Dresses and Body Dysmorphia
Two and a half weeks ago I practically had to pour myself into this dress. It was skintight, it hobbled my steps. It made me look simultaneously very, very curvy and dangerously thin.
Today it was cool enough to wear it again, I was sure it would be even tighter, sure I had somehow gained weight, sure my waist was thicker, my hips more padded.
All day I see myself half-dressed, reflected in mirrors. Most of the time I don’t notice the protruding ribs, the hipbones descending into a V shape, the pointed shoulder blades, the little dips behind my collarbones. I see only the almost negligible pad of fat over the muscles in my stomach, the slight jiggling of my thighs when I dance onstage, the fact that my ass isn’t as smooth or perky or small as I’d like it to be.
I can’t see myself as others see me most of the time. I’m what? A size four? Two, depending on the brand maybe? My few contemporary skirts are a size six, and I’ve had to take them in several times over the past two years, I don’t even know what my true size is anymore. Why can’t I relate that to my shrinking form? A better question, perhaps, is why I am so obsessed with numbers, the numbers on clothing tags, on the scale, on the tape measure? I dislike mathematics, while their objectivity appeals to me (A is always A), I find them ultimately pointless, they only measure, they do not create.
I, also do not create, though. I seek to destroy myself, to dwindle to nothing. Am I so full of self-loathing, so shy, so self-effacing at my core that I literally want to disappear, or is it something else?
I was raised to have a healthy relationship with food, I was taught that food makes us strong, that in moderation, even sweets are a good thing. I was taught, for as long as I can remember, that eating is nothing to feel guilty about. My sister and I were not allowed to have Barbie dolls, lest we sink into a pattern of self-loathing and critique because we did not resemble the little plastic women we had played with as children.
I wonder, always, ‘How did I get here?’ How did I get to this dark, ugly place where I am never good enough, where goodness is measured by beauty, and beauty is measured by frailty?
Intellectually I know that this is unhealthy, that it wreaks havoc on my heart, my skin, my stomach, everything, but when it comes down to it I don’t want to stop or ‘get better’. I am afraid that if I do, if I eat what I want, when I want it, and stop only when I am full that cushions of fat will creep in, covering my ribs, smoothing my hip bones to a point where they cannot be differentiated from my stomach, filling out the hollows of my clavicles, hiding my sharp shoulder blades from view. I am afraid that I would not only be perceived as less, but that I would BE less if I became more.