Elf I didn’t know I’d lost so much weight until my sisters started commenting on how my jeans were hanging off me, how I looked sickly. But if I’d been paying more attention, I’d have noticed all the skinny girls on campus starting to swarm around me. Suddenly, they all wanted to be my friend, or at least spend time near me making passive aggressive catty competitive comments. I found myself having whispered conversations with near strangers about not ever allowing themselves to get into a double-digit dress size. It was bewildering. I wasn’t sure what was happening to me. I was still eating nachos for every meal but I’d stopped having my period. I had diarrhea every day and cried all the time. This was 2002. Body Pos wasn’t a thing yet. [Image Description: A stucco white wall, with a variety of pictures, cork-board mat, with pinned cards and doodles, with a central hanging image, framed in a funky wooden frame. The image in the frame is a line drawing of a nude torso of a white, femme body, from the chest to the upper thighs, centered on a white background. There are faint, pink shading of the nipples, aureolas, and under the breasts, as well as pink marks, indicating scars, in different areas of the abdomen. The figure is wearing a dog-tag, around their neck, and dark trousers or skirt.] One day I was sitting with one of these girls at a coffee shop and a man in his late twenties approached us. “Excuse me,” he said to my companion. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I design video games and you are the perfect model for one of our characters.” He dug into his pocket for a business card. “I’d love to have you come in and take photos of you. The character is an elf. You’re exactly what we had in mind.” My companion turned her pale face upwards, pushed her brown hair out of her bright green eyes. “Sure,” she said taking his card nonchalantly. “That’s cool!” I said, after he walked away. “Are you going to do it?” She just shrugged and put the card in the pocket of her hoodie, as if this kind of thing happened to her all the time. I felt jealous. I wished that men approached me at coffee shops and asked me to be an elf. Why couldn’t that have happened to me? Up until that point in my life I’d only been asked to come into an alley with a man and watch him masturbate while his friend took photos. Many years later I would discover that I have an adrenal disorder that makes me lose and gain weight uncontrollably, as if someone has cast a spell on me. For my body, there is never a size that is okay – it’s always a sign of my disease. And no one wins; if I have a doctor that’s bigger, her advice on health is irrelevant. If I have a doctor that’s skinny, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. No woman wins; we’re fucked either way. I know this is irrational, but a decade later I’m still jealous of that brown-haired girl with the big green eyes. I’ve been asked to do many things, to be many things, but I’ve still never been told that I’m a magical creature. Elf 2018
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
All dressed up...with nowhere to go.
Menu
|