Sex and Skeletons

* * * (Written two years ago)
“What can I do for you?” Dr. Michelle Warren eyed me over her reading glasses. Her question irritated me. She knew what I was there for.
“I haven’t gotten my period in 4 months.”
We went over the routine questions, making sure I wasn’t pregnant, didn’t have cancer, wasn’t doing blow etc…then we did some x-rays which finally determined, as I knew all along that:
“This is a nutritional problem.” Dr. Warren fanned out the x-rays on her desk like a deck of cards. “You need to get enough fat in your diet. You need to have enough fat on your body. Your uterus has shrunk immensely. If we don’t reverse this soon, you may have difficulty conceiving. Essentially, your body has resorted back to a pre-pubescent stage.”
No wonder I hadn’t been much fun with my boyfriend in the bedroom that past summer—no sex drive when you’re pre-pubescent.
Dr. Warren lifted her all-concerned tone. “They’re doing a study on this kind of thing at Columbia University. It’s becoming an epidemic. You would be a perfect candidate. They’ll pay you.”
Oh. My. God. I had become a statistic. I refused to do the study.
* * *
Back at my dorm, on my roommate’s bed a saw a recent issue of Mary Claire, and from a Marc Jacob’s add on the back, a girl lying naked in a field with only blades of grass covering up her privates peered back at me. She wore that exhausted look that has become so prevalent among models today. Her eyes were empty—starvation. I recognized this look from somewhere else…oh yeah, the mirror.

(Have we forgotten all the wonderful things our tummies can do?)


I began thinking about this epidemic--these girls who had shrunk and dried up their insides far before the conventional age of drying up. We were sexless. We had given up our sex in order to be sexy. The trouble is, the more the girls become
sexually desirable (skinny) the less they are able to perform when the show is really on—to satiate the desires they have induced in men. The more they become desired, the less they desire in return. Still I couldn’t help but notice that skeletal women were popping up all over magazines and music videos—places where they are offered for the benefit of men. Is this what men want now? I asked myself and, why?

In my high school psychology class, we watched a video on eating disorders. I remember one boy, completely dumb-founded, asking, “why would a girl want to look like that? She looks like a skeleton.” Our teacher offered the explanation that it is not how the girl physically looks that a man may be drawn to, but rather what that appearance says about her character. She explained that self-discipline is a trait that some people find appealing.