FATLASH! Food Police & the Fear of Thin -A Cautionary Tale

By Karen Kataline

Before she knew what a calorie was, Karen Kataline was allowed to have only five hundred of them. She was seven. Forced into the spotlight by her weight-obsessed mother, Kataline spent her childhood trapped in a world of pageants, performances, and perpetual hunger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IndieReader
• Release date: Jan 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9780985967918

Book preview

Arizona

PREFACE

Who could have predicted it? Like a bad dream revisited, some of the most challenging issues from my childhood have become hot topics on a new battlefield where public policy makers and politicians are certain that they know best. In so doing, they’re making the same mistakes my mother did. My mother policed what I ate—when I could eat, how much, and what I couldn’t have—in the same way legislators are trying to, and they are certain that what they’re doing is for our own good. But does certainty about something make it right for everyone?

In an appearance-obsessed culture, the drumbeat of fear about the obesity epidemic has reached a deafening pitch. Especially as it relates to children, the crisis appears to be the justification for an invasion of privacy that in previous decades would have been considered a joke. That issue is a book unto itself. What we hear about much less often is whether such control and regulation about food and eating actually succeeds in its stated mission of benefiting others.

What are the real-life psychological and physiological consequences for policing what we eat? Be they the bully, the briber, the badgerer, the coaxer, the food hider, the coercer, or the punisher, there are endless varieties and flavors of food police. Millions of American adults have experienced it in their own lives. Their reactions span between resistance and dependence, but they know firsthand how well it works.

Diet centers are full of women looking for the perfect cop to cajole and patrol them in their pursuit of body nirvana. Chances are, they have forgotten or never learned to trust and listen to themselves. Food cops are only too happy to continue validating this lack of confidence.

Could the hysteria over weight and appearance actually be a major culprit in the so-called obesity epidemic itself?

Obesity as a form of protection is a secret that some mental health professionals know about, but few have found a way to treat or discuss in detail. While it is certainly not applicable in every case, I have repeatedly observed the shock of recognition on the faces of women from all walks of life whenever I have uttered these words: fear of thin.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of phobias, some with incredibly exotic names: triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number thirteen; cynophobia, the fear of dogs; altophobia and hypsiphobia, two names for the fear of heights. There is even phobophobia—the fear of phobias. But there has never been a term for a state in which the idea of thinness, or actually being thin, is frightening.

What I call the Fear of Thin is absolutely counterintuitive in our culture where thin is perpetually in. Perhaps it is considered impossible to be afraid of something we are all supposed to want so much. There are even women so desperate to be thin that they view weight loss as a result of cancer as a positive side effect. Tragically, some aren’t joking. However, when people have learned to use weight as protection, they may be completely unprepared and even repelled by what they discover their weight has protected them from.

Unwanted sexual attention, feelings of being sexually exploited or objectified—whether real or perceived—are among the threats that extra weight can serve to successfully protect someone from. The irony is that while the culture demands thinness, it also demands greater and greater tolerance for just such displays and sexualization.

In fact, an inability to tolerate it is considered to be maladjusted. Particularly in the case of children, the need for protection is not only reasonable but quite possibly a saner reaction than the culture has shown thus far. Is it any wonder that people are frustrated and confused?

The personal vignettes and accompanying commentary from my own life are not meant to be construed as a singular cause or solution to the complexities of obesity. Neither is this a book about how to become thin. As anyone who has struggled with a weight problem can attest, the best solutions are as personal and unique as each and every physique.

By sharing my story, I hope fewer women in the future will have a similar one to tell. Not to make my best possible attempt seems almost irresponsible—a bit like having the fire extinguisher in my hands and refusing to use it. The blaze is burning now, and I am compelled to help put it out.

INTRODUCTION

Time couldn’t move fast enough. I forced myself to wait as long as I could. My mission required absolute certainty that everyone in the house was asleep. More than an hour had passed since the last toilet flushed.

Finally, I crept out of my bed and tiptoed into the hallway. The sculpted brown thickness of the carpet could not muffle the wood underneath that creaked with my every step. I imagined my mother’s shrieking voice, Karen Sue? What in heaven’s name are you doing up? The version in my head was embellished with sirens, ambulances, and dramatic background music. Get back to bed this instant! I could hear her say.

I paused between each step I took as I made my way. Step … pause … creak … pause … step … pause. My breath came faster as my fingers slid along Mother’s velvety white flocked wallpaper. Hunger gnawed at my stomach as I continued my forbidden trek. Afraid to make a sound I sucked in my breath and held it, which only made me dizzy. She would definitely wake up if I fell down and fainted on that immaculate carpet.

When my foot touched the cold stone of the vestibule floor, I knew I could speed up. Light from a street lamp filtered through the glass next to the front door and made squiggly patterns across the floor to guide my way.

Finally, I reached the destination of my pent-up desires—the kitchen. The lime green linoleum and the pale pink countertops beamed welcomingly. Pink drapes hung like theater curtains over the giant picture windows in the breakfast nook. Mother loved for everything to be color-coordinated. (I was much older when I realized that not everyone’s dishes matched their wallpaper.)

I opened the refrigerator door and was greeted by the light from inside, which spilled out across the room and shocked my eyes. I grabbed at the leftovers from dinner. First, the cold chicken. After devouring as much as I thought might not be missed, I wiped my greasy hands on my pajama top. Then I skimmed off the cheese sauce that covered the broccoli: at dinner that night, mine had been served without it. Then I went for the baked beans, which had beckoned to me from dinner two nights ago when I hadn’t been allowed to have any.

Scanning the fridge for something else, it never occurred to me whether I liked what I was eating, nor did I consider whether or not I was full. Mayo? Yes, slather it on a piece of bread. Velveeta? Sure, why not? It didn’t matter if the beans were cold and the chicken, congealed. What mattered, or at least so I thought, was winning—and this was a game that had become a nightly event.

If I didn’t quite get the tops snapped back on the Tupperware containers, I left them that way. It was careless. Was I trying to get caught? The hollowness in my gut vanished at the first few bites. Wow, I loved how that happened! Anything I ate beyond that was just for good measure, hopefully to help me stave off that hateful emptiness for as long as possible.

The return trip to my room was easier and faster somehow. I nimbly danced up the hallway that had become my bridge from desolation to deliverance. Once I was in bed again the desolation returned as I attempted to banish the inevitable guilt that followed each nighttime binge.

My mother’s voice haunted me. There’s nothing I hate worse than a sneak thief, she often muttered. Why couldn’t she just yell at me? I was the sneak thief she was talking about and we both knew it.

At seven, I didn’t really understand what calories were, but I realized they must be bad because my mother said I could only have five hundred of them a day. Once she imposed that limit (a choice that she acknowledged to me was drastic), my trips up and down the long hallway increased. Sometimes I made several visits in a single night, just to get one last bite of the apple from the forbidden tree. Of course, apples were never what I was after—I could get those with the half a sandwich Mom packed in my school lunch.

Only after the emptiness in my stomach had been replaced with the fullness of triumph could I settle down for the night. My satisfaction never lasted long though—not much longer than the last cookie that peeked out from under my pillow.

PINK POWDER PUFF

FRACTURED FLICKERS

Please, will you be extra available in the next few weeks? I have this horrible feeling that if I lose any more weight I’ll be hit by a bus.

Anna, my therapist, had never heard me say anything so bizarre. I was almost twenty-six, and for the past five years since moving to New York City, I’d shown her how competent and independent I was. I’d shared with her my on-again, off-again professional career as an actress and singer; she knew I sometimes held down three or more jobs at a time while I finished my master’s degree in social work at Columbia, and she knew when I had finally scored my first serious boyfriend, Glen.

On my list of successes was tackling my weight problem (or so I thought), dieting myself right out of one of my best paying jobs at Tons of Fun—a singing telegram company that featured very hefty girls doing comic strip-o-grams, ending with a tasteful black and red teddy. Usually I’d do anything for a laugh, including make fun of my weight. But despite always being the consummate performer, I felt a strange sense of relief when Tons of Fun let me go.

I told Anna that this damned weight problem was the backdrop on which every drama of my life seemed to unfold. It was the reason I got myself into therapy. Though as an adult I had never again come close to my heaviest weight of 285 pounds as a teenager, I was ready to rid myself of the curse I feared would continue to cloud my future.

Meeting Anna increased my confidence so that I could finally put my weight issue behind me. I spoke with her openly although dispassionately about my fattest days as a teenager.

When I was sixteen and at my heaviest, I was usually successful at avoiding having my picture taken. However, two photos of me were snapped by a student photographer when I wasn’t looking, which ended up in the yearbook. They took up half the page and were huge—and in them, so was I.

One was a full-body shot of me playing the violin with the school orchestra. The other was taken while I was delivering a humor speech that won me first place in the state speech contest. The topic? Being fat. The speech featured a series of hilarious poems by Victor Buono. I killed ’em. The irony of being out there as a performer and simultaneously camera-shy wasn’t lost on me, but I didn’t fully understand it and had told Anna so.

Anna’s consistent lack of emotion during our sessions used to frustrate me, but was welcome now. And five years later, while I was pleased with my success at losing weight, I detested the gooey-eyed way people responded when they saw me. You’re tiny … why, you’re just wasting away! they would gush with big smiles.

I continued listing to Anna my complaints about people’s reactions to my weight loss.

"How about this one? They tell me how marvelous I look now that I’ve lost weight, which just shows what they really thought before. I wish they’d just shut up altogether. Why is it OK to comment and invade my privacy? Am I wearing a sign around my neck? Please comment on my body. I know why. You know why?" I answered my own question while Anna watched me rile myself up.

Because they assume it could never be anything but a compliment—but what if it’s not? What if I don’t happen to want to waste away, huh? Why do they simply assume that everyone wants to lose weight?

Noticing how intense I was getting I kept going, trying to figure myself out. "I don’t know, sometimes it just feels like losing weight is an acknowledgment that I’ve joined the opposition—like I did it to be more acceptable—to them."

Who’s them? Anna questioned, pushing me to keep going.

The people whose superficiality I’ve always fought against—people who spend their every waking minute worrying about looks, looks, looks. They only care how things look and not how they really are. You know how you constantly ask me how I feel? Well, I feel like throwing those people off a bridge.

Such an irrational statement scared me and I looked at Anna as if I had just confessed to actual murder.

It’s OK, Anna said, You were just expressing a feeling. It’s not the same as acting on it. Now, if I thought you’d really do it, then we’d have a problem.

For four-and-a-half years, Anna had asked me that perennial therapist question, And how do you feel about that? In my case, it was an excellent one. I had ceased to feel much of anything since my teen years. Oh, I knew how to emote—especially onstage when a role called for it—but I didn’t feel much inside my own body. Having detached from feelings years ago, I didn’t even know that your body is where you feel them!

Other than standard therapeutic protocol, getting me to feel was part of Anna’s strategy to help me stop stuffing my emotions down with food. It was finally paying off. When we began I had immediately gained weight and was furious about it. Now I was headed down the scale at a particularly rapid pace. I was settled in my routine consumption of only a Granny Smith apple and a small amount of turkey or tofu with my protein drinks every day.

I guess I’ve intellectualized a lot, huh? I had no idea I felt stuff so intensely.

Looking at me without saying Ya think? she said, It’s different isn’t it?

After numerous diets and yo-yoing through the years, I had grudgingly begun to wonder if I had some sort of a mental block against weighing less than 150 pounds. Every time I approached that number on the scale, (hardly thin for a woman who isn’t quite 5’1") I developed racing thoughts, stomachaches, and nightmares.

I knew I was approaching that benchmark again and I was already feeling shaky, irritable, and not sleeping well. Still, I hoped that maybe this time I would finally discover the secrets that lie on the other side of 150 pounds. With reinforcements like Anna—whom I had finally learned to trust—I hoped I would find out if there was a dark secret in my past or if, as my father had suggested long ago, I was just afraid of men. But thinking about it all made my stomach hurt.

I’ve always wondered if the whole world had a nervous breakdown in 1968, when I turned twelve, I said to Anna. Not only was that a year of tumultuous events like the Tet Offensive and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, among others, but everyone I know can recall life-changing events in their own lives during that year. Mine was no exception. The same month as my twelfth birthday my parents separated and began their interminable road to divorce. It would take another nine years before it was completely settled.

My memory was either vague or non-existent about what life had been like when my father lived at home. Matter-of-factly, I said, I have pretty much blocked out the first twelve years of my life.

Anna simply nodded. As a budding mental health clinician, I knew this was a significant admission I had just made to my therapist, but I didn’t attribute any memory blockage to a serious trauma. I simply concluded that since my life had