Skinny Enough Yet?
We've been watching America's Next Top Model on Saturday nights at 10:00 p.m. And by we I mean me and my two teenaged daughters. My son doesn't watch with us. He plays Quake or Doom or somesuch violent video game. Unless they aren't violent. I really have no idea - I'm left-handed and can't play video games. All I know is, I'm not surprised by his lack of interest in America's Next Top Model. I once did an entire Christmas shopping for his sisters with him in tow and he had no idea that I was buying them presents. It was quite something. His interest in the stuff I was buying was so minimal that it didn't even register with him that we were shopping. He just clomped along beside me, staring off into space with his mouth hanging open until we were done. I don't know. Maybe he can't see the colour pink.
Anyway, the fun thing about the show for me this cycle (it runs in cycles - this is the first one to really grab my interest) is that there are identical twins in the running who bear an uncanny resemblance to one of my daughters - except - my daughter is prettier. Much prettier. And with a better figure. Still tall and straight. But with a figure. And, of course, if you've never watched Tyra Banks in action, well, you're missing something. Something quite clearly insane. Whether driven insane by modelling or not eating enough fat on her way to becoming a model, I don't know. And, not to be cruel, but...well... once her modelling career was over, it would appear she decided to make up for all that lost fat in her diet - pretty much full-time, too. Leaving only enough room for insanity, I guess.
But back to the models. I'm rooting for the remaining twin in the running (her sister got kicked off last week for not being ambitious enough, even though she was considered by the panel - which includes Twiggy (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Baby Spice - or is that all English women in middle-age) - to be the better model. But ambition matters, says Tyra. So off she went and now it's up to her sister to win the day. (As a closet stage mother, I'd feel vicariously victorious, you see. She must win. She WILL win. Redheads are grotesquely under-represented in the modelling world!)
Interestingly, if the remaining twin does win - she's certainly the skinniest winner on the show - ever. Hard to believe, but the winners to date haven't actually been the twigs you'd expect to have won America's Next Top Model. They've been, well, not really that alarmingly skinny.
Speaking of skinny, I'm a thin person. Trim, as it were. And I've heard myself tell other people that I'm naturally this way. Which isn't really true because when I was a teenager, I had an "athletic build". I hovered around 118 on a 5'4" frame.
Until, one day, I woke up - and I was fat.
Oh, I was still hovering around 118 on a 5'4" frame, but something had changed. For some reason, I was suddenly grotesquely... dumpy.
I started dieting. Well, dieting is what teenaged girls call it. In fact, I started fasting, binging (bingeing?), purging. I also started running. 3 miles/weeknight. 10/miles/weekend. No one in my family noticed, particularly. My Gram commented once that I'd only eaten carrots for a couple of days (although celery was my food of choice since I'd read that eating celery actually burned off more calories than it produced). But I was aware that I was "up to something" - so I was careful. I was also aware that all I thought about was food. Food combined with the not eating of it. Every bit of food not eaten was a triumph of will.
It went on throughout high school. Dieting. And thinking about food. At one point, I had my weight down to 98 lbs. That's 20 lbs less than I weigh now (I don't have a scale - I have teenaged daughters. In my opinion, having a scale and a teenaged girl in the same room is like keeping a hunting rifle under your teenaged son's bed - not smart because they'll use it. I just go by my annual check-up weight as told to me by my doctor.) And I'm slim. With muscle, since I do a 40 minute walk to work every morning, have a dog, and don't own a car. Yup. In high school I weighed 98 lbs. and was pretty much thinking about food all the time. All day. Every day. Food.
And see? I'm still doing it. "40 minute walk to work every morning, have a dog, and don't own a car". Keeping watch. Making sure I don't take up much room. And I don't mean that in a humble way. I mean that in a superiour way. Because the buzz about anorexia is that it's a good girl thing. Perfectionist girl vs demanding parents and sexist society. It can be any of those things, I suppose. But I don't buy it, personally. Here's what it is to me: It's a switch. A switch that goes on in a girl's head one day. Randomly. If she's lucky, a while later, it goes off again. But it's just as randomly. Or maybe she goes out to the bars on her 18th birthday and discovers a new obsession.
I know, I know. But who to blame? Somebody's got to take the rap for this mind-boggling affliction. Well, I once watched in horror as my Mother-in-Law said to my 17 year old Sister-in-Law one morning, "Oh, look who's wearing her fat clothes!" I say "in horror" because I'd forgotten that all the media blather about anorexia is meaningless drivel and that my Mother-in-Law saying, "Oh, look who's wearing her fat clothes!" would no more trigger anorexia in my Sister-in-Law than I can think of any one thing that had happened to me in my teenaged years that would have triggered anorexia in me.
Except waking up one morning on the side of the bed that said, "You should whittle yourself down to the size of a twig."
So, if anybody's looking - my only advice to the Moms or Dads out there worried about the prospect of an anorexic daughter (and that is pretty much EVERY Mom and Dad I know) is to just cross your fingers and whistle nursury rhymes backwards in hopes that it doesn't happen to you and yours. Because I really don't think there is much you can do about it if it does.
That's my "been there, done that" take on it, anyway.
