choo•koo•loonks (n) i. A Trinidadian term of endearment, used especially when addressing a child.
ii. A person of rounded form and ample proportion.
My mother has always said that I was nine pounds when I was born. My baby book says 8lbs.10oz. so I won’t make her a liar for 6 mere ounces.
Literally six of one, and a half dozen of the other.
Any way you care to slice it, that’s a pretty big girl.
A pretty, big, girl.
A pretty big-girl.
And that encapsulates pretty much how I always felt. And you will pardon the vanity of the adjective “pretty.”
Before I go on I want to make two things clear. The first is that I entirely loved, and still love, my mother. And I was her only child so she adored me. Spoiled me, cosseted me, protected me. Friends would be, in equal measures, both charmed and repelled. And I experienced a dichotomy as well- at once glowing from being so absolutely loved, while, at the same time, drowning, from being so, absolutely, loved.
So that’s the second thing I need to make clear: it can be a daunting responsibility to be someone’s everything when that someone is a) beautiful b) of exacting standards c) had the not unreasonable expectation that her only daughter would be similarly constructed.
Let me give you a short backstory.
My mother belonged to a family peopled with athletes and tall, lean humans. With the exception of my lovely mother who was short, but lean. My grandfather had been a body builder and a Greco Roman wrestler. My uncles were basketball players and cyclists. My aunt was athletic and tall. All the women were deep chested with narrow hips and lean legs. With thigh gaps. And into this house, 3 Elizabeth Street, with its chiseled and beautiful denizens entered from stage left, the progeny of my mother’s failed first marriage , Chookoolonks: curly haired, short and round. Then, as now, missing a thigh gap.
I think my mother was well pleased with me. But when the baby fat proceeded to not melt, nor did I manage to sprout up tall and lean hipped from the chunky toddler that I was, them my mother’s Pygmalion instincts were piqued.
My mother was permanently on a diet as she struggled with those five pounds that were her nemesis . She was 132 and insisted on hovering somewhere around 127. She wore an English size 10. Equivalent to an American size 8. Which in those days would probably have been a size 6, for as we know, dress sizes have expanded. I on the other hand was probably an English size 10 when I was actually 10. Years old .
So as my mother dieted, so did I. But very unwillingly. I probably went on my first diet at about the same time I grew to fit into that English 10. But even before that formal diet there was a list of no-nos. No juice. No soda. No candy. Our house had no cookies or chips or junk food of any kind. I was allowed fruit and raw almonds if I HAD to eat between meals. I had skim milk with my breakfast egg and on occasion I was allowed a single squirt of chocolate syrup, which resulted in something the exact color, and possible flavor, of Port-of-Spain gutter water after a rainy season deluge. Lunch was a thermos of skim milk, murky and tinged with blue, I always thought. And a tuna sandwich on whole wheat. And if you should think for even a second that this does not sound too bad, expunge from your imagination the vision of creamy tuna with mayonnaise. This was a can of water packed tuna , drained and decanted on to a slice of bread sans condiments, and covered with another equally unadorned slice. It tasted like sadness , and was inevitably thrown away. Dinner was almost always fish or chicken – free of salt because my father’s blood pressure was high. And two or three vegetables- unsalted, un-buttered, and steamed. Most nights I would look across the table at my father, and he would meet my gaze and almost imperceptibly shake his head. But he had it good. After his breakfast of fruit and coffee, he would go to his office where a hefty lunch of creole food would be delivered. And in the afternoon pastries would arrive for the tea hour. Lucky, lucky man. No pastries ever darkened our door at home.
So diets – and exercise classes. Dance class. A personal trainer. Weight Watchers. Diet shakes. Atkins. And a crazy crash diet when I lived on black coffee and paper thin slices of cheese with weekly weigh ins with my doctor where he would give me a vitamin shot- so I didn’t die of rickets or something. All before I was 18. I would lose weight and gain in back as I yo-yo dieted and generally felt depressed and deprived . I emerged from each round of diet- well, round. Built like a Serbian peasant , with a low center of gravity, suited for heavy farm labor, and unlikely to perish during a famine. In some corners of this planet I would have truly been a prize .
If you imagine that the above is the recipe for an eating disorder waiting to happen, you’d be correct . Except that it didn’t wait to happen. Chookoolonks developed bulimia at age 17.
I had developed a very unhealthy relationship with food and possessed a metabolism that was irreparably screwed up. And this led me to some very dark places and some very risky behaviors. I don’t resent my mother, and no I’m not sublimating . I am a mother too now. And I know she was doing what she thought best. In her world, to be a woman necessitated being pretty. And being pretty meant being thin. Her intentions were never to hurt me. And I get that. But I was hurt. Not just by her but by the things other people would feel empowered to say to me. You have such a pretty face, I would be told, if only you would lose some weight. As if a face such as mine were wasted on the body of a Serbian peasant . That I was not ugly too was seen as a disrespectful affront maybe? If the random comments of cruel children and supposedly well meaning adults were not enough, as an actress I also had complete strangers comment on my body- a tyrannical costume designer who humiliated me , to my face, in front of a roomful of people. An audience member who told a friend that she was watching my thighs jiggle with amusement when I did a tap number in a short dress. The sales lady who questioned the wisdom of my burlesque number because I was so much “bigger than the other girls.” Comments from boyfriends – yes from boyfriends too. I had one when I was 15 who suggested I “give up eating fried foods.” Little did he know that I was only familiar with fried food from tv and magazines. No, not really. But almost.
What really hurt was the implied message that I just wasn’t good enough.
But motherhood changed me and saved me.
Pregnancy was not easy . It difficult for someone with body dysmorphia and an eating disorder to witness their body just expand on its own accord. Having gained 60 effortless pounds with my first pregnancy, I exercised and dieted through my second , until my doctor put a stop to it. Salad, he said, was to be eaten with a meal, but could not comprise the whole meal. He said that my body had a lot of work to do and needed to be fed.
The results of my pregnancies, all four of them, left me in awe of this wonderful, magical, imperfect body. I developed respect for my body. Admiration even. And as I grew older, and less immature, I was finally ready to own it. All of it. I am impressed with, and thankful for, the strength of it. Its grittiness and determination to survive and thrive . The robust health of it. It’s sturdiness and formidable heath, pound advantage not withstanding. Fertile as a Mesopotamian floodplain, it has, after all, made four humans entirely from scratch .
So I forgive my mother. A thousand times over. And thoughtless children, unworthy boyfriends, rude strangers , and maybe even that costume designer . The amazing thing is that even though the messages that I was receiving all pointed to my not being good enough , I harbored the suspicion that I might well be more than than enough . That I might in fact may well be fabulous.
And that also was a gift from my mother. To be loved so intensely does something irrevocable to one’s sense of self.
I still have a dodgy relationship with food. And I still obsess and diet and in fact I am dieting this very moment . But I know with my whole heart that I am much more than my dress size and more than the sum of my parts.
And if diet number 347 doesn’t work, I could still always move to Serbia .
Raising Cain 