I laughed in delighted recognition at the first several pages of this memoir. Valerie and I suffered the same -- completely unfair/ridiculous -- childhood torment of being put on a diet and forced to "weigh in" while disappointed parents shook their heads and sighed. Like Valerie, I was NOT FAT, but I did commit the sin of developing breasts slightly early and of not being able to shop in the petites section like the non-puberty-hitters whose classroom desks surrounded mine. When I brought my best friend home with me at age 13, my mother accused me of befriending the bona-fide chubster just so that I might look small by comparison.
But childhood is where the similarities between Val and me stop. She has spent a lifetime hating her body and accepting criticisms of it as her due -- at one point numbering her self-loathing daily thoughts in the hundreds. She regularly tormented herself by slapping her naked belly in front of the mirror so that she might bear witness to the ugly jiggle. Rather than rejecting her parents' methods of shame as a weight-loss incentive, she tweaked them to a more vicious level. She took a job with a fashion magazine and starved/snorted herself thin to fit in there. She then married a man who dismissed her, after their first meeting (at one of her weight low points), as "chubby" and, therefore, not worth calling. Her second husband (before marriage) told her he'd love her body more without the belly...and she calls him "the best" in her thank yous. Idiot needs to get a clue.
Apparently Val's now succeeding on her "Not Diet," and bully for her -- but I don't believe she's conquered her lifelong battle with poor body image. The real test will be if her next favorite piece found on a shopping spree is a size 10 rather than a size 8. Will she still crow? Will she still be "successful"? Has she learned ANYTHING?
C-
Non-fiction #5
