Being Thin Is So Not Worth It

Liz Jones, fashion editor for the Daily Mail, has written about her 40-year battle with anorexia, bringing a face to the devastating belief so many women hold, that they would “rather be thin than happy or healthy”. (Warning – this may be very triggering for some people).

Her obsession began at age 11, and she has clear memories of her mother bringing her toast with butter and marmalade, which she hid, rather than eat. Despite being

…so vocal in campaigning for more diverse women on the catwalk, on the covers of magazines, and in adverts – encouraging women to love themselves as they are, not to conform to some outrageous, one-tiny-size-fits-all ideal of beauty

she admits

I certainly don’t practise what I preach and am in fact secretly proud that I’m still a size 8, a sample size. I love my concave stomach and I can’t help, despite my beliefs, but regard women who are fat, who don’t exercise, who gorge on things like Galaxy, as somehow lazy. They just don’t try hard enough.

I wonder how she reconciles these conflicting beliefs? Is it really possible to believe that women should love themselves as they are, while simultaneously believing that fat women are lazy and lack willpower? I do not think it is, but I also suspect that Ms Jones is too busy fighting her own body to really examine this hypocrisy. I don’t mean to judge her for this – I understand that this is a part of her disease, and I know that for many women this is a way of life. I think it is terribly sad that so much of her self worth is wrapped in this battle which she will probably never be free of. She writes

I might not have been good at anything else – relationships, sport, conversation – but I have been really good at being thin.

On the whole, I have this thin thing under control: I eat just enough to keep me stable, to avoid various people (my mum, a sister, a husband) interfering.

It is heartbreaking to me that forcing your body to be a certain size has become something that we strive for, to the detriment of everything else. If we as a society were not so obsessed with having to look a certain way, how much pain would be lifted from our collective psyche? Why do we accept behaviors such as “vomit[ing food] straight back onto [the] plate, in front of everyone” as being healthy and desirable so long as they mean that your body fits a certain—apparently healthy and desirable—mold? Jones admits that she has had her period “perhaps half-a-dozen times in [her] life” – a clear indication that her body believes it is starving, and is trying toprotect blood and protein reserves to keep her alive.

When Jones’ sister’s visit coincides with a warning from her doctor that she is heading for osteoporosis, she decides

… for three weeks, to eat normally. To see if my world falls apart and I become fat, and bloated, and lazy. To see if I can no longer think straight (I never eat if I’m writing, it slows my brain), or if I become happier.

Understandably, this creates feelings of both excitement and panic. For someone who can “survive on muesli, fruit, pasta with nothing on it, water, for weeks, months, years . . .“, and considers eating “a whole bar of chocolate, a whole banana, or even a whole avocado” to be pigging out, the thought of eating “normally” must be truly terrifying.

I admire what Jones’ sister was trying to do – I expect that after so many years of worrying about her, being given the opportunity to feed her anything and everything must have seemed a huge relief. I suspect that the sister was trying to get as many calories into Jones as humanly possible, while simultaneously trying to introduce her to the world of deliciousness that is food, in the hopes that she would be unwilling to give up such delights and return to her previous muesli-with-juice ways. I may even have done the same thing in her place, but I’m not sure it was the best way to go.

Jones goes straight from having nothing but black coffee for breakfast to having “three scrambled eggs made with cream, butter and salt and pepper on white bread with butter on it, …juice and two Dove digestives“ or “peanut butter on a home-made bap with a sliced (whole!) banana on top, followed by porridge made with cream and sugar”. She eats “two perfect scones with jam and cream, every day”, and her sister cooks “pancakes, apple crumble, rice pudding, and chocolate pudding and custard” for dessert, all in the first week. Jones comments “I feel incredibly fat, and lazy, and tired… [but] when I stand up, I don’t see stars and black clouds”.

The diet she describes as normal does not reflect my normality in any way. I love to cook, desserts especially, but I only do so occasionally, and my normal diet is much lower in fat (and volume) and higher in vegetables than this. If I ate that way for a week, I suspect I would feel unwell and over-full too. However, not seeing stars and black clouds when you stand up? That’s a GOOD thing.

Sadly, in the second week, despite enjoying the food, Jones is annoyed to find that not starving herself all the time makes her happier, and worries that eating is causing her to lose all self-control, saying

I find to my chagrin that I’m in a better mood, pretty much all day. I snap at people less, I smile more. I have found that if I eat eggs or some other form of protein in the morning, I’m much less depressed.
This whole gluttony thing has changed other aspects of my behaviour, too. Twice, I do not make my bed, which is unheard of.

Can eating really turn you into a slob? Or is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Her life has revolves around the fact that if you eat too much you are disgusting and have no will-power, so when she begins to eat, she validates her own beliefs by not making the bed, since clearly not making your bed on occasion makes you a terrible evil person (I almost never make mine – must be because I’m fat! But then, The Husband doesn’t make his either (it’s the same bed!), and he’s thin, so…).

By the end of the experiment, Jones has noticed that her skin has become less dry (a sign of improved health?), and she looks less gaunt. She says:

I discover all sorts of activities that had been verboten: I take myself to a sunny hill and just sit, with a picnic. Pastry, I find, is pretty wonderful. I eat popcorn and ice cream at the cinema. I eat avocados – for so long my ultimate bete noir.

Unfortunately, for this woman who has never picnicked before, the pressure to be thin will always overwhelm everything else.

…on the last Thursday of my experiment, I weigh myself. I can barely look down at the little dial: nine stone, it says. My stomach is huge, like I’m pregnant.
…All this eating has proved what I thought all along: food makes you soft, lazy, undisciplined.
When my sister goes back to Australia, I know I will clear out the fridge. It makes no sense, but I’d rather be thin than happy or healthy.

And that right there is the ghastly truth. It takes guts to admit that straight out – and the scary thing is that while she knows that what she is doing is unhealthy, many people will continue to congratulate her for being so dedicated to maintaining a “healthy” weight, and will continue to insist that those of us who are fat should really aspire to Liz Jones’ level of self-control, so that we may save ourselves from the horrors of the fat.

I feel like this article was sincerely intended to be a warning, but at the same time it supports so much fat and body hatred. By the end of it I just wanted to cry, and to give Jones a hug, to try to relieve some of the hatred she so clearly has for herself. Through all the stereotypes and the confusion, the message I got is being thin is so not worth it, but I’m sure that many others will feel validated in their desire to be thin at all costs. For me, it was a reminder of why I decided to stop dieting – the cost of being thin is too high. I am not willing to subject myself to this obsessive hell just to be what someone else says I should be. I would rather be happy, fat and healthy, than thin and miserable. So let me finish with Jones’ final words, for anyone who may have missed them way down at the bottom of that article:

It’s too late for me, but if now the sun is shining and you are thinking of all the ways you can ‘Get that Bikini Body’, entering the endless cycle of guilt and recrimination, then DON’T.