Me 33 years ago

For anyone who didn't know me at the age of 13,  8th grade/freshman year of high school was the time when I began running compulsively and eating rice cakes with peanut butter for dinner, in the hopes of looking like Brooke Shields and the other leggy chicks in the cheesy early 1980's designer jeans commercials. When I began receiving compliments on how fit I was, etc, it negated any unpleasant feelings of adolescent angst or vague insecurities about my lot in life as a privileged teenage girl growing up in a post-modern feminist (yet-still-heavily-partiarchal) Ronald Reagan world.  When the numbers on the scale crept over 100 lbs, this was a catastrophe; I sensed that all control was lost.  I loathed the prospect of a bra.

33 years later, (and at least 33 pounds heavier, with one awesome healthy 13-year-old child of my own, and one failed marriage) I now realize that the female body is a life-giving, miraculous machine, NOT something to be measured, evaluated or judged, or a piece of meat to gain approval or validation from lascivious onlookers.  Having an eating disorder - whether anorexia or overeating/food addiction - is a peculiarly American epidemic propagated by unrealistic media images that MUST be dispelled once and for all.  It's a horrid psychic addiction that can be more insidious and destructive than substance abuse like heroin or crack...because you can't exactly kick FOOD, can you?

This haunting song was on a mix CD someone made for me once, and I just stumbled upon this rendition of it.  

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gle1bcBpISE