Blonde and Skinny and Fake

I admit that I spend more time than I should thinking about how I look.  I don't know about you, but I was indoctrinated at a very early age.  Like many newborns, I had blonde hair at birth.  That blonde hair usually doesn't last.  It didn't last on me.  I don't know exactly when it happened, but I remember that my mother poured peroxide over my hair when it started getting dark.  Now, my mother was an educated woman; she received her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois in 1943.  But, even an educated woman apparently wanted her first child to remain a blonde.  For years, she went to the drug store to get some Miss Clairol Blonde formula with which to keep me bright and beautiful (in her eyes, anyway).  I don't know how she found the time, but it must have been quite the priority for her.  This was a woman with a medical practice in our home who was very often called away to deliver babies.  Looking back, I am amazed at all that she did.  

For my first few years I was fairly thin.  As I've mentioned in another post (Body Image, August 1, 2019), I have had my share of struggles with this body and how I perceive it.  When I was very young, I had quite the monster metabolism; and then the devil that is puberty struck.  I was accustomed to eating whatever I wanted, and lots of it, but the pounds and the stretch marks soon appeared.  Stretch marks never go away.  I gained more than twenty pounds in a few short months.  My mother was not happy.  She went to the medicine closet in her office in our home and got me some diet pills.  Mom was an Obstetrician/Gynecologist and back in those days it was normal to give postpartum diet pills to the new moms to help them get back to their pre-pregnancy weight.  Really.  That medicine closet was packed with diet pills...and cough syrup with codeine that I enjoyed.  I know, I know, it's wrong, but that stuff tasted really good.  

I realize now that I am lucky to be alive.  

The summer months found me getting bored and chunky.  My sister was on the local swim team, so she was out of the house, busy, and not pigging out on everything in sight.  I had no interest in the swim team, so Mom somehow got me jobs out of town where my days would be busy and my feeding frenzy could be controlled.  One summer I worked at a clothing store in some beach town in New Jersey.  My mom arranged for me to stay in a boarding house with other girls.  The lady of the house would fix us dinner every day, but we were on our own for breakfast and lunch.  My breakfast was cereal and milk; my lunch was a salad bought at a place near my job.  No snacks, no after-dinner treats...and plenty of diet pills.  I lost 18 pounds, and still bleached my hair blonde.  I remember going to some teenage party at the beach and a girl asked me if I was on drugs.  I said, "No!!!".  She said that my pupils were dilated and that I seemed sort of jumpy.  Hmmmm.  That was honestly my first clue that this diet pill stuff might not be 100% good for me.  I don't remember when I stopped taking the  pills, but it must have been before my senior year in high school, because I vividly remember that those clothes I was wearing during the diet pills days no longer fit after just a couple of months.  Senior year was proms...and I couldn't fit into my prom dress.  But, hey, at least I was blonde!!!

I could go on and on, and maybe I will another time.  Writing all of this makes me a bit sad.  I really think my mom believed she was doing me a favor by making me "pretty."  These days I wish I didn't care so much about how I look, especially how much I weigh.  My hair is what it is: brown with some silver (yes, silver!!!  not grey!!!)  I think I was conditioned/brainwashed/indoctrinated at an early age.  Talking myself out of it seems an endless battle.  Sorry, Mom, I know you did the best you could.