“
What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the
growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on
a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes,
alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women’s shelter one
night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its
seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something
about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a
mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or
sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight
train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea.
She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who
could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams
that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available.
Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like?
But if she is not careful she will end up: raped, pregnant, impossible
to control, or merely what is now called fat. The teenage girl knows
this. Everyone is telling her to be careful. She learns that making her
body into her landscape to tame is preferable to any kind of wildness.
Dieting is being careful, and checking into a hunger camp offers the
ultimate in care.
”
”