Hungry by Sheila Himmel Page A

being the good girl in the family, Ned was simply “the boy.” He had a lot more latitude. With behavior and food, Ned got green lights while Elaine got Stop signs. And then he wondered how his edginess affected his behavior in raising Lisa. He had tried so hard not to show anxiety, but it had to have broken through.
    Brother and sister had a few points of historical disagreement. Ned remembered Elaine wanting to kill herself, even picking up a knife. Elaine had no memory of that.
    In their experience of specific foods, especially sweets, it was as if they were raised in different houses.
    ELAINE: We were never allowed to have cotton candy. They’d say, “It’s all sugar. You can’t have it.”
    NED: I got cotton candy. I don’t remember that being an issue.
    ELAINE: I had a bite of it somewhere. You must have gotten it.
    NED: When we went to a ballgame, we’d have cotton candy.
    ELAINE: No. We’d have peanuts when we went to a ballgame.
    NED: Cotton candy is one of those things that once you’ve had it, it’s not that good.
    ELAINE: Maybe I would encourage somebody else to get it. So I could have a bite.
    One weight-related incident was seared in both of their minds. When Elaine was twenty-one and Ned eighteen, they and a friend of Elaine’s spent the summer traveling around Europe. Elaine gained twenty-five pounds; Ned lost twenty-five pounds. Elaine couldn’t believe the injustice. “We ate the same food!” she said, exasperated. And worse: “When we got off the plane Dad said, ‘Oh my god, what happened to you?’” To her, not to Ned.
    This is a textbook example of what fathers, particularly, are cautioned not to say to their daughters. Eating disorders are about the hunger for love and acceptance. Girls often yearn for their fathers’ affection, approval, and ideas about what’s attractive and desirable in women. Their dad was not a cruel man. Les loved his family and liked to joke around. But he had gone bankrupt and had had two heart attacks by then, and though happy to see his children again after their long trip, he probably wasn’t feeling great. He made a comment that confirmed Elaine’s negative view of herself.

    Elaine’s forever best friend, the trim and petite Carol, always got the guys. Elaine resented Carol’s good luck in the size department. Now in their sixties, they wear the same size. Still, Elaine is so wrapped up in being the fat girl that she admits, “Now, she’s almost irritating me over it. It was okay when I was the one doing all the fussing about weight. Now she’s fussing; it’s annoying.”
    Whenever somebody thinner than Elaine complains about her weight, she thinks, “If I looked like that I wouldn’t have to always be worried about my weight, so why are they? People have said I look good or I look nice, but nobody has ever suggested I should stop losing weight.”
    Lisa feels the same irritation with friends. Why are they complaining about their weight? Eating disorders are a bad thing, but they’re her bad thing, not theirs. Skinny friends can be the worst offenders. When they moan that they couldn’t possibly have another bite of ice cream, Lisa thinks, “Yeah, right.”
    Exercise is another of Lisa’s things. For Elaine, exercise mainly is painful medicine.
    Instead, she diets. She has done Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, grapefruit, Metrecal, and a dozen diets recommended by the Kaiser Permanente health plan, among others. As a child, one regimen required her mother to make Elaine’s sandwiches with lettuce instead of bread. Let’s imagine how that went over at school. The Jenny Craig diet plan was successful while Elaine ate Jenny Craig products, but as soon as she was making her own choices, she gained the weight right back.
    Elaine has had the best results with Weight Watchers, which she joined in 1974. In those thirty-five years, she has re-upped at least fifteen times. Most recently, Elaine lost thirty pounds, but she still feels she is fifteen