Rituals

By: Paulina Sicius

An illustration by the author of a scale, albeit not that of her gym class.

My first diet was when I was eleven years old. In those days, Avril Lavigne, Fergie, and the whole slew of Disney Channel actresses were my body inspirations, with their flat stomachs, defined collarbones, and angular hips. There were also myriad Tumblr pages to choose from dedicated to the 'thinspo' trend—pages dedicated to curating pictures of unhealthily skinny people to serve as inspiration for people seeking to look the same. I’d spend afternoons after school scrolling through these Tumblr blogs, saving my favorite pictures of thin, smiling models onto my computer, and planning to return to them whenever I craved pizza or was sad about my weight. The pictures would either suppress my appetite or remind me that there was a skinner—and thus a happier and better—version of myself.

The diets began around the same time I came to understand that my weight was a way for society to determine my worth: in my fifth-grade gym class. One day, we all stood in a line in front of a scale, each student taking turns to step on. I remember the teacher violently sliding the weight back and forth until achieving a perfect balance, revealing a number presumably more valuable than an exam grade or IQ level. Because the teacher would say the number loud enough for the next students to hear, a game of telephone followed, ensuring everyone memorized each classmate’s weight. A skinny girl with a freckled face, about a foot shorter than I was, stepped off the scale right before me. Eighty-seven pounds. I followed her and stepped on the scale. The teacher slid the single digits' weight as far to the right as possible. The scale protested and asked for more, more. She slid the hundred pounds mark, the scale dancing until it came to a stop. She called out the highest weight thus far and scribbled it onto a paper on her clipboard. I jumped off the scale and ran to the bathroom, where I cried for the rest of the period. I had been indoctrinated into womanhood.

Thus began another pillar of perceived femininity, the infamous diets. My mother was proud of my diets, which included excessive calorie restrictions. While my dad and younger athletic sister ate pasta, my mom prepared salads for us. No ranch or vinaigrette dressing, she would say. Just a little bit of olive oil and vinegar. I began bringing my own lunches to school, usually just a hard-boiled egg and baby carrots. I threw half of the carrots away, a symbol of my self-determination, the touchstone of an exemplary woman. I quickly became a master at counting calories in my head—I reviewed everything I ate multiple times per day, revising my numbers with an accountant's precision to ensure I did not miss a 5-calorie piece of gum or an almond.

My mom and I also bonded through reading Vogue magazines. We laid in bed on our stomachs, flipping through the glossy pages, capturing the smells of the perfume samples as we went along. I pretended to like the fashion; I oohed and aahed at the puffy dresses and ornate jewelry. My mom pretended to admire the photography. In reality, we both participated in a game of comparing our thick thighs and bellies to the rail-thin models. When my mother and I were done flipping through the magazine, I cut out the pictures of the skinniest models and added them to a collage on my bedroom wall.

The practices I shared with my mother in my pre-teen years were merely introductions to what I later shared with my friends as a teenager. We would run countless miles to “get skinny,” compete over who could eat less at lunch and eventually share best practices to make ourselves purge. Working at Hollister when I was sixteen did not help, as our weight was constantly being assessed. If you were deemed too big to fit into their smaller jeans, you’d be punished by being sent to work in the stock room, ensuring you did not poison the brand’s image of skinny and happy teen girls. I kept to salads and squeezed into the smallest jeans possible to maintain my spot in the front of the store.

After high school, I maintained a perpetual diet. I may not have been as meticulous about calorie counting during college as I had been in my earlier years, as I had long papers to write and parties to attend. However, I still thought about the 100 calories in the banana before unpeeling it or the checked calorie labels on everything I ate.

At twenty-six, I’ve only recently come to terms with my body. Something inside me clicked one day, I don’t know if it was due to fatigue from over a decade of dieting or moving to a country that is less obsessed with the dainty feminine than the United States, I just realized I did not want to spend the rest of my life measuring my worth based on my body weight. There were more important things: landing my first job, graduating with my master's, and falling in love. I did not want to fall for the same trap as so many women have before me. I had watched my mother suffer with her desire to be thin my whole life, and I wasn’t going to do the same. Now, I allow myself to eat a second serving of cake during birthday parties, share a plate of cheesy nachos with my boyfriend, and enjoy a couple of rounds of cold beers with coworkers without a second thought.