(no subject)
I came home from work tonight and turned on the TV. HBO was showing the documentary "Thin." I've been wanting to watch it since I heard about it, so I clicked to it and quickly became engrossed in the characters' struggle. Except they're not characters, of course.
I felt so detached from it all. Bone-thin women smoking into air vents, bucking authority, hoarding ketchup? OK. A 15-year-old who wore baggy jeans and ran over her eyelids with eyeliner until there were big black smudges around her eyes. Half her hair was Manic Panic red, half blonde. She's a baby, I thought.
But then she told the camera she wanted to lose 40 pounds to get to her goal weight. She pinched the skin on her neck, tugging it out and moaning to her mom about her double chin. She cried, "I just want to be thin. I've always been the fat girl. There are so many girls who are thin and I'll never be one of them."
I began sobbing with her, and my body heaved with the tick of the clock. I tried to grasp why I was even crying. Am I grateful? Relieved that I never got to that point? Because I was on my way. I have been the girl in the chair sobbing, screaming at God for not letting me be thin like the other girls. Am I sad for her? I'm 24 and know that there is light beyond the agony of high school. But it's called womanhood, and sometimes it's even darker. So maybe I'm scared and sad for all of us. Was I sobbing to ask God to send me - me and all those women - strength not to listen when our minds want to sabotage us? Strength to realize that we get no control from killing ourselves trying to be someone else.
Gizmo hopped on the couch to lick my tears away, and I thought, I just want to be strong, in every way possible.
I felt so detached from it all. Bone-thin women smoking into air vents, bucking authority, hoarding ketchup? OK. A 15-year-old who wore baggy jeans and ran over her eyelids with eyeliner until there were big black smudges around her eyes. Half her hair was Manic Panic red, half blonde. She's a baby, I thought.
But then she told the camera she wanted to lose 40 pounds to get to her goal weight. She pinched the skin on her neck, tugging it out and moaning to her mom about her double chin. She cried, "I just want to be thin. I've always been the fat girl. There are so many girls who are thin and I'll never be one of them."
I began sobbing with her, and my body heaved with the tick of the clock. I tried to grasp why I was even crying. Am I grateful? Relieved that I never got to that point? Because I was on my way. I have been the girl in the chair sobbing, screaming at God for not letting me be thin like the other girls. Am I sad for her? I'm 24 and know that there is light beyond the agony of high school. But it's called womanhood, and sometimes it's even darker. So maybe I'm scared and sad for all of us. Was I sobbing to ask God to send me - me and all those women - strength not to listen when our minds want to sabotage us? Strength to realize that we get no control from killing ourselves trying to be someone else.
Gizmo hopped on the couch to lick my tears away, and I thought, I just want to be strong, in every way possible.