I can break you like a stick
When I first started going to yoga a few years ago, there was this guy in there who was so skinny and petite I had this weird visceral reaction to him. Every time I saw him, I’d think, “I could break you like a stick.”
Which is not my normal violent thought about someone. I don’t know what brought it on, and in the time since I’ve become friends with that guy and I really appreciate who he is. And I don’t think about breaking him over my knee anymore.
But there was an article in today’s paper that brought back that same feeling. It was about how some designers are now coming out with size 00 clothes. And to illustrate the article, we get pictures of all the current hot anorexics–Lindsay Lohan, Kate Bosworth, Nicole Richie.
Yuck.
Here’s what I don’t understand about those girls (can’t really think of them as women because they have the bodies of fourth-graders): Why would you want to be weak? Because that’s what it really comes down to. If you diet your body into such a skeletal form, how are you going to climb mountains or fend off the bad guys a la Xena or Wonder Woman or Buffy? (I know Buffy was skinny, but she had some muscle. She looked like she ate.) How are you going to lift your own luggage up into the carry-on bin on an airplane? I’ve seen more than a few times the spectacle of some girly-girl wearing ridiculous shoes, looking like she’s been off solids for month, trying to heft her overstuffed bag above the seats. It brings out my violent streak. I want to shake her and tell her to stop being such an idiot and go eat something and lift a few weights and wear shoes she can run in, for heaven’s sake.
Helpless girls annoy me. Squealing, shrieky, drama queens are a waste of time. I’m so much more impressed by a girl like Katie, an 11-year-old my friend Barry knows. She’s a charming, very pretty girl who also happens to be the toughest girl on earth. She’s a fearless goalie for her soccer team and is going out for football in junior high. A girl like that isn’t going to starve herself into size 00 submission. A girl like that recognizes she needs fuel to go out there and kick the world’s a**.
Look, I’m sure a lot of of wish we were a few pounds lighter–especially in these days after the Thanksgiving gorge. But health and strength are such a better baseline than some particular size or weight–especially if the size and weight are unrealistic and potentially deadly. I saw a news item last week about some model in South America dying of anorexia. Come on, people. Our bodies were all made to hold a certain amount of flesh and muscle. We can overdo it and pile on too much, and we can starve the poor frame down until there’s barely anything to keep the bones from clattering to the ground. How about that middle ground, where girls can eat when they’re hungry, they can eat what their bodies say they need most at that moment (whether it’s scrambled eggs or ice cream), and we the mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles, etc., say, “Good going–you’re strong and beautiful. You’re part of that next generation of sensible girls who care more about feeling healthy and fit than looking like some doctor’s office skeleton with a little blush and mascara slapped on.”
Let the girls eat, for heaven’s sake. They need energy to go rule the world.
Technorati Tags: Eating Disorders, Size 00, Body Image, Girls’ Self-Esteem
Amen to that-HBO has been showing a documentary about women with eating disorders called Thin recently and it’s truly heartbreaking to watch these ladies(from teens to adults)struggling with this addiction.
I’m on the opposite end of the weight spectrum and when I have dieted,I went the healthy route(Weight Watchers). Part of the whole problem is the double standard that women must maintain their figures while men can weigh as much as they please(as long they have enough of the other guy requirements to make up for it). Would they even consider having size 00 for men? No,but even a girl like Anchal on America’s Next Top Model is constantly told how “fat” she is and she looks the way a girl her age is supposed to look!
Being too heavy or too thin is not good for you but all this overemphasis on body type is more damaging in the long run.
I saw “Thin” when it premiered at Sundance this past January. A few of the women who were profiled in the doc showed up at the screening. Scary. One was doing better–relatively (although she was still crazily thin)–but two others had fallen off the wagon and were back to either puking or starving.
I know when it reaches that point it really is a mental disorder. But there has to be a time–or maybe many times–along the way when if the girls or women had heard some message besides “you must be as thin as X model or actress” they could have pulled back.
I guess all we can do is try to do our part, one girl at a time. Stop emphasizing how they look, and instead praise them for their accomplishments and kind hearts.
Katie is, indeed, the Toughest Girl in the World. She could kick my ass from here to the North Pole and back.
God, that’s cool.
Anorexics are only hot if they are on fire.
Is Katie available? My 11 year old nephew needs a girl who can protect him. I mean, he’s kinda tough. With all his taekwondo he’s ridiculously hard to slap upside the head when he’s looking, but he has the family brain(and mouth) which can be a little dangerous at the younger age. He needs protection — kind of like how Annette is my bodyguard from the evil corporations out to stop me.
Lady T. – Men have a waist and an inseam. Women apparently do not. They are just sized. I think if a man gets to 0 inseam, they don’t have legs. That’s not a common form of weight loss, although I hear it is highly effective.
“I think if a man gets to 0 inseam, they don’t have legs.”
Thank you, Patrick. I can’t stop laughing at that.
Patrick,
Katie would be the world’s most awesome 11-year-old bodyguard. I’ll put your nephew on the waiting list.
i quess i’m doing a pretty good job–patrick is still alive. can’t imagine what side of the family his nephew would get a mouth from.
like patrick’s nephew i was a kid with quite the mouth on me (no, really). i was also x-ray thin before there were eating disorders (nothing like twenty years to “cure” that naturally thin condition) but pretty darn scrappy. when i would, and still do, enter the world of fantasy, it was, and is, jackie joyner who i want to be in my next life, not a vogue model. i am now in “training” for a kick-a** trip to crested butte, colo. so excited to try out the ski legs.
rb is right, there is nothing quite as satisfying, empowering, what have you, as physical wellness and well-being. whether protecting patrick from the evil forces of the whole damn universe (and god knows he needs the protectin’), digging a garden or just riding a bike to the park–it just feels so wonderful to be strong, on purpose.
Thanks Robin for a very timely topic for me. My tall and thin second grader came home on the last day of school before Thanksgiving telling me she wouldn’t be eating Thanksgiving dinner and would be starting “a serious diet and exercise program to lose weight and inches.” Some classmates told her she was fat and she should be trying to lose weight. I silently flipped out. Second grade!!! Then I had The Need to be Strong and Healthy and Happy discussion and gave her a bowl of ice cream which she happily devoured. Why are second graders worried about getting fat? Shouldn’t they be more concerned with mastering the cursive “k”? Are they getting the “can’t be too thin” message from their mothers? The media? Barbie dolls? Admittedly, I am on the thin side, but I eat like a small horse, and I even managed to bulk up enough in the last week to qualify to donate blood today. Annette can attest to my penchant for corn dogs at 3 am and let’s not even get into my feelings about potato chips. It seems like all the media is full of stories of either the obesity epidemic among US children or the aneroxia epidemic. The shrink in me wonders if all those obese kid are over eating to quell their anxieties and fears about not looking like Nicole Ritchie and if the anorexic kids are starving themselves from fear of becoming part of the obesity epidemic. Why is this country so focused on our physical appearance anyway? Do we all just need to get our heads out of the bags of chips or take our fingers out of our throats and focus on something a bit more global?
i can indeed attest to deborah’s 3:00am junk food jags (necessary nutritional supplementation in her case–the woman has the metabolism of a humming bird, and is only slightly larger).
d. do you think the food/weight obsession is a just part of our national self-absorbtion? or a reflection of the incredible power of corporate america and its hand maiden, the us media, to get us to worry, worry, worry, eat, eat, eat, buy, buy, buy?
Thanks,Patrick but I would love it if they announced it on the news that men’s fashion had to adjust to size 000 waistlines. True,they would have to be actual skeletons but,hey-no pain,no gain:)
Deborah,it is sad that even younger girls are getting this twisted “food is evil” message(second grade? Oh my,oh my!)and glad that you had a positive way of dealing with it. Reminds me of an interesting experience I had at my former bookstore job:
A very well dressed little girl came up to me in the store(she even had a hair ribbon,I think)and said to me”Excuse me.”
“Yes,can I help you?”
“My mom says that baby fat looks good on babies but not so much when you’re older.”
She said this in such a sweetly honest way that I wasn’t upset over it. Her dad,however,got major league embarrassed and made her apologize to me. Ten to one,there was quite a fight when they went home to talk to Mommy!
Deborah, that story makes me so sad! But she’s lucky to have you for a mother, instead of the mother who created that sweet little monster Lady T met. Seriously, it’s horrifying to hear that even a girl as young as 7 is already worrying about this.
Lady T, what restraint you showed in not pinching that girl until she wailed for mercy. I’m glad her father was properly embarrassed. Sheesh.
Not to argue against your very good points about eating disorders and waifs and strength and society’s obsession with Thin, but…
I think deisgners have to make size zero now because they’ve “upped” all the other sizes. When I was in highschool, I wore size eight. Now I wear size 4. I am NOT thinner now than I was at 17. I hold up size eight pants i had in college to my size four pants now, and they’re the same size.
So, the petite friends I have who used to be sized two or four now HAVE to wear size zero.
What I want to know is what one friend I had, who in highschool had to have her mom take in all the size twos and looked everywhere for size zeros so she didn’t have to wear little girl clothes — is doing now. Size negative three? This friend was by no means anorexic. She was an athlete, ate like a horse, was very strong and active and healthy and had a very curvy body — it was just TINY.
Diana, that’s really interesting about you comparing your old 8s to the new 4s–I never knew they were reworking the sizes like that.
And yeah, I know there are some tiny women out there who are that way naturally, and who are still very strong. My friend Lizzie (whom you all know from commenting here) is thin as a greyhound, but she and I learned martial arts together, and she’s a strong, tough one.
This rant is really about the kind of thing Deborah just saw with her 7-year-old. I hope the message we adults can give our kids is it’s better to be fit and strong and to feel healthy than to be as scary and skeletal as some of the young stars out there.
Why are women’s clothes in sizes? Wouldn’t it make more sense if there were waist, hip, and length measurements?
Oh yes, they’ve been reworking the sizes for MANY years. I’m partial to 1940′s vintage and take an 18 in that era’s clothing. I take a size 6 in today’s clothes. Fifteen years ago I took an 8, and I weigh 5 pounds more now than I did then. There’s definitely a trend going on. And yes, it’s all about marketing and the economy. There is a very simple solution. Throw out your TV. You’ll be amazed at the results after one year.
i’m bummed, i thought i was soooo teeensy.
bj, in my heart i know you’re right (we went for years without a tv and years thereafter with very restricted viewing) but i love my silly shows. (what am i saying, “slap”–”project runway”, “top chef” and “what not to wear” are not silly!) i feel very diminished having just typed that. oh well. at least the blog keeps me away from the tube.