‘I'm so fat!’ and other locker room tales

I was one of those women, too. For years, I struggled with an eating disorder — anorexia — that demolished my self-­esteem during my first year of college faster than any unrequited freshman crush could ever have. I shed 30 pounds from my already slender five-foot-eleven frame before winter break through a diet of salsa-topped salad and seemingly endless nighttime runs across the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s beautiful, sprawling campus. My face grew gaunt; my clothes hung from my skeletal frame as if from a hanger. All around me, chaos ensued — “What should we do with her? Why did this happen?” Meanwhile, I was busy hammering out my daily caloric intake on my calculator. I just didn’t get it. I mean, five foot eleven and 120 pounds — that’s what models weigh, right?

In a sad bit of irony, I was majoring in — and acing —­ nutritional sciences.

I am now considered recovered in terms of my eating disorder, meaning I don’t actively engage in the destructive behaviors that overpowered me for so many years. Through a treatment regimen that consisted, at different times, of a variety of therapies and medications, I exorcised the demons that drove my pulse to 36 and my periods to a halt. But the inner critic will always remain and I, along with millions of otherwise successful women, continue to struggle with body image on some level.

From the constant trips to my university’s drab public fitness facility to the high-gloss shine of my current health club, I’ve pretty much seen it all — and I suspect I’m not alone. According to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub ­Association, in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), 21.6 million American women had health club memberships.

This book is for any woman who has ever experienced the terror of stepping on a scale large enough for the entire locker room to read, or gotten tangled in a wet bathing suit when all she wanted was to be cloaked in a bathrobe, or desperately grasped at her towel as it slipped from her nude body, just as another woman walked behind her. It’s for any woman who knows what the physical high of a great workout feels like, but continues to beat herself up emotionally. For any woman who has ever looked at another woman’s breasts, hips, or stomach and wondered, “How do I compare to her?” (Remember the Sex and the City episode in which the famous foursome meet at a day spa for some R&R, only to learn that Charlotte is unable to shed her towel in the steam room, convinced other women are staring at her thighs?)

Considering the society we live in, is it any wonder I’ve found myself comparing cellulite with total strangers? Or looked on with envy as preteen girls enjoy the blossoming of their breasts while their hips remain narrow?

For years, these locker room observations and comments from the scores of women involved in this book have been marinating in my mind. We have spent far too many hours worrying about our bodies, how they look in the mirror, in our minds, and in other people’s eyes. Let’s take back time and reclaim some of those hours — if not for ourselves, then for the millions of other women who have struggled alongside us.

I remember, for instance, making my way to the showers one morning after a killer workout when something blonde and odd-shaped lying on the floor caught my eye: a wig. On my way back to my locker after lotioning up, I instinctively looked down to where the wig had lain, only to find an empty space. Now, it was atop the head of a beautiful, thirty-­something woman dressed in business attire and applying her makeup. I later learned the young woman had lost her hair during treatment for breast cancer, which got me thinking about the importance we, as a society, place on physi­cal looks, even in the midst of a potentially life-threatening disease. It also filled me with admiration for her strength and vigor in continuing to exercise her way through cancer. I recall thinking, “I’d love to talk to her and learn from her.” I since have and her story truly is awe inspiring.

Laura Berman, PhD, the famous sex therapist, calls distorted body image “an epidemic, affecting all parts of wom­en’s lives; in particular, their sex lives, but also how many outfits they try on in the morning before work, their sense of self-consciousness during the day, their self-esteem and their general quality of life.”

“The fact is,” she continues, “women in general look at each other and compare themselves — on the street, in the office, in the entertainment industry and in the locker room.” It’s at the point where fields such as genital rejuvenation (read: surgery or lasers) exist to answer the call of women fearful that their vaginas, let alone their stomachs or derrieres, don’t measure up.

Further ingraining the notion of physical perfection and feeding women’s starving body images are the recent reality television programs that chronicle women’s (and men’s) quests for physical perfection via tummy tucks, liposuction, breast lifts, porcelain veneers, nose jobs, and so forth. Even Lisa Simpson — yes, the cartoon — struggled with an eating disorder, as has her voice, Yeardley Smith. (Lisa’s problem was solved within a thirty-minute episode, but Smith’s battle with bulimia lasted more than a decade.) More extreme, another network premiered a sitcom ... a sitcom! ... called Starved, which followed four thirty-something friends, all of whom suffered from eating disorders. There was no laugh track.

Women also continue to be exposed to advertising that promotes an unattainable ideal, made all the more obvious beneath the glaring lights of the locker room. As Jean Kilbourne, EdD, the former model and advertising guru, once told me, “I’ve heard that even Cindy Crawford has said, ‘I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.’” In the three thousand or so advertisements we take in each day, women are typically airbrushed out of reality, with only a long, lean torso shown here, or a perfectly smooth rear-end displayed there. These images engender in women the feeling that our bodies are, and will always be, less-than, interchangeable, and somehow incomplete.

It both scares and deeply saddens me to imagine the hours, the days, indeed, the years, that my female counterparts and I have flushed down the toilet (often literally), thinking about which parts of our bodies we wish we could shave away, what we should eat for our next meal, how many calories we need to burn to cancel out last night’s chocolate cake. I suspect that with my background in science I could have helped discover cures for both cancer and cellulite in the time I’ve spent agonizing over such meaningless inner dialogue.

That’s why I’m ready for my fuzzy little notebook, a true labor of love and self-exploration, to go public.

And let’s not forget the lesson learned by Charlotte from that locker room episode of Sex and the City. After her con­fidence is bolstered by a body-image pep talk with Carrie, Charlotte returns to the spa, tip-toeing through the locker room. She pauses nervously to unwrap her towel, enters the steam room, and bares all. Just as her nervousness is about to reach a fever pitch, validation comes in the form of another woman’s voice: “I’d kill for your breasts.”

Excerpted from “Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth about Women, Body Image and Re-imagining the ‘Perfect’ Body,” by Leslie Goldman. Copyright 2006, Leslie Goldman. All rights reserved. Published by The Perseus Books Group. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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