The following story discusses eating disorders and disordered eating.

The handprinting is tiny. It has to be, to fit within the confines of a single page, the little 5 by 7 (or is it 4 by 6?) inch journal that rides around in my purse. I’m fresh out of college. 22 years old in the summer of 2012. I carry the book ostensibly because I dream of being a writer. 

I’m trying to emulate Jack Kerouac, minus the frequent indulgence of uppers. How better to build a writing habit than to always have pen and paper at hand for notes, fleeting lyrical impressions, basic practice? I’ve spent months in terror of the words of my senior portfolio professor, that success in writing requires far more consistency and persistence than it does talent. That’s what I say I’m doing with that journal, practicing, writing daily, jotting a few dozen words during stolen minutes.

What I mostly use the book for is compulsively diligent. It’s the reason I actually open it every day, filling the off-white page with minuscule black marks, short line entries in this ledger. 

1 apple- 100 cal. 

10 almonds (chewed slowly)- 80 cal.

Salad- 250.

Seed crackers (12) ~100. 

And on and on. 

The daily balances take up most of a page, leave room for a paragraph or so of reflections on the day. Occasionally, I’ll really write, fill four or five pages with substance and flavor. 

It’s the era where pop culture commentary wonders loudly whether Jennifer Lawrence deserves the role of Katniss. Yes, she’s beautiful and talented. But she’s Blonde and Big Boned and Not Skinny. How did she come to play a canonically emaciated character? Media condescends on Jessica Simpson in between babies for the roundness of her cheeks, for the use of a girdle to portray a semblance of a flat belly. 

Kate Upton has won the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Nevermind that men are drooling on their copies of GQ; the fashion world is in hysterics about this “plus-size heifer,” that her upper thighs and breasts jiggle when she walks a runway. 

My not-so-covert food log is to help me shrink. At 18, I grew my final longed-for half inch to hit 5”8’. With it, the ability to cling to a distant fantasy of modeling. But I also [freshman in college] gained the standard 15 pounds to tip the scale at the dreaded 150. My goal weight, the 126 I’d been two inches shorter as a mid-puberty freshman in high school, felt hopelessly out of reach. Still does. Each college summer, I dropped back to the low 140s via zero cheese and ample hiking, but the numbers ticked back up during the school year.

Graduated, I’m on a mission. Dropping pounds will, I’ve decided, help me live my Best Life. Improve my health. Unlock doors, somehow. Demonstrate my self-control and capability as an adult. 

This young woman doesn’t dream of a movement just a few years later, when people start to accept biologically normal body-fat percentages as healthy. When major clothing brands have lines that look good on bodies with shapes, not just the lanky runway wraiths. She cannot imagine a future in which we laugh that Anne Hathaway was ever called something other than skinny. That she will have the space and permission to retrain her eyes to accept a logical truth: that humans come in myriad body types beyond just tall and short. 

College me splashed apple cider vinegar into tall glasses of water to curb hunger. Ate tiny dinners the nights of parties and joked with sorority sisters how we were “alcorexic,” saving the calorie budget for our preferred drink mixers. 

I didn’t talk to anybody about what I did after occasions when I stress-ate too many baked goods. How I’d lock the door of the tiny blue-painted downstairs bathroom, turn on the tap, probe with two fingers for my tonsils. How I’d rinse my mouth immediately after, brush my teeth, walk the mile across campus to the gym and hop on the elliptical for at least an hour. I knew I wasn’t the only one in the house. But I didn’t dare admit to my last-ditch mitigation of my moments of weakness. I didn’t do it every meal or even every day, so how could I be bulimic? 

2025. My trained Instagram algorithm peppers my For You page with the opposite of the thinspo that dominated my secret undergraduate Tumblr. Women with muscled upper arms broader than their elbows. Women with thick, strong thighs, protective evolutionary rounding between their belly button and uterus. Bodies that beautifully, post-pubescently jiggle. 

This week I scrolled upon a compilation reel. It started with screenshots of famous women. Ariana. Cynthia. Brittany Snow. As the images fade to videos of average women weight-lifting, words rise onto the screen. The brain needs an average of 480 calories per day to function. The heart 200. The caloric needs per organ total to at least 1,450, just the ones mentioned in the reel.

My 2012 food log manifests, unbidden, across my field of vision. I lost 30 pounds that year. From over 160 in January to around 152 by late May. I’d reached 136 by Thanksgiving. Sometimes my daily log was at or over 2,000. But many, so many days, my total was between 1,000 and 1,600. Every now and then, I’d manage 850. I still didn’t see skinny in the mirror. I saw normal, I saw “not fat anymore.” With my nose bigger in my face and my jawline sharper than it had been since childhood.

Another Instagram video in the feed. How inadequate calories lead to reduced cognitive capacity, to eroding bone density with magnifying consequences decades later. My mind conjures my grandmother, known in the family for her epic metabolism. She never wore a bikini; she was an especially modest woman. But the only times in her life she had an unflat belly were her pregnancies. When she broke her hip at 92, she had no fat reserves to help with the healing, despite exceptional mobility and top-percentile physicals. She died three months later.

I’m trying to lose weight now. Hoping to dip back below 150 after being firmly 7 to 15 pounds over that mark for almost 4 years. Really, it’s because I find my cup size unwieldy. I’m annoyed having to maneuver around and across the protrusion of my breasts. But I don’t dream of being 126 pounds these days. 

The sharp collarbones and narrow upper arms I used to idolize frighten me. I’ve seen the low 130s, the 120s as an adult. I was always cold. Be damned that I could wear a size 2 or a 0 then. I want a strong heart and lungs and bones over supposedly flawless photos. I want to remain astute and strong and self-sufficient decades from now. I’ll sacrifice vanity in exchange for long-term health and independence. 

Go ahead, try and pry my improved body image from my clenched fingers as this new wave of emaciated-chic begins. Try to take it, see if you can. I eat full meals these days, and I don’t balance the numbers like a checkbook anymore. I have grip strength. I eat glistening, perfectly crisp pink bacon straight from the damn pan.