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Wishing For A Barbie Waist

Book Excerpt

It was the summer of 1993. I had sold my business in February and decided I would begin to make up for the lack of playfulness and fun in my life by devoting the summer to playing tennis. During the drive to the tennis courts, the glare I had leveled at my stomach lingered in my mind. It was like an internal spotlight that never turned itself off, even when I wasn't fully conscious of what I was doing to myself. I hated my stomach. The rest of my body was passable. But my stomach stuck out. Even at my lowest summer weight, it was round instead of fashionably flat, with the hard and rubbery consistency of an oversized Spalding handball. The tennis skirt, with its elastic waistband and pleats, emphasized its ugly bulk.

I knew I wasn't fat, but I never felt thin enough and always struggled to eat as little as possible. Struggle, struggle, struggle. My body was an adversary. It ate things I didn't want. It was tired and lazy when I felt I should be jogging.

But most importantly, it would not, no matter what I did, turn into the ideal body I wanted. Carefully constructed over the years, my ideal body looked like this:

Julie Christie's nose (Dr. Zhivago, 1968), a 21-inch waist (probably Barbie), and a stomach in line with the front tips of my hipbones (magazine ads for lingerie).

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