a spin-the-bottle game at summer camp in seventh grade and the other was Mikey Bronstein, the alto saxophonist from band class, who was sweet but wore thick Coke-bottle glasses and still let his mother pack him crustless bologna sandwiches in brown paper bags for lunch. He’d taken her to a freshman football game, held her hand, and called her his girlfriend. Mortified by his enthusiasm, she’d dumped him within a week.
Not long after Lizzie tipped the scales at 168 pounds, she arrived downstairs one morning to find an egg-white omelet on the table rather than her usual bowl of Frosted Flakes. “Honey,” Janice said, as Lizzie balked, “don’t you think you would feel better if you lost a little bit of weight?”
“No,” Lizzie said. “I’ll be miserable no matter what I weigh.” But she knew this wasn’t true; didn’t skinny girls have more fun, get more boyfriends, attract more attention?
“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Janice said. “It’ll be fun. We’ll do it together.” She patted her own thighs, underneath the pleats of her tweed slacks. “I’ve got to do something about my cellulite, too.” And Lizzie imagined living like her mother, who had been on a diet as long as she could remember, who nibbled on green vegetables and cottage cheese rather than French fries and chocolate popcorn in order to maintain her figure, and she wanted to cry. Her future spread out before her, a barren wasteland with all the joy and grease stripped out.
But maybe if she was skinny, Lizzie thought, she would get attention from boys. Dates. Love. And that would be even better than chocolate popcorn. So she did it. She stopped her lunchtime raids of the vending machines in the cafeteria, cut out the secret trips to McDonald’s that she usually made on the way home from school, and stopped hoarding candy bars under her bed. She ate the tofu salad and skinless chicken and mounds of steamed spinach that her mother prepared without once making a face or holding her nose.
It was about this time, the fall quarter of her freshman year, that she joined the swim team—initially because it provided an easy way for her to bail on the etiquette and elocution lessons, per Margaret’s advice, and then because she found she actually enjoyed it. And, amazingly, between the exercise and the self-restraint, she found the scale registering lower and lower: 162 pounds, 157, 149. Clothes began to hang off her, and she thought she could actually see cheekbones. Her mother, she could tell, was pleased. Lizzie began to look forward to her mother’s little exhalation of pleasure when the scale registered a drop, pushed harder just to impress her. Even her father noticed the change, dipping his Wall Street Journal one morning to examine her over the top of the business section. “Lookin’ good, pumpkin,” he said before turning the page. It made her week.
When she hit the twenty-pound mark, Janice lent Lizzie her platinum card and sent her on a shopping spree. Lizzie filled her closet with trendy new things, dumping the baggy cargo pants and oversized T-shirts, the dresses she’d stealthily purchased in the Generous Juniors department, and replacing them with neon-pink halter tops and denim miniskirts. She couldn’t wait for the moment when she could put on something sexy—a fancy cocktail dress, maybe even heels?—and walk out the front door on a date with a cute boy while her parents watched from the kitchen window.
And it worked: Losing all that weight got her the attention she wanted. That, and much, much more.
by the spring of her freshman year, it seemed like Lizzie had been dying to lose her virginity forever. She felt it hanging like a yoke around her neck. Girls in her class had been bragging about their sexual conquests for years: starting with Frenching and feel-ups in sixth grade, moving on to blow jobs and fingering (a phrase she found both obscene and banal—some cross between an alien probe and playing the
Not long after Lizzie tipped the scales at 168 pounds, she arrived downstairs one morning to find an egg-white omelet on the table rather than her usual bowl of Frosted Flakes. “Honey,” Janice said, as Lizzie balked, “don’t you think you would feel better if you lost a little bit of weight?”
“No,” Lizzie said. “I’ll be miserable no matter what I weigh.” But she knew this wasn’t true; didn’t skinny girls have more fun, get more boyfriends, attract more attention?
“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Janice said. “It’ll be fun. We’ll do it together.” She patted her own thighs, underneath the pleats of her tweed slacks. “I’ve got to do something about my cellulite, too.” And Lizzie imagined living like her mother, who had been on a diet as long as she could remember, who nibbled on green vegetables and cottage cheese rather than French fries and chocolate popcorn in order to maintain her figure, and she wanted to cry. Her future spread out before her, a barren wasteland with all the joy and grease stripped out.
But maybe if she was skinny, Lizzie thought, she would get attention from boys. Dates. Love. And that would be even better than chocolate popcorn. So she did it. She stopped her lunchtime raids of the vending machines in the cafeteria, cut out the secret trips to McDonald’s that she usually made on the way home from school, and stopped hoarding candy bars under her bed. She ate the tofu salad and skinless chicken and mounds of steamed spinach that her mother prepared without once making a face or holding her nose.
It was about this time, the fall quarter of her freshman year, that she joined the swim team—initially because it provided an easy way for her to bail on the etiquette and elocution lessons, per Margaret’s advice, and then because she found she actually enjoyed it. And, amazingly, between the exercise and the self-restraint, she found the scale registering lower and lower: 162 pounds, 157, 149. Clothes began to hang off her, and she thought she could actually see cheekbones. Her mother, she could tell, was pleased. Lizzie began to look forward to her mother’s little exhalation of pleasure when the scale registered a drop, pushed harder just to impress her. Even her father noticed the change, dipping his Wall Street Journal one morning to examine her over the top of the business section. “Lookin’ good, pumpkin,” he said before turning the page. It made her week.
When she hit the twenty-pound mark, Janice lent Lizzie her platinum card and sent her on a shopping spree. Lizzie filled her closet with trendy new things, dumping the baggy cargo pants and oversized T-shirts, the dresses she’d stealthily purchased in the Generous Juniors department, and replacing them with neon-pink halter tops and denim miniskirts. She couldn’t wait for the moment when she could put on something sexy—a fancy cocktail dress, maybe even heels?—and walk out the front door on a date with a cute boy while her parents watched from the kitchen window.
And it worked: Losing all that weight got her the attention she wanted. That, and much, much more.
by the spring of her freshman year, it seemed like Lizzie had been dying to lose her virginity forever. She felt it hanging like a yoke around her neck. Girls in her class had been bragging about their sexual conquests for years: starting with Frenching and feel-ups in sixth grade, moving on to blow jobs and fingering (a phrase she found both obscene and banal—some cross between an alien probe and playing the
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