mik1of3's Blog

Being thin..probably not a subject you'd expect to read about on this website, but my recent trip to London got me thinking..

It started when I was in the car en route to Leavesden film studios.  I whiled away part of the journey reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing); anyway, there is no other explanation for the shape of her body. She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy, and having the world's fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray, another couple of ounces gone!)  but her concave stomach, protruding ribs, and stick-like arms tells a different story.  This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is,  they're putting her on a magazine cover instead.  All this passed through my mind as I read the interview, then I threw the horrible thing aside. 

But blow me down if the subject of girls and thinness didn't crop up shortly after I got out of the car.  I was talking to one of the actors, and somehow or other,  we got on the subject of how a girl he knows (not one of the Potter actresses; some body from his life beyond the films) who had been dubbed "fat" by certain charming classmates.  (Could they possibly be jealous that she knows the boy in question?  Surely not!) 

'But', says the actor, in honest perplexity, 'she is really not fat.' 

"Fat" is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her, I said; I could remember it happening when I was at school, and witnessing it among the teenagers I used to teach.  Nevertheless, I could see that to him, a well-adjusted male, it was utterly bizzare behaviour, like yelling "thicko!" at Stephen Hawking. 

His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the "fat" insult is.  I mean, is "fat" the really worst thing a person can be? Is fat worse than vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring, or cruel? Not to me;  but then,  you might retort,  what do I know about the pressures to be skinny?  I'm not in the business of being judged by my looks, what with my being a writer earning my living by using my brain...

I went to the British Book Awards that evening.  After the award ceremony, I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen in three years.  The first thing she said to me?  "You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'

"Well," I said, slightly nonplussed, "the last time you saw me, I'd just had a baby."

What I felt like saying is "I'd produced my third child and sixth novel since the last time I saw you.  Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?" But no..forget the kid and the book, finally something to celebrate!!

So, the issue of size and women was (ha ha) weighing on my mind as I flew home to Edinburgh the next day.  Once up in the air, I opened the newspaper, and my eyes fell, immediately, on an article about the pop star Pink.

Her latest single, "Stupid Girls" , is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness.  "Stupid Girls" satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models; those celebrities whose greatest accomplishment is un-chipped nail polish; whose only aspiration seems to be getting photographed in a different outfit nine times a day,  whose only function in the world seems to be supporting the trade in over-priced handbags and rat-sized dogs.

Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but its really not.  It's about what girls want to be, what they're told they should be, and how they feel about who they are.  I've got two daughters who have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed emaciated clones,  I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny-- a thousand things before 'thin'.  And frankly, I'd rather that didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them had fleshier knees than they do.  Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.  Let them never be "Stupid Girls".  Rant over.

--source www.jkrowling.com  click the hairbrush marked as "extras", then the tab under miscellaneous..then on "For Girls Only, Probably".