Thin Air

I wasn’t sure if I was going to write this piece. I’m still not certain if it is the right thing to do so – I have always said that we need to stop commenting on women’s bodies, on the weight they have lost or gained, and I stand by that. All it does is perpetuate the idea that our bodies are public property, that our worth can be reduced to a number on a scale. So let me set out my stall: I am not here to discuss a certain celebrity’s body. You know who I am talking about, we have all seen the music video, we have seen the photos. Obviously, we are not privy to her medical history so there is no way of knowing what is going on there; regardless, I hope that she gets the help and support she needs.

The issue here is that when we are presented with clear-cut evidence that someone is unwell and we are told everything is fine, it is hard not to feel gaslit. A source close to the singer told People Magazine, the perennial fave of celebrity publicists, that she “performs a very physical show, and there is a lot of athleticism involved. She performs healthily and successfully at a very high-level night after night.”

Here is what I will tell you – in 2006, when I was at my sickest, more than three stone (42lbs/19 kg) lighter than I am today, I went on an eight-day hike to Base Camp of the Annapurna Mountain range in Nepal. Google describes this as “featuring endless stone stairs, daily walks of 5 to 7 hours, and a peak altitude of 4,130 meters (13,550 feet).” When I came home, I was hospitalised for three months. Whilst struggling with anorexia and bulimia, I aced my Leaving Cert exams, I got an honours degree from Trinity, and first-class honours in a post-graduate degree from DIT. I did a J1 in the Hamptons. I went on a road trip from San Francisco to Las Vegas, driving down Big Sur I backpacked through India and then again through Central and South America. I moved to New York to work for a fashion magazine. I wrote my first two novels. I had a serious boyfriend for four years, I made friends, I went to music festivals. I went out and lived my life and from the outside, it appeared as if I was making a huge success of it all.

And I was still sick.

Saying that the singer can continue to work is not the flex that her reps seem to think it is, neither is it proof that she is ‘well’.

***

When I came back from Nepal in 2006, I had to wait a month before a room on the hospital’s eating disorder unit became available. I was back in my home town and my gang were going out to the local niteclub that Saturday. I met one of my best friends from school in a pub beforehand and after saying our hellos, I took off my sweater. Underneath, I was wearing a backless halter top, a pair of skinny jeans. My friend gave a sharp inhale when I did so, as I presented my body to her, and the look on her face was not envy. She was visibly repulsed and then, her mouth quivered, like she was trying not to cry. She didn’t say anything to me but all night, I received the same reaction. People were not admiring me, rather, they looked deeply uncomfortable. I was making them uncomfortable. Yet, I continued to wear revealing clothes during this period, outfits that showed off my spindly arms and skeletal ribs. On one night, I took a photo of my back in the mirror, marvelling at how I could count every bone. It look like a set of wings carved into my skin, about to fly. I kept staring at that photo, at what I had whittled myself down to, and I did not feel disgusted or scared. I felt fascinated, enthralled at what I had done to my body. Look at it, look at me.

Look at me. I dare you.

***

I was thinking about this recently, when Madonna performed at Coachella and once again, the conversation focused so heavily on what plastic surgery she has or has not had. The disparity between how we discuss her face and Kris Jenner’s is striking and I wonder if it is because we consider Kris’s work to be ‘good’. We want women to look beautiful but we do not want to see the evidence of what it took to achieve that. We do not like to see the effort; please, hide the sweat and tears, the money, the time. In the same way, we have accepted that many famous women are very small, that they exist in bodies that are much thinner than when they first stepped into the public eye. We do not seem to mind, we buy into the narrative that they are just healthier, they are eating better, they are working out more. Society likes it, I think, for women to take up as little space as possible. It is only when it goes too far that we protest, when it crosses the Rubicon into that which we consider grotesque. What does that say about us? That it’s okay for someone to struggle with disordered eating if they are still pleasing to the eye? It’s okay as long we do not have to be confronted with the damage being wreaked upon a body deliberately starved to fit an aesthetic ideal?

Is that our reality now?