Numbers

The web has gone rabid over the whole Abercrombie and Fitch debacle. I don't need to rehash it much. Weirdly unattractive CEO cites exclusionary reasons for not making XL sizes for women. There was the requisite backlash, some well-written responses.

But since it is a brand for teens, and since I write YA and middle-grade fiction, and since I speak at schools and am the writer-in-residence at a  high school, I spend a lot of time thinking about being a teenager--and I have contemplated this whole PR explosion. And while I find the CEO strangely creepy . . . and his comments obviously unkind, I actually feel like he is so obviously a jerk that his comments didn't bother me very much. They are almost cartoonishly ugly. No, what bothers me much, much more are real-world situations with women and size, the insidious ways women themselves send the message to other women and young girls--and themselves--that they are a number.

A dress size.

A set of digits on a scale.

Every single day--every day--on my FB feed, I will see at LEAST one woman write as a status some variation of: "I ate a cupcake and feel gross--looks like I'll need to hit the treadmill for two hours tonight after work" or "I just ate a Hershey bar and feel SO guilty. I had been doing so good on my diet.#FAIL." Those are the obvious ones. Then there are the status updates about diets and trainers and hip sizes and waistlines and skinny jeans and fat jeans.

What message does that send to our young girls?

I feel like I know this firsthand in an extreme way, in a way that has stunned me more than once recently in particular. For years, thanks to steroid treatment for Crohn's (first-line treatment, before biologics, is often prednisone, which has a side effect of rapid weight gain), I carried on me an extra twenty pounds, easy. Because I am very tall, close to six-feet with my cowboy boots on, I could carry it OK. A size 14. Not a "small" woman because of my height. I also had a baby after 40--the now somewhat infamous Pirate Boy. And so the "baby" weight remained as stubbornly as the "prednisone" weight. I frankly never cared. I had a healthy baby. And since all my pregnancies were extremely high risk--and since I had lost a baby before I had him . . . pounds were insignificant. I created a LIFE, people. One look at his dimples and my brain turned to mush. "Fat jeans? What fat jeans?"

Then two years ago this June, the Crohn's disease that has plagued me since my twenties came out of remission in a BIG, splashy, show-stopping, miserable way. It attacked my eyes for the first time. It attacked my joints. I haven't slept through the night in two years because of joint pain. Some days, I literally hobble to the shower, turn on the hot water so no one hears me sobbing, and climb in, hoping it loosens things up enough that I can get through the day. And in the last two years, I've lost, as of this morning, about 55 pounds.

I've dropped 6 sizes or so.

And women--not men, but WOMEN--say things like, "Is Crohn's contagious? Because I'd love to have it for three or four months." They're joking, so I don't take it personally. But really?

Picture the last time you had food poisoning. The clutch-your-gut, doubled-over-agony kind. That's Crohn's. Ten times a day--on a good day. Fifteen on a bad day. Add joint pain so bad you feel like someone is stabbing you in your hips, your knees, your ankles. Thanks to prednisone, you ruptured the tendon in your right leg, so any time you walk for long, that leg aches. Your vertebrae are bone on bone. The prednisone that you took at age 28 is now destroying you like the Wrath of Khan. Your fingers are frozen in the morning, so that you can't even open your childproof medicine bottles without pain. Your eyes are blurry and burn. I could go on, but I'll spare you the details. You DON'T want this disease, ladies. Not even for three months so you can drop a dress size. Yes, I can eat cookies every night. But no, cookies in NO WAY make up for the pain.

But more than that . . . why are women so fixated on a number? No man has ever jokingly asked if he could rub my arm and get Crohn's disease for a couple of months. Not once. Women I find utterly BEAUTIFUL, but who might carry a few pounds, fixate on their pants size. I want to--and DO--tell them, "You have your HEALTH, so enjoy. You are gorgeous!!"

At the end of your life, we all know that line that no one is going to say, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office." They're also not going to say, "I am so sorry I had dessert. I wish I'd turned down the cheesecake."

Life is too short not to have the cheesecake.

And yes, I do understand that we are facing an obesity epidemic in this country. So it is about moderation. While I joke about eating cheesecake (and really, I'm from NY, so I don't ever joke about real NY-style cheesecake, but I digress), my disease makes eating difficult. I eat very, very small meals, if at all. And so the heaping portions, enough for three people, that I see at restaurants for ONE person kind of make me queasy. But for me, it's all about being at peace with the food you eat. Eating when you are hungry. Stopping when you are full.

I also do know there is fat-hatred in this country. I used to follow a fitness guru on social media. One day, she posted the Dove plus-size real beauty ad as an example of "thin-shaming."(Who knew?) Suddenly dozens of women chimed in that they were very thin and were sick of people commenting on their thinness, when no one would comment on being a bit plump (which I disagree with--people DO comment on plus-size, but no matter). I commented that I think the point behind the ad was media misrepresentations of real women, and unrealistic expectations for our daughters--body sizes that are not attainable in post-pubescents without extreme dieting, for example. The claws came out. The guru, rather shrilly, said the campaign was a fake and she wanted to see "stretch marks" and the "gross" side effects of being overweight. Many women chimed in agreeing with her--a chorus of fat-shaming. And so there it was. Again. Women shaming other women.

So what DO I want to say to my daughters? To the beautiful teen girls I see in the classrooms I visit? What do I want to appear on my Facebook and Twitter feed? What do I want to SAY to young women?

Have a cupcake without punishing yourself.

LET GO of the guilt you have about food.

Stop and consider--there really are people who cannot eat, who have illnesses that rob them of the ability to eat food without pain. ENJOY your food. Eat mindfully. Appreciate the spectrum of foods you get to enjoy. Go ahead. Enjoy it for me. Have the cheesecake if it brings you joy at the end of your meal. Have it INSTEAD of your meal if that makes you smile on occasion.

Love the body you're in.

If you've veered toward the unhealthy end of the spectrum, start with little steps, healthy replacements of one habit at a time. But don't HATE yourself until you get to where you want to be.

Keep it about healthy.

Don't give a crap what some CEO says or what anyone says about your body--and sadly, that may include your own mothers who may not have made peace with their own bodies.

You are NOT A NUMBER.

Life is too short for the scale or the cheesecake or the size of your jeans to have any correlation to your happiness. Your self-worth.

Love yourself for the beautiful that is INSIDE. And the outside? It's awesome too, whatever the size.

Namaste.