#61: Jessi and the Awful Secret Part Deux
Warning: it'll be a bit ragey. Ann is going to talk about dieting now, and Jessi is going to play doctor. You might want to fix yourself a stiff high-calorie drink before clicking the LJ cut.
Jessi ruminates that she can't understand what Mim Dupre is up to in the class. It can't be that she doesn't care about the poor kids, can it? Jessi basically explains that all ballet teachers care intensely about whatever it is they're doing at the time. And yet she's so easy on all the poor children. How are they going to become dancers at this rate?
For the third class, however, Mim Dupre ramps things up. She brings in a professional pianist and teaches the kids all five positions. She makes a troublemaker called Devon demonstrate the positions, and when he can't, she yells at him. Later, she benches him for the whole class for pulling a girl's hair at the barre. I want this woman to go babysit for the Pike children, stat.
Martha, the only poor black child in Stamford, is doing everything "perfectly." Jessi doesn't have to correct her at all. Plus, she looks embarrassed when Darcy tries to compliment her. Jessi doesn't understand this because Jessi has no concept of modesty. I'm not saying that it's wrong to be confident in your abilities, but I'd far rather read about someone who's embarrassed by compliments than by someone who can't get over what a fantastic dancer she is.
Jessi helps other children named Yvonne and Alphonse and other names that I think Ann means to be inner-city ghetto kid names, and I am so physically embarrassed for Ann that I want to drop through the floor. Fortunately the dancing is interrupted by Mary holding her stomach and nearly falling over. She tells Mim Dupre that she's "getting a virus or something." Jessi volunteers to help her to the dressing room while she waits for her mother. She offers Mary a bag of chips, which she refuses. This is supposed to be a Bad Sign, but honestly it's not unreasonable to not want to eat chips when you're very nauseous, Jessi. Also, why is Jessi carrying chips? In other books she makes a huge deal about the fruit she eats because dancers can't have too much junk food.
When Jessi comes back, the children are doing the pas de chat across the floor. Martha does it well, of course, because she's black and a token black character can't fail at anything. Yvonne the fat kid jumps very high on her pas de chat, which sounds like a good thing to me, but Jessi still acts as if Yvonne is a big joke of a person. I think it's pretty horrific that in a book that's supposed to be all about the dangers of anorexia, the only fat person mentioned has to be painted as slapstick comic relief. Sometimes fat people are human beings.
Then the parents arrive, and Jessi sees Martha's mother for the first time. She looks surprised when she makes eye contact with Jessi, but says nothing.
The student teachers stand around and ask what's wrong with Mary before deciding to go to Burger King again. I find it hard to believe that serious ballet students like this, planning to make a career about it, are this casual about fast food. Also, I hate how in this book, casually eating French fries and drinking soda is a sign of normalcy, whereas if the book were about a fat person Ann would be using every opportunity to say that it's not right. Ann: excessive junk food isn't good for anybody. Moderate junk food is harmless for most people. It doesn't matter if you're fat, skinny or any of the myriad variations of "average," which does exist, you know. Also, while I'm on the topic, not all fat people are comical gluttons. Some people have autoimmune conditions that make weight loss difficult; some people have to take medications that make them fat as a side effect; some people inherit sluggish metabolisms from their ancestors. This side rant courtesy of a fat girl with CFS who eats a Dawn Diet AND exercises every day, and who had no positive fat literary role models growing up because she read the Baby-Sitters' Club. And Anne of Green Gables, who was also skinny. NOT THAT I'M BITTER. Thank you.
Jessi calls her dad to ask if it's okay to go to Burger King again, and he says yes. Then she asks him to wait in the car for her instead of coming in, and he compromises by saying he'll come in but go to the counter and order a shake, so no one will know he's her father. That's kind of cute.
Chapter Seven! Apologies in advance, I just can't see myself getting through this chapter without blowing a gasket. I'll try to make the rage as humorous as possible.
Jessi is very quiet at the BSC meeting, so the sitters pry into her business (insofar as Mary's health IS Jessi's business).
Jessi explains everything she knows about Mary.
Stacey asks if Mary might be anorexic, and Jessi the ballet dancer claims to have never heard of anorexia before.
Stacey mentions that the sitters thought SHE was anorexic in that other book I never read, because she didn't eat junk food. Yet another illustration of how the sitters think everyone's business is their own.
Claudia says she's heard of a girl who made herself throw up so as not to gain weight, and Dawn shrieks that that's "gross."
Kristy then informs the audience at home that not all skinny people are anorexic; some people are "naturally thin." The "like us, thank God" is only implied.
Stacey sagely says that dieting is still okay as long as you "do it right" and ask a doctor first.
Kristy says that "a fast weight loss is always bad news," though.
Dawn says that anorexia is "psychological," which leads Jessi to squeal "You mean the person is crazy?" No, you entitled little brat, it means that the problem is in the psyche, the mind, just like your narcissism!!!!!!!!! Pardon me a moment. Slow deep breaths, slow deep breaths, think happy thoughts, you can get through this chapter, it's only a book, it's only a Scholastic book at that, slow deep breaths, om mani padme hum...
Next, all the sitters tiptoe into Janine's room to steal a few of her psychology textbooks without asking-- not because they think she'd mind, but because they don't want to hear a lecture on anorexia from Janine. Janine's books are all alphabetized neatly, which just screams "please borrow my hundred dollar textbooks without asking, thank you," doesn't it? I wonder for a moment what Janine's major is... something that comprises astrophysics, computer science, and clinical psychology, apparently. Maybe she's going to be a clinical psychologist with an eating disorder treatment center in a space station, where the lack of gravity will keep the patients from feeling heavy, and... I don't know what to do with the computer science. Maybe they'll all float around playing video games to pass the time between therapy sessions. Sign me up.
Then I'm drawn away from my train of thought by a boiling rage cloud as the girls read aloud some fun facts about anorexia. Happy thoughts, slow deep breaths, it's only a book, it's only a book...
Kristy's book claims that an anorexic's dieting may start after a casual weight remark from a friend, which sounds like nonsense to me. It's got to take a lot more than that to make a person that terrified and neurotic. Otherwise Norman Hill would be a flyblown skeleton by now.
Mary Anne says being "moody and irritable" is a sign of anorexia. Uh-oh, maybe I'm getting anorexic, because I totally feel moody and irritable right now.
Jessi says that Mary isn't moody and irritable, which Stacey says is a good sign: "Maybe her problem has just started. If someone does something now, I bet it can be stopped before it gets too bad." Ah... Mary hasn't eaten in days and is fainting all over the dance class. How much worse is "too bad?"
Mary Anne reads aloud that "The disease can lead to weakness, fatigue, and depression, along with low blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature." And that's it. Full stop. No mention of lanugo, heart attacks, brittle bones, liver failure, or, you know, death. Very responsible for a book for tweens to downplay the symptoms of anorexia while at the same time encouraging them to accuse people they know of being anorexic. Slow deep breaths, slow deep breaths, happy thoughts...
"Wow," says Dawn the gorgeous militant vegetarian. "Can you imagine starving yourself for thinness?"
And then the gorgeous exotic Asian Claudia, "Who had just bitten into a Twinkie," mumbles "no." *Headdesk*
Jessi wonders what to do.
Kristy says she should talk to Mary.
Mary Anne says to tell a teacher.
I say things I'm not going to repeat. See, to me this "what should I do" business is the most offensive part of the whole chapter. I've actually been in the Mary position before-- not as an anorexic, but as someone whom someone else decided to "fix" the way the BSC now wants to fix her. I once had a friend who knows less about psychology than AMM suggest I get medicated for bipolar because I was very sad at the beginning of a conversation and felt happy after I'd had someone to talk to. She was convinced that my CFS was a psychiatric problem too. The harassment got to the point that I told her I didn't want to be around her anymore, and then SHE acted like the wounded party. And I know other people who have been through worse. I really really hate the whole idea that a person with no psychological or psychiatric training can observe someone displaying a psych symptom, play doctor and diagnose them behind their back without knowing what's actually going on inside the person's head, and then be responsible for pressuring them to get treatment. It scares me more than a little that Ann is advocating this kind of thing in a children's book. Relax, relax, slow deep breaths...
The phone rings then, reminding all the junior psychologist busybodies that they're in a meeting. It's Kristy's mom, asking for a sitter while Kristy goes to a basketball game. Stacey takes it, and then they talk about Shannon for awhile. Shannon apparently had a good time hanging out with Stacey and Claud the other day. She did silly imitations of the other people downtown as they passed by. Claud laughs at an impression she did of a woman with pinched, hollow cheeks who looked a little fishlike. Shannon sucked her cheeks in just like a fish!
I. Can't. Fucking. Believe. That these girls are giggling about making fun of people's appearances, let alone the appearance of a VERY SKINNY AND POSSIBLY ANOREXIC WOMAN, in a book about ANOREXIA and how it's wrong to hurt yourself to change your appearance!!!!!!!!!!!!! HULK SMASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*moments later*
Oh, and Kristy doesn't seem to want to talk about Shannon.
Chapter Eight!
It is a testament to how repulsive the last chapter was, that I'm actually relieved this is a Big House babysitting chapter instead of the main plot. It's even got Karen in it, and I don't mind. Next thing you know I'll be pining for the Pikes.
"Kristy bounded to the front door just as Stacey was about to ring the doorbell at her house. (Excuse me, her mansion.)" Not a moment must go by without reminding us of how superior Jessi and her friends are to normal folks like you and me. Charlie and Kristy run out the door to the Junk Bucket. Sam and Stacey make eyes at each other before Sam joins them; he explains that Charlie's late for a date. A date? I like to imagine he's taking Janine to the date, which means that Kristy's going with... her brother Sam? Okay, never mind.
Watson and Elizabeth leave for wherever they're going, explaining that Nannie's at a bowling tournament and will be back first unless her team wins, in which case she's going out to celebrate. I sure hope she's got a designated driver. Jessi exposits that "The Brewers sometimes go to very fancy affairs. I guess millionaires are expected to do that sort of thing."
The kids drink soda (which is okay, because they're thin) and complain that Emily's new game is putting things away, in hidden places where they can't find them later. They watch TV, play and run around in a fairly tame way until bedtime. There is a mildly amusing interlude where Emily loses the remote and Stacey can't figure out how to turn off the TV. Then, after the children are in bed, Stacey realizes that Emily has "put away" her math book. She finally finds it just as Shannon comes over uninvited. She "got back from the movies early" and doesn't have to be home until eleven, so she dropped in on Stacey. They chat until Kristy gets home.
Kristy bitchily asks if Shannon is "having a problem at home." She refuses to see Shannon to the door, and I don't really get why this is such a terrible thing. But Stacey does it, asking Shannon why Kristy is so upset. Shannon doesn't know.
Chapter nine!
On Monday, Jessi gets a letter from Quint. She writes back right away, telling him all about Mary and her anorexia which Jessi diagnosed. She knows he'll have plenty of insight. Well, he did get into Julliard at eleven; it's quite possible in the BSCverse that he could have a medical degree as well. Perhaps the bowling bag doubles as a doctor kit.
On Tuesday, she goes to the poor children's class. Devon isn't there. Raoul seems to think it's a shame that Mim Dupre scared him off by being "too hard on him," and Mary points out that everyone was criticizing Mim Dupre for being too lenient last week.
Jessi admires Mary for having the integrity to disagree with a guy she likes. I like how not lying to impress a boy is considered something special instead of basic self-respect.
Mary says her "virus" was only a "twenty-four hour" virus.
On Friday, Mary faints in ballet class. Mim Noelle screams to "get ze first aid kit from ze receptionist" and then they give her smelling salts. Did any first aid kit after about 1920 actually contain smelling salts?
Mary begs them not to call an ambulance, so instead they call her parents. Mim Noelle wants to speak to her "fazzer or muzzer."
Jessi takes Mary to the changing room again. She tells Mary that she ought to stop dieting.
Mary snaps at her for being "Just a kid," and I snicker.
Jessi is stunned, but remembers that "moodiness and irritability" are a sign of anorexia. They're also a sign of having just had your private business invaded by an eleven-year-old girl, Jessi. I mean, I totally agree that Mary needs some help, but this is the opposite of help. If I were Mary I'd never eat again just for spite.
Jessi explains about anorexia and says that Mary has "all the symptoms." Oh really? I don't remember you saying she had lanugo or a heart attack, Jessi.
Mary continues to be awesome for saying she didn't know Jessi was a "medical authority."
Jessi said "My friends and I looked it up in a book."
I hulk out again. What if Mary has another problem? What if she has, like, a rare form of cancer or something, and she's dancing away the hours until she wastes away? Or maybe she's type one diabetic and embarrassed to talk about it? Because I seem to remember that happening to someone you know. I'm not saying that's likely; I'm saying you can't diagnose anorexia by being an eleven-year-old know-it-all who stole a textbook. This is incredibly offensive.
Mary is furious that Jessi told her friends, and I would be too. She throws her bowling bag and screams, which makes Jessi cry. No one's ever yelled in her face before. Come over here, Jessi, and let me do it next.
In the hallway, Mim Noelle is talking with Mary's "fazzer." I had hoped she was mentioning Mary's visible weight loss to Fazzer, but instead she's just told him to take her to a doctor for the virus. She suggests chicken soup, and Jessi prays that Mary takes her advice.
Chapter ten! Jessi helps out at another class. Devon is back. Mary ignores Jessi. Jessi notices that Raoul is a careful listener to Mary, and surmises that they like each other. Because a man can't listen respectfully to a woman unless he wants to have sex with her. The children are better behaved. Martha admits to having had five ballet classes before. At the end of the day, she hugs Jessi. Jessi nearly cries with joy. Mary leaves to go running instead of to Burger King. That's all that happens.
I have to go do some primal scream therapy now, but I'll be back with the conclusion next time.