Body Image Not Bought and Paid For by Terra of Raising Zoeyjane

Twenty. That’s the number of years I was anorexic for. Twenty-one: The smallest my adult waist ever shrunk down to. Two Thousand and Four: The year I got breast implants, thinking that if I felt more proportionate, I’d have a more positive self-regard. 87: The weight I got down to, ten months post-partum. Eight: The number of miscarriages I’ve had, likely owing to a hormone issue brought about by the eating disorder. 100: The number of Cheerios I would allow myself in a day, alongside an apple and a cup of hot chocolate, when I was fifteen. Two: years as a part-time model, during the grunge/heroin-chic period. While on heroin and cocaine. Thirteen: The number of workouts I was doing a week, at twenty and twenty-one. 1000: How many sit-ups I had to do each day, or I was a lazy failure. Four: suicide attempts. One: Year sober, on November 16th.

I sought out an eating disorder at seven years old because I was a chubby kid who got picked on for it, who came from an abusive home, with a single father who minimized me ‘to keep me from becoming egotistical’ and an absent mother. I wanted to disappear, while also wanting to be able to have control over just one thing in my life. I understood the ideology and the permanence of anorexia, and I read hundreds of case studies before I started to restrict, eventually adding over-exercise, vomiting, laxative abuse, amenorrhea, multiple esophageal infections and a prolapsed colon to my resume.

When sex discovered me, it edited the mantra I’d always repeated, ’You are ugly and stupid and fat. No one can stand to be around you’, and made it, ‘You are not too ugly, stupid or fat. Men will want to be around you for sex. This is all you’re worth, so don’t fuck it up.’ This was my law for over a decade.

When a friend in the Vancouver social media community asked me to participate in a date auction she was organizing to raise funds for a writers’ society, you could say I spit-taked. I tried to back my way out of it, before I’d ever agreed to do it. I was positive that she was delusional and I would ruin the whole event, if not simply embarrass myself by drawing in the minimum bid and listless looks from a crowd.

I’d been practicing for years to hide myself, whether with an imaginary wall, or a literal one made of scrubby clothes and hair, no makeup and ragged fingernails. You didn’t see me, generally, unless I’d decided that I wanted to be seen.

This auction was a challenge to that. I didn’t volunteer, I was asked, so I would be on display, felt as if I needed to measure up to some appearance-based ideal, and it wasn’t on my own terms. I agreed to do it, because I’m a pushover who is more concerned with disappointing people than looking like a fool, but I was anxious and considered backing out, or just not showing up, several times.

The day of the auction came and I had a friend do my makeup and hair for me. She went way more overboard than I would have, getting really excited about the event and trying to sculpt me into what she considered a cultured lady (and what I saw as a street-walker). I was incredibly uncomfortable, and when she picked up my camera to snap this photo, I can honestly say that it was the saddest and angriest I’ve ever felt. I was sad because I couldn’t appreciate how she had made me look. How I’d come from dishevelled to coiffed and sultry; mad because I couldn’t make myself smile for the camera, or even look at it, and she was harassing me to. So this is the shot she got.

Walking down the street, I felt like everyone was staring at me, judging me, thinking that I was poorly imitating a woman with class and style. When I got to the event, that feeling magnified and I quickly put away two glasses of wine, though I detest wine, to compensate. Eventually, it was my time to be measured and my worth assessed. My assigned date was a certificate to a popular local pub, so I figured, worst case, I’d break even.

In the end and of course to my surprise, I earned the highest bids in the event. Wouldn’t it be the nicest end to this post if I said that it taught me something about my self-reflection being off, or how enjoying myself was more important than feeding the dimorphic thinking I’ve had for two decades, or that the event really showed me that someone was willing to spend $250 just to talk with me for an hour and that meant so much more than sex appeal or waist circumference? It would, but I’m not that girl.

It took me another year and a half after the auction, after I went on the date – during which my companion complimented me on my attractiveness, writing ability and intelligence and I covered my face in horror and discomfort – and after which, I rarely spoke to him again, to literally wake up one morning, look in the mirror at a particularly flattering angle and think ‘Damn, I’ve had it all wrong, forever.’

To realize that even if I didn’t see something in the mirror that I liked, others didn’t see what I did – so maybe I was the one not seeing properly.

To see that my body wasn’t a conduit for others’ self-esteem or happiness.

To understand that I was lucky for the body I have: that it’s generally without sickness, it’s fairly small and idyllic, it allowed me to give birth to my daughter, and it’s allowed me to experience pleasure, from the satisfaction of a really good slice of cheesecake, to giving and receiving massage, to orgasm.

Thousands of dollars in drugs and alcohol didn’t give me self-esteem, and modelling tore down what little I’d had. Buying breasts gave me really great breasts, but I was too wrapped up with self-loathing to take them out for a spin, so to speak. Diets, starvation, binges, purges, exercise… none of those things had any lasting positive impact on my body image. Having my company bid on and paid for didn’t either, even if it did earn more than the other dates.

What did? Waking up.

Terra (aka Zoeyjane) is a Vancouver-based freelancer writer. When she’s not obsessively refreshing Twitter or blogging at Raising Zoeyjane, she’s reading, writing, baking or having philosophic conversations with her four-year old daughter about character development in Tim Burton films. She uses the words ‘like’, ‘totally’ and ‘awesome’ far too often and fantasizes about a stay at some sort of Betty Ford-esque center – for the silence and decadence.

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