Body of evidence

I’ve done everything. I’ve replaced sugared drinks with power water (my new obsession is Light Water which can be found in 7-Eleven… this is not a plug). I walk five kilometers every day on the polo field. I do Plyo with Aries Fonancier who has classes in Polo Club and Pearl Drive. I do Pilates (okay, will begin to this week, promise). I have a vitamin intake that could rival Amy Winehouse’s “recreational” vitamin intake (fish oil, Acai and vitamin E are my top choices). I drink Chinese herbs and tea (thanks to The Fiancé’s Chinese background). I do portion control (it works). I don’t tan and slather on SPF 50 every day (there are now three UVs to watch out for).

I’m paying for my 20s.

Yet when I had my general checkup in Hong Kong, which is the explanation for my two-week absence from our Sunday pages, I learned I wasn’t going to die soon but also that I had gained 11 pounds and my waist had ballooned three sizes.

It’s like Thor’s revenge for all the olla podrida of dieting and my obstreperous behavior in general. I should have taken it seriously when Dennis Lustico and Rhett Eala gave me warning looks that I wasn’t fitting in my usual sylphlike dresses. This may well be sulfuric evidence of my death as a waif. The pixie cut, the little boy body (that seems to be the apotheosis for the deity of faåhion) and sunken cheeks: all gone. I had finally grown into my body, with little curves and hips that won’t slip into cigarette pants no more. Talk about a late puberty.

Was it weird that I was actually happy about this?

My career as a serial dieter has come to a nidifugous end. If you can’t make friends with bread, you can’t be friends with anyone.

Who ever smiled back during the whole heroin chic/CK One era? Now everyone is wearing orange lipstick and smiling like Miley Cyrus on the cover of W magazine. It’s a good time to embrace that Betty Boop body. What particularly surprises me (at least in my world, still subsisting on a worn-out Atkins/aerobic lifestyle) is that a size 4/6 is considered full. This can eff with people’s brains. This is real-world skinny. Fashion peeps are always on the qui vive for patches of cellulite, a soft belly or full, cherubic cheeks on a famous face or body. Kate Winslet famously berated a magazine for peeling her body like a carrot with Photoshop. Some European catwalks have banned underweight models since one model died of a heart attack from malnourishment a few years ago. So you can say there is a mild backlash.

The very things that make a woman lovable and — dare I say — seductive are frowned upon by society. It’s like we find these very things desirable but vie for the exact opposite because Anna Wintour and Co. say so. The very sign of poverty, which is a starved and desiccated frame, is also what the richest and wealthiest covet. Think Allegra Beck, the tragic niece of Gianni Versace and daughter of Donatella Versace. It is a disturbing irony.

On the other hand, middle class Americans face the disease of obesity stemming from having too little time to prepare healthier meals and surrendering to fast food. Food is such a complicated element in society, when it’s the very source of life. Added to the fact that eating food is a very intimate ritual. It enters your body; it can protect or destroy your internal organs; it can leave you celebrated or ostracized by society; it becomes you. Thus the saying, “You are what you eat.” In many moneyed societies, it’s what you don’t eat. Bird eaters are lauded for being disciplined and refined. It’s become a religion for the ladies who (don’t) lunch.

A few weeks ago, my friend’s sister died of anorexia. She said that she feared food. Like one would fear bees or roaches, she shuddered the thought of food entering her body. Much like one would be afraid of ever getting raped. She was shriveled like a weathered tree branch yet all she saw were belly folds, a bloated stomach (the ironic result of starvation) and log-like legs covered in vibrissae. It wasn’t enough; she starved until her last breath.

In some way, we live with an anorexic state of mind. We punish ourselves when we eat food that makes us happy. We reward ourselves for eating cardboard with nourishing meals that make the soul glow. In general, I’ve made friends with food with a fervor that challenges my studied table manners. Yet I do still catch myself worrying about my belly and I still suck my cheeks in to a sunken lizard-like style when I still see vestiges of body issues cultivated by years of reading fashion magazines. Old habits die hard.

A socially acceptable linear frame is much like a Degas painting: delicate and fragile but in reality so much pain was involved. The poor ballerinas who posed for hours for the artist to capture them on canvas experienced astonishing pain. Their feet would bleed and bruise and it was speculated that some couldn’t move for days after each sitting.

I have had a complicated relationship with food. My former activities included guilty midnight binges followed by a week of austere meals composed of thin wafers and watered down soup. There would be times I would nod off during a lunch meeting or have a hard time reading a book. This was not only about my body anymore.

A few years ago my size zero frame was part of the foppery of a narcissistic era. It not only ravaged my body, but my emotions and, to a certain extent, my soul. I realized this one time when I was eating pizza one day, scraping off the toppings and leaving the fusty crumbs on the plate. It was a picture of waste, vanity and sadness. Perhaps, too, of the things that defined me during that fetid time in my life.

Happiness is not only a state of mind, it’s a condition. Grab that sandwich and try to make yourself happy. It is truly the way to your heart.