ANOREXIC IDOL:
IN BARFY PURSUIT OF MALE ATTENTION
4/4/06
Last Sunday, I had a few nanoseconds of peace and quiet, so I decided to indulge in the rare event of sitting on the sofa with the morning sun at my back and reading the Times. Ahh. I cozied up to the Style section, always my first choice, because, you know, I'm not going to pretend that on Sunday mornings I feel like being deep or intellectual right off the bat.
So the topic of the lead feature was anorexia (“Before Spring Break, the Anorexic Challenge,” by Alex Williams, 4/2.) It seems that the Internet has paved the way for yet another dispersed worldwide community to cling to each other. This particular virtual community is known as “pro-ana,” or in other words, girls who are, believe it or not, pro-anorexia. The article focuses on these evangelic and perversely body-obsessed gals participating in starvation/bulimic/obsessive-exercise triathlons of sorts, all in preparation for that highly important, deeply philosophical and introspective time of life known as “lookin' good in a string bikini at spring break.”
I had to sigh. Because, like, I have to (gulp) admit -- it, like, took me back to high school years. And, like, not in a fond way.
Okay, I have to make a difficult, if not humiliating and pride-swallowing confession. I went through my own phase of wacky thin obsession as a teenager. There were a few years where I, too, participated in the barfing, the starving, the laxative and diet pill and diuretic popping. Horrid, awful, gross - indeed. It was.
Only it didn't have anything to do with lookin' good in a string bikini at spring break. It had more to do with the fact that the really popular cliquey chicks in junior high treated me like I was a geek and a lamo, way un-cool, undesirable, and some sort of disgusting human life form that deserved to be vomited out of acceptable junior high society, or even more to the point, a piece of shit on the bottom of their shoe. Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums up where it started for me.
See, I had been able to maintain a relatively cool attitude about being a low life for quite a while in junior high and into high school. I kind of reveled in it. I was weird to the extreme, carried a briefcase to school instead of a backpack, read Nietzsche and Freud in the corners of the cafeteria, brooded, gave everyone dirty looks, and refused to talk to pretty much anyone and everyone. Those were my golden days. But at some point I decided that being an outcast was way too much work, caused too much inner angst, and was probably not going to land me a date to the prom someday (why this mattered I'm not sure.) Trying to fit in with the popular cliquey ho's was an inevitable endeavor that I undertook in my sophomore year.
It's not like I really wanted to be like the popular girls. They seemed like aliens to me on some level. I mean, these were the girls I had had so much fun giving dirty looks to prior to this. I didn't have anything in common with them. But still, there was the nagging desire I felt to fit in.
And so the obsession began -- with small things like trying to dress spiffier and getting a perm (disaster), trying to think cooler thoughts, listen to cooler music, and eat cooler food. I certainly wasn't fat, or even overweight at all, but the message from the inner circle was definitely that thinner, being emaciated even, was better. Cooler. Hotter.
Looking through my eyes, those of a former piece of shit on the bottom of the cool girls' shoes, what I could decipher as their foremost value in life was this:
What you do, how you behave, what you look like, and how you perceive yourself must be for the sole purpose of getting guys to want to nail you.
Whether or not you ultimately allow yourself to be nailed is optional. But any girl worth anything must be able to walk into a room, or onto a beach, and attract the sexual desire of any male present. Her ability to do that equals her self worth. Period. It's the cool girls' credo.
This, in turn, sets up a bizarre kind of female misogyny. The cool girls I knew were all in competition with one another to be the hottest, thinnest, and most utterly desired by guys. Essentially, they all hated and resented one another, tore each other down at any given opportunity, and yet on the surface pretended to have some kind of ultra exclusive incestual sisterly bond.
I was pretty lucky and pulled out of the wacko mindset somewhere around the time I went away to college. In the end, I suppose I realized that devoting my entire being to the goal of attracting the male gaze, especially by means of destroying myself, was really friggin' empty. Not to mention that starvation gets kind of old and boring (and besides makes you feel really really hungry.) It's too bad girls get hooked into that at all. It's so crippling.
And it's unfair. Because guys aren't thinking about this crap at that age -- not even a little. Sure, they want to have sex. But they aren't picky. They're humping their bed sheets at that age, thinking about women of all sorts ranging from mothers of friends to school nurses to chicks in gym class to, I don't know, empty egg cartons and cottage cheese containers probably. Anything that doesn't move for more than three seconds and is remotely female shaped is fair game. You think they care about size 2 versus size 4 versus size 6? You think they're obsessing over how bony girls' hips look in a mini skirt or what the caloric intake of the Playboy centerfold is? I'm telling you, if there was a really ugly woman named Bruno in the centerfold of Playboy, and she were naked, guys would still get off.
And so the mission of the pro-ana is futile. It's a game that later in life will land them in the role of hopelessly empty Stepford wife - exercising obsessively and getting plastic surgery endlessly in the hopes of looking 30 forever. That never really works. Meanwhile, those guys they're devoting their lives to impressing still won't care. Talk about a marginal way to live. Better to get back to the Nietzsche and the Freud, the briefcase and the well balanced meals before it's too late.
4/6/2006
I had two friends in high school who were as you describe: bookworms, shy, nerdy. And somehow when they got out of high school they blossomed into very attractive women. They totally didn’t care about being a beach party ho.
4/6/2006
You are great. Always to the point and evoking a chuckle. A real plasure to read. Thanks.
Paul
4/7/2006
As a normal sex manic in high school, I never tried to hump cottage cheese containers! Or any apple pie or liver, unlike Portnoy! I do recall that overweight females were generally known to be more liberal in providing sexual output, perhaps to make up for their perceived diminished value in sexual attractiveness.
As far as thin being perceived as hot by males, recent scientific studies suggest young women are incorrect. Men have a biological preference for the two-thirds relationship between bust, waist and hips: 36-24-36! So the women should stop starving and instead exercise, get padded bras or implants if not 36 C, and enjoy!
PS. I think Freud was a great fiction writer and enjoyed his Dreams book, but I preferred "Psychopathology of Everyday Life" and "Jokes and their Relationship to the Unconscious."
4/7/2006
A comment about above comment encouraging women to get breast implants to fit "biological preference" of males: I think the point Jacooz is trying to make is to love thyself as you are, not try to fit into perceived or "scientifically proven" acceptable body forms. I do not fit the 36-24-36 profile and my husband quite loves my body! As a man, try padding "down there" because "science tells you you should" and see how much of a man you feel like.
4/7/2006
I am stunned that someone as good looking as you wasn't in the in crowd in high school. I was lucky (although I didn't realize it then). I went to an all girls school, we wore uniforms and boys were not an issue. Took me several years to learn how to dress once the uniform was gone and the nuns did cause damage but I didn't experience that awful meanness that teenage girls are so prone to. So sad that time is wasted on getting a man's approval.
5/1/2006
biology does not conform to political correctness. The two thirds ratio seems to be biologically imprinted. Biologists theorize it is related to fetility and thus natural selction favored. Just like symmetrical features may be seen as more desirable due to the absence of sinus infections. One should not confuse what would be deirable in a Left wing wet dream fantasy with actual scientific evidence of real animal behavior.
8/29/2006
"I'm telling you, if there was a really ugly woman named Bruno in the centerfold of Playboy, and she were naked, guys would still get off."
If that were true, she would BE in Playboy and you wouldn't have to merely suggest the idea on a website. For that matter, you'd see women like that doing lapdances at strip clubs - and you don't, there's a reason for that. (Hint: it's not that men DON'T care about looks.)
8/30/2006
The argument that men don't care about looks because they hump bedsheets or jerk off into milk cartons is easily refuted. The bedsheets and milk cartons are *substitutes* used out of desperation, not choice. How many men, given a choice, wouldn't choose to have sex with a beautiful woman over a blanket? Or for that matter, over "a really ugly woman named Bruno?" Unless one lives under a rock and has zero common sense, these questions answer themselves.
