In This Body: Other Women
“In middle school, I tried to have an eating disorder.”
Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED.
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You change appearance and nothing changes. This is how I know it’s all bullshit. You lose some weight, your legs look scrawny under oversized sweaters. You put on some makeup, it’s cheap and smudged. Take it off and your eyes are too small. Let your leg hair grow, it’s patchy and dark. Shave, and the color and texture of your legs is uneven, you have razor burn and missed several strips of hair around your knees.
None of it matters when I’m in a different state of mind. I get here, ugly and hurt and mean to myself, and I am devoured. The main objective is to remember how I used to feel, how it was I was able to feel like that.
I knew I was sexy. I knew I was pretty. I was proud of my successes and knew I was smart. Now, it’s all a band-aid for failure. An affective camouflage for how dumb I really am. Makeup that hides my small eyes under sharp black eyeliner wings and thick mascara.
Here, every woman I know is better. My worth now depends on besting each of them in everything.
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In middle school, I tried to have an eating disorder. Anorexia. I tried to not eat. I caved either once or twice a day, always at the same times of day. Lunch hour at my school, I’d go to the corner store with my friends and some days—most days—couldn’t resist. A binge on candy, chips, soda. If I made it all day without food till the home-cooked dinner, well I had to eat something or my parents would worry. Once I had a little, I couldn’t stop. Ate seconds or thirds till it hurt. And every morning I would wake up and think that would be the day I stopped eating.
Not that I didn’t try, but I never figured out how to make myself puke.
None of it seemed fair. I gained weight, most visibly in my stomach and face. Bulbous and ugly. Why couldn’t I gain in my tits, or ass? I had some fat on my chest, enough for a bra, but my stomach always stretched further. Every other girl close to my age seemed to be skinny, or at least shapely. Without even trying. When we got free pizza at school for whatever special event, none of them seemed to hesitate as if one slice could change their entire body.
I stuck my fingers down my throat, dirty untrimmed nails, making myself drool heavy but never puke—till the back of my throat bled.
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I lost a lot of weight my last year of middle school. Got put on an elimination diet by my doctor and found out I had a gluten sensitivity. Once I got off that, I went down to a hundred and thirty pounds and basically have stayed there since then.
It didn’t change things, not really or right away. Still had tummy fat that hung over my jeans, and I still thought no other girl had that hidden under her shirt.
After I lost the weight, I remember one of my dad’s friends saying look out for the sharks, they’ll bite. The sharks, meant boys. But they never bit. Sharks were really men.
When I lost all that weight, my tits didn’t shrink much. I didn’t know how to deal with my new shape. Didn’t know how to dress, what it meant to the world around me. I wanted to be like the punk girls I knew. Artistic and dark and giving no fucks. I cut all my t-shirts up, ripped out all their necklines and didn’t realize it would give me cleavage.
Men, honked and shouted at me from their cars. Sharks, biting. They approached me on the street. While the boys at school saw a girl trying too hard, those men saw something worth pursuing.
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Creepy dudes on the street hardly approach me anymore, unless I’m all made up to go dancing. A handful of months ago, I was proud of that. I had mastered the art of being unapproachable. Sunglasses and headphones. A long jacket and oversized sweater would hide my cleavage, my ass. Anything worth yelling out your car window at.
In this place, where all other women are better and I am nothing—worse than nothing, the absence of something: a deleted sentence, an erased drawing, an object created and burned. In this place, the reason I don’t get approached by men is because I am unattractive. I am not worth the time it takes to objectify.
I can change my appearance to be any woman I want, and that reality—that feeling won’t change. There’s no way to move back to the place when I feel okay about my body, because maybe that place never existed.
When I’m back where I belong, it won’t matter if I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, no makeup and unshaven. If some random creepy dude hits on me in the street, they better watch out. I’m a motherfucking shark, and I will bite.
That is who I want to be, if she exists.
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Read the previous In This Body: here.
Header image courtesy of Rob MacNeil. To view more of his photography, go here.