Hello, I'm Benedict Arnold

On betraying feminism and myself.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Other Liz says I’m human, but I disagree.

I feel like I’m the Great Betrayer of Myself and All Women.

Today’s essay is one I don’t want to write, because I’d prefer you think of me as not quite so vacuous and self-obsessed.

But I’d be misrepresenting myself if I didn’t write about my relationship to my weight. It’s something that doesn’t change, even when I think it has.

It’s upsetting. I want to be free from this tether. No amount of wanting changes the situation. I’m still tethered.

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In 2022, I changed my relationship to food. After fighting it my entire life, food and I became friends. By the time my mother died in January of last year, I’d lost over sixty pounds.

I accomplished this by doing two things:

1) I stopped eating all refined sugar.

2) I ate three meals a day with no snacking.

In short, I did what the experts instruct: portion control, plenty of fruits and vegetables, no empty calories. I became a disciplined eater.

I cannot overstate how successful I felt. I was brimming with triumph, because I finally felt like—and I loathe this term, but it must be said—a good girl.

Good girls don’t eat too much. Good girls don’t eat too fast. Good girls don’t spill things on their shirt. Good girls take small bites and chew their food before swallowing. Good girls eat at the table. Good girls cook meals and shun fast food. Good girls are reasonable people who don’t let life get them down. Good girls definitely do not use food for emotional comfort. Good girls look attractive, no matter their age. Good girls are slender.

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I love the word slender.

Slender: adj. (of a person or part of the body) gracefully thin.

Slender sculpts, slender is lithe, slender is beautiful. Slender is the holy grail of what I think I’m supposed to be.

Slender flits into the room in kitten heels with no effort at all.

Slender is not what I am at heart: bumbling, awkward, large. I am very tall, which ruined my chances of a career in gymnastics or figure skating. I run into furniture because I move too fast. I talk loudly and use my hands. As Secret Service says when I get going,

“Oh boy, here comes the karate chop…”

It does tend to look like I’m about to break a board when I’m making a point.

So, not only did I lose all that weight, I was fast approaching slender.

Oh, I forgot the bonus points I get for doing all this after I’d gone through menopause, which as everyone knows, is impossible. How’s that for being a good girl?

“Good girl” is the creepiest phrase on earth.

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I wasn’t slender yet. There is always another five pounds.

I realized I’d probably never be a six again, a four was unreasonable, and I gave my Size Two (Size Two seems worthy of capitalization) Betsey Johnson hot pants to my niece years ago.

I wanted to be an eight because there are stores in New York which don’t carry clothes above an eight. And an eight is a single digit, and I didn’t want to be a double-digit.

Brain cells were burned thinking these thoughts.

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I promise I was not always like this.

I wasn’t always a demented, shallow version of everything wrong in our society, and I didn’t always have such relentless self-hatred and perfectionism. I wasn’t always a Benedict Arnold-Wave feminist.

There was a brief time as a teenager when my self-talk was positive. I weighed more than what my mother wanted (she was a ballet teacher; it explains a lot) but I didn’t hate myself. Being different was alright.

It’s difficult to imagine if you look at me, because I am a blue-eyed white woman. But the word I used to describe myself at age fourteen was,

Exotic.

I thought I looked European. In the vast WASP desert of 1970s Virginia, being European might be considered exotic.

Because I was tall, and because my hair wasn’t feathered, and because I couldn’t do a cartwheel and would never be one of those little cheerleaders who looked like everything is effortless, I was exotic.

One day, an exotic man who likes to read as much as I do will come along and recognize my charms, despite not looking like everyone else. He will see me as an individual. My weight won’t bother him because like Rubens, he will consider larger women gorgeous.

My exotic man would know something about art, in addition to being a reader.

More importantly, I saw myself as acceptable. I did not think I was a failure because I didn’t look like a cheerleader. I rebelled against the idea of looking like everyone else.

I thought I was special.

I feel embarrassed writing that, like loving myself at the age of fourteen is something over which to be ashamed.

Here’s 59-year-old me chastising 14-year-old me for having self-acceptance.

Benedict Arnold rides again.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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All that changed when I got into a car accident at sixteen, broke my jaw, couldn’t eat, and became slender.

Once you people decided I was attractive, it was game over. I haven’t been myself since. But I want to be myself. Thus, my weight has gone up and down my entire life.

The last time I lost weight was different. I wasn’t dieting anymore. I was just eating normally, and my right weight found itself.

Problem solved.

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I gained a little weight after my mother died. By little, I mean a pound or two every month. This was disturbing. So I watched my portions.

One month, I gained eight pounds.

I was livid with rage. How is it possible? I don’t have any thyroid issues, because I was tested once. There is no excuse whatsoever, except maybe too much Uber Eats.

People would be able to see the eight pounds on me. And what is worse than looking at the face of someone who notices you’ve gained weight?

It is the ultimate humiliation and failure.

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I had one feeling, and it was all-consuming: rage. I did everything right, and gained weight? GTFOOH.

Now I’m going to eat whatever I want.

It is an unjust world and there is definitely no god and everything is awful. I know life isn’t fair, but it should be fair to me. That is my expectation, and the Universe is failing to meet my expectations.

I refused to get on the scale, but estimated I’d gained about twenty pounds.

Then I got on the scale at the end of last month. I’d gained thirty pounds, which is half of what I’d lost, and what happens when I get pissed off and start drinking Coca-Cola again.

And that, my friends, was the start of this depression in which I find myself.

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While speaking with a friend, I mentioned the eight-pound weight gain when I’d done nothing differently.

And before she could catch herself, she said the word,

“Nothing?”

Oh, the tone. You’ve done nothing differently, she was asking. Bullshit.

We’ve learned to edit ourselves. As someone who was fat-shamed as a child, teenager, and adult, I know it’s not cool to comment on another’s weight. Period.

But others don’t hear what I’m thinking, and I do what she did. I judge women who gain weight. I argue with myself about it, but my first response is always critical.

And self-satisfied. Because I like feeling superior to them.

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So long, arrogance. The halcyon days of superiority are gone. I’ve gained weight, and this is how I talk to myself:

No you can’t go out. No, no, people will see you’ve gained weight, and you cannot stand to see them see you. No, you have to stay inside. No, you can’t call that friend, that friend is more judgmental than others. No.

When are you going to get help with this? When are you going to stop punishing yourself with food, you don’t even enjoy it anymore. I don’t know why you’re staying clean when you’re going to eat yourself to death, what’s the point when you feel you can’t even get out of the house?

Before I lost all the weight, I did a television appearance. I can barely believe I let myself go on camera like that. But it was because of an essay I wrote, and someone reminded me I wasn’t going on TV because of what I looked like. I was going on because of what I’d done.

That made it easier.

But part of my delight in losing weight was that if I ever had to do a TV spot again, I wouldn’t be fat anymore.

That relief is gone. Now I fear success even more, because success is exposure. I don’t want to be exposed. Not like this.

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Finally, I decided I don’t have to do everything the hard way, and being a good girl does not pay. If half the nation is on Ozempic, so be it. I can be on it too. I made an appointment with my doctor.

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Several years ago (pre-Ozempic) I saw a friend of mine who had gotten downright slender herself. When I said I hoped she felt as good as she looked, she said,

“You know, I had cancer.”

No, I didn’t know.

In those moments I have perspective. In those moments I know being thin is very low indeed on a priorities list. Who cares.

My friend spoke about her cancer as if it were in the past tense. I asked if she were alright now, and she assured me she was.

A few days ago I got a call that she was in hospice care.

And here’s the rub. She’d understand every single word I’m writing, because I’ve had so many conversations about it with her. And she’d suggest I not waste my time here worrying about my weight.

I wish I could ask her how these two truths can live inside us at the same time. Maybe she’d have a better answer.

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Hearing she was in hospice was devastating.

I was able to talk with her this week. Her voice was so weak. I asked her if she could eat, because she loves my pound cake, and I thought I’d make her one.

“No, I can’t eat,” she said. “But I can still feed you.”

This made me laugh, then it made me cry harder, at which point she said,

“I’m not dead yet!”

I’m still crying.

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Yesterday I went to the doctor to plead my Ozempic case.

I told her about the weight gain and the depression, although I did not want her to know how depressed.

Too bad for me, because I couldn’t stop crying in her office. Then I told her I could not live like this and wanted to start Ozempic.

She went through all the side effects that could happen if I took the drug, which I must say, made it much less attractive. Then she said she would first do bloodwork, and before she prescribed the Ozempic, she wanted to do an ultra-sound of my thyroid.

Fine, I said.

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I bet everyone can see the punch line from a mile away.

Tentative test results (which I looked up on MyChart at 2:30 this morning) reveal that I have an enlarged thyroid. My blood work isn’t in yet, and I don’t see my doctor for a follow-up until Monday. But evidence is pointing in the direction of something which blows my mind.

This weight gain I’ve had may not be my fault. An enlarged thyroid is symptomatic of an underactive thyroid, which regulates metabolism. It can also contribute to depression.

I might be off the hook.

I’ve spent the last month berating myself for weight gain. What a colossal waste of time.

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My thyroid does not fix my Benedict Arnold Brand of Feminism, or my self-hatred, or my judgment of my weight and yours, or the damned patriarchy.

I haven’t seen the doctor yet. This is info I’ve read online after seeing my ultrasound results. I don’t know that my thyroid is the problem.

I may be off the hook, but shouldn’t I have been off the hook no matter what? Isn’t grief and depression and finishing the book reason alone to let myself off the hook?

This hook is tedious as hell. I want off of the damned hook.

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I do not want my weight to be the pass/fail test of my right to exist.

But I don’t know what the fix is. I have a friend who has a perfect body, and she worries about the scale more than I.

Could I re-wire my brain? And even if I can re-wire my brain about my weight, I certainly cannot re-wire the brain of society. It’s not like society is suddenly going to back me up and decide my weight has nothing to do with my value.

I’d like to leave myself alone. I don’t know how.

I have a sneaking suspicion I’m missing the entire point of being alive.

This will not do.