Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher Page A

mashed potatoes, the gray peas, the beef stroganoff that lay in a vomitous pile on my tray.
    “Yes, you do. Admit it,” they taunted, grinning. One would trace the line of my bra across my back, his finger gentle, almost seductive, then snap it hard. “What's that?” they'd say. “Huh? Huh? Is that a bra ? Are you developing breasts ? Say it!” they'd say, getting louder.
    “Say, ‘I'm getting titties.’” They laughed. I was flushed with fury from my forehead down to my toes, “Oooo, she's blushing! Are your titties blushing, Marya? What size bra is that?” Looking up at the one across from me, blond sonofabitch in an Edina hockey jacket, or the brown-haired, rat-faced skinny kid whose little pecker poked through his jeans even though he kept a hand in his pocket to cover it up. It didn't matter. They were all the same horrible creature. I searched my brain for some witty response, but before I could stop myself I blurted out, “Fuck off.” Ooooo, they said, and told the lunch lady, who grabbed my arm hard and hauled me out of the lunchroom. I glanced back and watched them laugh at me. One of them put two fingers up to his mouth in a vee and wiggled his tongue between them. I had no idea what that meant. I took my bra off in the bathroom, stuffed it into my locker, and crossed my arms over my chest.
    There is a plethora of recent data focusing on the relationship between puberty and eating problems. Researchers are finally turning away from the long-held assumption that eating disorders are the result solely of innate neurosis and are now looking at culture and family. The first of these, culture, is relatively self-evident: When a prepubescent shape is held
    up as an ideal to (impressionable, pubescent) girls, they may balk at their own bodies' sudden mute refusal to adhere to cultural requirements. They might, if their personal chemistry is right, go head-to-head with nature and bust their asses in a campaign to defeat their own biology. A body that begins to look exactly opposite of what it's “supposed” to look like is an uncomfortable body indeed.
    Rather than take a feminist delight in your Cycles and Curves, you're probably going to freak.
    Puberty is a perverse rite of passage in contemporary culture. The nice school nurse comes to talk to your class, telling you how you're going to Become a Woman. You want to scream with horror as visions of cellulite dance in your head. Girls, Becoming Women, begin to emulate the older women in their lives: They diet. They borrow their mothers' vocabulary, expressions, mannerisms. Between poring over the mysteries of long division and playing kickball at recess, they also discuss, in weirdly adult voices, “keeping their weight down,” with that regretful, knowing smile. They pinch their bellies, announcing, “I'm not eating lunch today, oh, no, I really shouldn't.”
    Becoming a Woman means becoming someone dissociated from, and spiteful toward, her body. Someone who finds herself always wanting.
    Even the timing of puberty is important. Extensive data supports the assertion that early-onset puberty may significantly predispose some young women to eating problems, whereas girls who develop closer to or later than their same-age peers have a more positive body image and fewer eating problems. I was not the only one who felt painfully aware of my suddenly sexual body in the midst of a bunch of gangly girls, nor was I the only one who tried to beat my body back. My body was visible evidence of all that was wrong with me: I had hips, ass, boobs, the whole nine yards, and was therefore a person who clearly ate food. I was a human-type person as opposed to an ethereal pale mannequin type, or a tall, thin, blond, blue-eyed, Scandinavian, future Bikini-Team type, with whom my little school-hall-size world was primarily populated. Worse, I was sexually developed and therefore obviously a sexual being at a time when boys were still known to punch your shoulder and holler,