Northern California in search of the ultimate purger's paradise -- the buffet. We would have eating parties -- gallons of ice cream, whole pizzas and dozens of cookies and doughnuts were ingested, then divested. Our vomitory of choice was my home, because it had three bathrooms at separate ends of the house, sparing us the echoes of each other's retching. The climax of our bulimic neurosis was our post-high school graduation trip to Hawaii. Most 18-year-olds in Hawaii hit the bars and the booze cruises; not us. We hit every happy hour, gobbling down mounds of free appetizers, and ate at the Chart House's 100-item salad bar every other night. Disaster struck one evening when the Chart House's bathroom was out of order. Desperate to rid ourselves of the 10,000 calories we'd consumed, we frantically drove around the island in search of alternate facilities. Finding no available toilets, it became clear our only choice was the great outdoors. Finally, Susan found an open sugarcane field. When she stopped the car, we all bolted out, running in separate directions to find a private place to do our business. We must have made quite a sight -- three tanned, teenage ex-cheerleaders in thick-soled Cherokee sandals and summer dresses, shoving our fingers down our throats and barfing our brains out. Looking back I see how frightening we were, but truly the mind-set at that time was to be thin at any cost. College separated us, and the purge parties ended, though we all
continued doing it solo. But by the end of my freshman year I'd gained 20 pounds -- some caloric absorption occurs when regularly feasting on 5,000 calories a sitting. I was also miserable and realized that this was a sickness. During my sophomore year, I went into therapy and kicked the habit, never to bow to the altar of the porcelain god again. Almost 15 years later, I never even think about doing it, except when confronted with an exceptionally appetizing buffet.
Contestant No. 1 |
Contestant No. 2 |
Contestant No. 3
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