Daughter Simone and I had lunch today in Barney’s restaurant and we saw a woman so anorexic that she got tongues wagging at the next table. Her legs were so thin it was hard to believe they could hold up her body, frail as it was. The woman was OF (I’m going to leave off the F in this case.) When we passed her table to leave, she was pecking at her bread, just like a bird.
When I look at my body today, I know that it’s a bit chunky. When I lose a few pounds, I know it’s less chunky. When our stick figure woman looks at her body, she thinks she’s fat. I understand anorexia is a disease but I wonder whether the people who love this woman tell her she looks frightening and try to get her help.
One of my FOF friends is borderline anorexic (remember, I sometimes act like a doctor). She isn’t as dramatically emaciated as the woman I saw today, but still she’s ridiculously thin. I once mentioned to her that she hardly eats and looks anorexic, but she fabricated some excuse, so I knew I was wasting my time–and hers. She’s a pretty woman, but the glow left her face long ago. She’s pale and drawn. It’s not attractive.
I wish my thighs were thinner and I had a bit less flab around my middle. But I’ll take the way I look over the anorexia any day of the week. It’s not the actual look itself that disturbs me. It’s the mental state behind it.
Yeah, I know what you mean, Geri. But someone came up to me once & made a little finger wag in my face. Guess what? I was really sick & did not lose weight on purpose at all. I get that this “looked” different. Still & all…I’d be careful. My sister just got this today (!) as we went to lunch. She’s coming off of many many weeks of chemo. So I’m still steamed about it. Be careful, people. Also about handicapped parking passes…& disability cards for subways, etc.
Do you think she may have been ill with something else? I always remember a movie scene
where Mery Streep was the mum dying of cancer and she said to her best friend one of the ‘uptics’ was becoming thin…
Not everyone who sees photographs like the model from the Chanel show thinks ‘anorexic’. Some of us are of a certain age and cultural upbringing where we think this: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/photographs/61-173-38.jpg
Concentration camp survivors. I once looked up information on long term studies on people who had gone through prisoner of war camps (which also ‘featured’ what would be now termed ‘calorie deficit’)and concentration camps and the results are the same: shortened life spans. Now, given the amount of time people actually spent in these camps – before they were liberated in 1945 – and given that there are many many women who impose this on themselves (and with the same elevated stress levels) for literally DECADES, no one should be at all surprised when we read of more and more women dying of heart disease (like Karen Carpenter) or falling and breaking hips and other bones (then dying of pneumonia or heart attacks caused by blood clots from the breakages).
All of my sins may be behind me, but at least when I sit on them, I’m pretty comfortable.
0 Responses to “Do I look fat?”
Geri says:
Hi Susan,
I hope your sister is doing well.
Geri
Susan says:
Yeah, I know what you mean, Geri. But someone came up to me once & made a little finger wag in my face. Guess what? I was really sick & did not lose weight on purpose at all. I get that this “looked” different. Still & all…I’d be careful. My sister just got this today (!) as we went to lunch. She’s coming off of many many weeks of chemo. So I’m still steamed about it. Be careful, people. Also about handicapped parking passes…& disability cards for subways, etc.
Grrrr.
Duchesse says:
In my city some of the activists paste stickers on the billboard ads of super-thin women: “FEED ME”.
Heather Chapple says:
Do you think she may have been ill with something else? I always remember a movie scene
where Mery Streep was the mum dying of cancer and she said to her best friend one of the ‘uptics’ was becoming thin…
Geri says:
Hi Heather,
I don’t think so. this was a different kind of thin.
G
Toby Wollin says:
Not everyone who sees photographs like the model from the Chanel show thinks ‘anorexic’. Some of us are of a certain age and cultural upbringing where we think this: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/photographs/61-173-38.jpg
Concentration camp survivors. I once looked up information on long term studies on people who had gone through prisoner of war camps (which also ‘featured’ what would be now termed ‘calorie deficit’)and concentration camps and the results are the same: shortened life spans. Now, given the amount of time people actually spent in these camps – before they were liberated in 1945 – and given that there are many many women who impose this on themselves (and with the same elevated stress levels) for literally DECADES, no one should be at all surprised when we read of more and more women dying of heart disease (like Karen Carpenter) or falling and breaking hips and other bones (then dying of pneumonia or heart attacks caused by blood clots from the breakages).
All of my sins may be behind me, but at least when I sit on them, I’m pretty comfortable.
Geri says:
me too toby. me too.
g