skinny in a mini

Fat Girl Thin

It is January, as you probably already know, but unlike 82% (or thereabouts) of the adult population of the UK, I will not be starting the year with a diet. I will not be detoxing, or raw juicing, embracing a new exercise regime, or doing anything even vaguely weight loss-y. This is because I am already thin. How thin, exactly? Thin enough to worry my mother; thin enough to enjoy shopping for jeans (although annoyingly few stores stock down to a 24-in waist currently); I am thin enough to inspire Observer readers to send me thin-related hate mail on a regular basis (hi, fans!). I am definitely thin.

My story so far: four and a half years ago, I was slim. A size 10-going-on-12, nine-ish stone. I’d never dieted. I wanted to be a bit thinner, in an abstract sort of sense; I had a vague notion that it would be good to be half a stone or so lighter - doesn’t everyone? But I never did anything about it. I thought that the constant background hum of dissatisfaction I felt about my weight came as part of the package of being a 21st-century bird.

Although officially, I pitied those who dieted. Officially, I ‘knew’ that being thin couldn’t make a girl happy. But then, bingo! A freakish combination of grief, stress and heartbreak conspired to make me drop a shade under two stone over the course of four months. There’s no diet in the world as effective as abject misery; and oh! I was miserable! During a routine shopping trip (an attempt to buy myself happy, naturally) I discovered that, in dress-size terms, I was much, much smaller than I had been pre-misery. A size 6/8 in fact. And furthermore, I liked it! Once the sadness subsided, I chose to maintain the thinness. I kept to the grief-enforced eating regime (of really Not Much), and I stayed skinny. Four years ago, I had the audacity to write about it, which was when the hate mail started. I was genuinely surprised to discover that thin is a very thorny issue indeed, and people choosing to endorse it are not admired - unlike people who are fat, because they’re making some manner of brave statement; and it isn’t ‘I Like Cake’. Since then, thinness has escalated into something of an international row. It reached new heights last year, with the rampantly over-subscribed size 0 debate, (a weird time for me because suddenly, in relation to super-thin celebrities like Nicole Ritchie, I didn’t seem that skinny after all).

Anyway. Four and half years into my tenure of being thin, I have substantial experience of it. I know stuff. I know, for example, that being thin is not the same as having a good body. I know a girl’s arse can sag even when she’s hardly got one. I know that problems arise when one looks 15 years younger from the back, than from the front - as the lecherous youngster who expressed disappointment in getting a close-up of my 35-year-old face, will testify. (Oh, how frantically he back-pedalled on all the chat-up lines he’d been directing toward the back of my head only moments earlier!)

But mostly, I am very familiar with the kinds of things that thin people say, and what they - we - really mean:

I just plain forgot to eat lunch today!

You’re mad if you believe that. Mad. No one who isn’t a) heartbroken or b) in the throes of a nervous breakdown, forgets to eat an entire meal. But, by surfing my hunger pangs with clever use of fragments of oatcake, and distracting my taste buds with vast amounts of Diet Coke, I just about managed to scrape by without lunch today.

You don’t think I’m too thin, do you?

Please say yes! Please say yes!

I have a very fast metabolism

I metabolise at the same rate as everyone else; but I mainline black coffee so I’m pretty much speeding all the time.

I don’t miss carbs

I miss everything about carbs! Everything! I miss white bread and the multiple forms in which potato comes (but especially roast). I miss crisps and pies and scones and sponge cake and fusili and sometimes - quite a lot, actually - I dream about rice.

I never diet

I never eat.

Beth Ditto’s so cool

Beth Ditto’s so fat

I eat whatever I like

It’s just that I’ve retrained my palate to ‘like’ anything low fat, high GI, and carb-lite. And actually, sometimes, in restaurants, I’ll order dishes I don’t especially like, because I know I’ll eat them slowly, and probably won’t finish them. I do at least get drunk very quickly, so I’m not a complete loss socially. (I don’t think.)

I’m completely stuffed!

The more psychotic edge has been taken off my hunger, because I’ve eaten a whole bit of sashimi and a Jaffa Cake. But completely stuffed? Ha! Not since the summer of 2002.

I wish I could be bigger. I’d love to feel all curvy, sexy and womanly

Ah ha ha ha ha haaa!

I am perfectly well-adjusted about food

I am bonkers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jan/14/healthandwellbeing.features

Admit it. You hate me because I’m thin

I didn’t mean to get so thin. I liked food, especially supermarket top-end ranges and expensive freebie work lunches. And I didn’t have an eating disorder. Just the usual understated body image issues; that low-level discontent most women experience on watching the stars on a glossy Channel 4 American import go about their whip-thin, fragrant business. Aka Sex and the City syndrome.

But thin wasn’t something I actively pursued. Thin happened to me. Firstly, there was some heightened life turmoil. A new job, a very ill mother, general unease about where I was going now I had hit my thirties. None of which made me inclined to eat. Secondly, I became ‘accidentally Atkins’. I fell spontaneously out of love with carbohydrates - with the pasta and bread that used to make up most of my meals - and in love with protein. I discovered fish, properly, for the first time ever. Sea bass, tuna steak, sword fish, yes!, went a bit yoghurt-based for breakfast, carpaccio of beef and rocket for lunch, fancy wilted spinach salad for dinner. In six months, I lost nearly two stone. On a clothes shopping expedition, I realised with vague interest that I’d gone from being a size 10 going on 12, to a size six going on eight. This tipped me and my five-five frame into the realm of what’s technically referred to as ‘probably a bit too thin, lady’.

What I didn’t realise was how massively Thin would impact on my life. Beyond the predictable scenarios (mother fretting, lover wondering out loud if I was ‘bulmenic’ [sic]), other things changed. Rather excitingly, I was embraced by a fast and glam super-thin super-class. I was summoned for a drink by a group of women I used to work with on Vogue, a place where thinliness is not just next to godliness, it rates way, way above it. They practically applauded when I entered the bar. ‘How did you do it?’ asked the people who eat nothing (give or take the occasional pistachio nut - which, apparently, are the thin person’s preferred bar snack because the time it takes to open them, multiplied by the possibility that you might break a nail on the shell, means you won’t consume nearly as many as you might if they were, say, cashews). ‘Stress, grief, a bit of abject misery, accidental Atkins,’ I told them. ‘Wow,’ they said. ‘Brilliant.’

We spent the night drinking cinnamon Bellinis, the Diet Coke of the cocktail world. We waved away the canapès on offer. We didn’t eat: caramelised red onion and soured cream blinis, mini portions of sausage and mash on big china spoons, California rolls, mini lemon mousses in shot glasses. Everyone hung on my every word because I was newly, truly thin, and therefore authoritative.

Not everyone was so impressed. Old friends started watching me when we lunched together. I could see them thinking: why doesn’t she have any bread? And why is she only having a starter? That’s the oldest trick in the book, that is! They stealth-ordered extra portions of fat chips for me, in the vain hope I wouldn’t notice. I did.

Men, in general, do not approve. Builders accost me on the street, telling me I could be a ‘good-looking bird, if I ate a bit more’. They wave their sandwiches at me, in case I am a bit hazy on what food looks like. When I was loudly declaring my love of dark choc Baci in my local Italian deli, I heard the man in the queue behind me mutter, ‘Yeah, right.’ In short: you get thin, you become public property.

Our culture is obsessed by thin and by The Thin, by the obesity versus anorexia debate, by our (women’s, obviously) constant taboo pursuit of thinness. A celebrity who isn’t incredibly thin isn’t generally considered ‘A-list’. It’s not right, but there it is. Everybody wants to be thinner. Whatever they say. And now I am, and I love it. I lost weight by accident, but I could have put it all back on again by now if I’d wanted to. But I don’t.

Contrary to popular belief, being thin has made me happy. I’ve spent probably 16 years wondering if I would look better if I were skinnier, and now I know for sure. I do. But then almost everyone does. I like the way clothes fit me. And I like having cheekbones (although I admit I can look a touch gaunt in harsh lighting). As one of the most astute women I know said to me recently: ‘You’ve lost too much weight. God, I love it when people say that to me.’

And weirdly, I like food more, now that I am untroubled by Sex and the City syndrome. I certainly think about it a lot less. I don’t waste time calculating that day’s fat intake, totting up calories consumed absent-mindedly on the corner of a Post-it. I don’t need to. I know it’s not that much: that’s sushi for you.

My friends have re-christened me Thinny Girl, and I love it. Thin is part of who I am now and I thoroughly intend to make the best of it. With no apologies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2003/sep/14/foodanddrink.features3

A day in the life: Alexa Chung

My weight is dwindling as I don’t have time to go to the supermarket. I speak to my mum most days and she always asks what I’ve had to eat. She gets very upset when I say: “Uh, I forgot.” My dream breakfast is eggs florentine or almond croissants, but I never get it. I’m thinner now than I’ve ever been because I’m working so hard. I carry around birthday cards I’ve made but haven’t had time to send, bills I need to pay. I’m rubbish at all that …..

I drink cappuccinos all day. TV studios have the worst food. I’m a vegetarian and the crew are always eating meat. I’d love someone to get me muesli and a cupcake, but it doesn’t feel right asking runners to get things for me.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4907332.ece