Eat…! Or Die in the Next Ten Seconds…
How do you think it feels to be condemned to wear oversize putty-coloured pants with puffy pockets when you’re 17?
The age when you’re supposed to be gorgeous, sexy, irresistible.
How do you think it feels to be passed over at the teenage dances because you’re heavy and spotty? When you don’t know any better than to put your thick luscious hair in a constraining pony tail when it could be swinging loose down your back? When the only guy who wants to dance with you is the one that all the other girls turned down because he’s drunk?
How do you think it feels to have thunder thighs (I didn’t know that expression then) and to believe that your body is repulsive? Thick, white and pasty.
How do you think it feels to look at the rolls of fat on your stomach with the contempt that is the only possible response you can imagine a potential suitor to have? And when someone finally does genuinely like you, you are so used to being rejected physically, that you cannot accept his overtures because you cannot believe it possible. Yes, he is touching your face, yes, he is seeking out your company, but this cannot really be happening. No, it’s impossible. There must be something wrong with him. Like Groucho Marx, “I don’t want to be a member of a club that would accept someone like me as a member”.
How do you think it feels to fall in love? And to see him leaning forward in his chair to play with Sylvia’s hair at the school concert? Sylvia with the down-to-her-butt hair, the pixie face, the charming dimples and the slender athletic body. (Erica Jong defines jealousy something like this: “all the fun you think they’re having”).
How do you think it feels to start up chit-chat with some guy at a party just so you don’t seem so alone and unwanted? Chit-chat that is fuelled by your fear, your desperation and the flame of sexual desire that hasn’t yet been fully quenched by stuffing your face? While all the time he’s looking for an excuse to get away.
How do you think it feels to be an eleven-o-clock princess? Yes, the one that no guy in the bar would look twice at when it’s 8pm. But hey, by the time eleven o’clock comes rolling around she merits lots more attention and he dosen’t want to go home alone. And his friends have already left so they won’t see how fat the chick he’s scored is.
How do you think it feels when he gets out of bed the next morning and says he’s going to the gym. He sits on the edge of the bed in his singlet, with his whitest of teeth and goldenest of skins and basically is telling you to fuck off. He dosen’t even pretend to be interested in your telephone number.
How do you think it feels when it’s almost impossible to get a bra that fits? Even an ugly one. And when you finally do, it’s made by a company you can’t stand supporting. (no pun intended, but there it is, it crept in)
How do you think it feels to be the last girl in the refectory, long after breakfast is over? Gorging on that 1970’s cardboard corn cereal masquerading as food. How do you think it feels to beg the other girls at the boarding school for their leftover bread-and-butter pudding? To go from table to table asking for their leftovers. To risk their contempt and ridicule because of your desperation for more. To feel their judgemental nods when they see you making a grab for the last piece of chicken, lamb or roast potato in the serving dish.
Because you know you’re going to die if you don’t have more to eat in the next ten seconds.
Thank you for reading. You can spark delight in this woman by clicking the little green heart below. Let my experience touch another person.
Here are some other stories that I have written:
