Tribal Outcast

This weekend I read Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, and it has given me a lot to think about.

First of all, she is an amazing writer.  She can turn even the ooeyist-gooeyist of physiological processes into poetry.  I love her NY Times column.  I think her college degree was in chemistry, but she combines the incessant awe of a scientist with the soul of an author.  Woman is basically Femaledom 101, with everything you could possibly wonder about your body, and then some.  It is actually extremely empowering; pride saturates every word as Angier describes everything from X chromosomes and fallopian tubes to breast-feeding and psychological theories on matriarchy, all depicted as a rich tapestry of womanhood that is a legacy to be cherished with the utmost pride.  Being a female is painted as an exquisite privilege, a tribe with a rich cultural and physiological history that half the world's population is excluded from.

If you are a normal female, that is. Instead of being enthralled by her excellent prose and the mind-bendingly awesome science of our bodies, though, I got more and more depressed as I progressed through the book.  Beyond the basic double-deuce set of X chromosomes, there was little I could relate to.  She talked about the wonders of the ovaries, all the rites of womanhood, etc.  She spent three chapters on estrogen and all of its amazing qualities.  The theme of the book is all of these physiological processes that literally make us who we are--the hormones and other chemicals essential to sex differentiation affect the brain as well as the other organs.  What an astounding thing to be a part of.  I wonder what it's like.

I have never menstruated, my bones are equivalent to Jiffy Pop, I wear the same bra size that I did in the 7th grade, and I have little hope of ever reproducing.  And I can't whine about it, because I did it all to myself.  Every single day for almost a decade, I've woken up and chosen this path.  So why the sorrow at not being part of the in-crowd with the Sisterhood of the world?  You can't have it both ways, Cammy, you created this reality and have no right to pity yourself. If you throw away your key, you can't cry injustice when you come to a locked door.

  

But it still hurts.

And it's ironic, because I am in this position because I feel chained to thinness, and yet I don't feel thin.  I've undermined my health and kept myself in an unnatural physical state, and to what end?  Frankly, the cost-benefit analysis is roughly equivalent to that of putting your hand on a hot iron.

Don't get me wrong, I highly recommend the book, and I am trying to transmute my alienation into inspiration.  The book is an exultation of the way our bodies are supposed to work.  Angier explains the way we are formed while also celebrating the form itself.  It has really given me a lot to think about, and provides a reality check for anyone who thinks they can skate along at subclinical levels indefinitely. The debt will come due, and what will you have gotten in exchange? We all have bodies, whether we like it or not.  We may not be our bodies (or we may, this is philosophical issue beyond the scope of this post), but our lives would be much better if we'd respect our bodies for how they work instead of how they look, for what they do instead of what we can get away with doing to them.

EDIT: I just wanted to respond to something brought up in comments, that I should have been more sensitive about.  I do not want to imply in any way, shape, or form that I think people are to blame for their mental illnesses.  I whole-heartedly believe that EDs qualify as a true disease with many biological underpinnings.  When I read other accounts of EDs, I never think "Wow, she sure brought that on herself."  As I'm sure many of you understand, though, sometimes it is just difficult to apply that objectivity to our own situations, I guess by definition our own personal cases are subjective?  Anyway, I felt guilty that I may have come across as demeaning mental illnesses and just wanted to issue this disclaimer.  Thank you, as always, to commenters, for their insights and support.