diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78225-0.txt | 1070 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78225-h/78225-h.htm | 1671 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78225-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 0 -> 598533 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78225-h/images/ititle.jpg | bin | 0 -> 18286 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
7 files changed, 2757 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/78225-0.txt b/78225-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ac14da --- /dev/null +++ b/78225-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1070 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78225 *** + + + + + NO FOOD + WITH MY MEALS + + O + + + + + BOOKS BY + + FANNIE HURST + + O + + JUST AROUND THE CORNER + EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG + GASLIGHT SONATAS + HUMORESQUE + STAR DUST + THE VERTICAL CITY + LUMMOX + APPASSIONATA + MANNEQUIN + SONG OF LIFE + A PRESIDENT IS BORN + PROCESSION + FIVE AND TEN + BACK STREET + IMITATION OF LIFE + ANITRA’S DANCE + + + + + NO FOOD + WITH MY + MEALS + + _by_ + + Fannie Hurst + + [Illustration] + + 1935 + + HARPER & BROTHERS + PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + + + + + NO FOOD WITH MY MEALS + + _Copyright, 1935, by Fannie Hurst_ + + _Printed in the United States of America_ + +_All rights in this book are reserved. It may not be used for dramatic, + motion- or talking-picture purposes without written authorization + from the holder of these rights. Nor may the text or part thereof be + reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing. For + information address: Harper & Brothers, 49 East 33rd Street, New York, + N. Y._ + + FIRST EDITION + + A-K + + + + + NO FOOD + WITH MY MEALS + + O + + +Sometimes, regarding my slimmed human envelope, which at best seems +designed more for service than beauty, I do ponder. + +Not so much upon its frailty, which has been achieved at the cost of no +food with my meals, but upon the frailty of the spiritual inhabitant of +that envelope. + +Regarding that spiritual inhabitant at the restless business of trying +to learn to live in her house of clay, faint ironic laughter, the kind +apt to be induced by a breakfast of lemon juice and hot water, rumbles +along the inner me. + +Some women are born frail. Some have frailty thrust upon them. Still +others achieve it, and at what price glory! + +_Trivia_, you say? + +Not at all. + +What is _trivia_, and what is not? + +If, by virtue of its relativity to my concerns, the dahlia in my +garden, the color of my tweeds, the nick in my dining-room table, or +the market price of strawberries become important, then they _are_ +important. Everything or nothing matters. + +When even half of one hundred and twenty-three million human beings on +a North American continent begins to care passionately about adhering +in standards of beauty to formulae concocted somewhere between anywhere +and Hollywood, then that state of mind becomes important. Sufficiently +so to create neurosis, psychosis, and acidosis. + +No state of mind or body flecked with evidence of phobia can remain +trivial, no matter how trivial the minds and bodies themselves. + +It was about four years ago that the slimming phobia of my sex and era +first began to fleck me with its rabies-like foam. + +Up to that period, although overweight by a not inconsiderable +poundage, I had not given complete rein to the latent unease which +sporadically smote me at my abundance. + +In fact, overweight from my advent as an eleven-pound baby, there was a +brief period around adolescence when my opulence seemed something of an +asset. + +“Guess how much she weighs,” I can hear my grandfather proudly +challenging, as he stood me on the sitting-room table and named a good +eight or ten pounds over and above the most conservative estimate. + +Ladies called me apple-cheeked, and gentlemen pinched them. I strutted, +but even back there, there was unease in that strut. + +But generally speaking, up to the time of my acute surrender to my +sex’s phobia for slimming, the matter of anatomical distinction or +peculiarity was scarcely within the pale of discussion. You were +fat or slim, narrow or wide, dark or blond, according to a divine +appropriation over which you had little control. To be sure, there was +usually a “Fatty” in the schoolroom or on the block, but generally +speaking, one did not dwell upon the flesh, or lack of it. + + * * * * * + +Beauty, had it not been parceled out in your direction, was something +that could be brewed within the spirit in a manner to offset the +external lack. This you were taught at the parental knee. Although +it was not very satisfactory, you let it go at that. Except, why +were hearts of gold and curls of gold so rarely supposed to strike +simultaneously. How odd of God.... + +Now take this matter of being a plump little girl. You were +apple-cheeked and got pinched for their cuteness, but then, you had to +go and be a fat little girl, too. Why couldn’t one be a slender little +girl--and apple-cheeked! + +If you were unduly slim, you were simultaneously apt not to be +apple-cheeked. There God went again, being odd. Slim, your portion was +usually the bitter one of cod-liver oil and shoulder braces, whereas +in plump reverse, you were called the picture of health and encouraged +in your natural predilection for the creamed potatoes and marshmallow +fillings which were usually anathema to the slim cod-liver oilers. + +There was to come an adult time however, in the life of this narrator, +when as the hum of a swarm of locusts over the peace of her mind, the +dietary chant of the dieting women began to separate itself into a +specific and ominous roar all its own. + +Gradually, and oh, so insidiously, the spectacle of you, going your +somewhat robust routine of three normal, if perhaps unscientific meals +a day, in a state of taken-for-granted health that made it no theme for +discussion; gradually you became to yourself a not edifying spectacle. + +There was too much of something with you. Yourself. + +Awareness, faint as the footsteps of a fly along the back of a neck, +began to creep upon you so lightly at first that it was scarcely more +than a tickling across your consciousness. + +It began from who knows what remote scratchings of unease, in a +changing attitude toward such cardinal institutions as breakfast. + +There had recently arrived a newcomer in our Middle West midst, a Mrs. +de Lisle from New York, a slim, pretty little lady much criticized +by the impeccable housewives on the pretty residential street of our +pretty city, for lax housekeeping, and who was openly known to have her +breakfast (roll and coffee) in bed. + + * * * * * + +Now you take what has since become this more or less national +institution of roll and coffee in the morning. It has its points +æsthetically and doubtless gastronomically. But along about ten-thirty +in the affairs of a busy morning those points, during the first period +of the transition from more substantial matinal fare, begin to reside +chiefly in the aching void at the pit of the stomach. + +Breakfast tradition dies hard, particularly if that tradition happens +to have been born and bred in the Middle West. + +We lived not on a farm mind you, in these years of my late teens when +too much of the corporeal me first began to seem too much with me, but +in a large Middle West metropolis of urban habits of a most complicated +nature. We ate our corn on cob from silver end-pieces, traveled east +in a manner your Easterner seldom traveled west, and were among the +first of the American communities to be stricken with such respective +epidemics as burnt wood, honitan, ping-pong, Kinloch telephones, +horseless carriages and hobble skirts. + +At seven-thirty o’clock during the first eighteen years of my life +spent there, a family of three, consisting of my father, the president +of a fair sized shoe factory, but who nevertheless, punctiliously +slid back his roll-top desk at eight o’clock; an alert and brainy +housekeeper, my mother, and a slightly overweight youngster, myself, +sat down to a breakfast worthy of the name. Literally we broke fast. +Oatmeal in a covered dish was served out with plentiful additions of +butter, sugar and yellowish cream. A platter of bacon and eggs, the +eggs not necessarily portioned out along the conventional lines of two +per person. My father was not adverse to a third, the frailer members +of the family usually contenting themselves with two. Toast or hot +biscuits or both arrived in a wicker basket, all tucked in under a +red-and-white napkin with a fringed edge. There was usually hominy or +grits or stacks of griddle cakes with apple jelly or molasses. Coffee +and plenty of it in a beautiful old “Meissen” china pot with a gilt +snout, and, more often than not, crumb coffee cake, still hot, and +thickly sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. + +You ate, aided and abetted, it is true, by maternal duress of the most +insistent nature, to have more of this, and another helping of that, on +the respective suppositions that a business man was facing a long and +exacting day, a growing child her school, and a housekeeper her arduous +routine. + +You ate! And thereby were to become susceptible for life to a tickling +of the nostrils at the smell of frying bacon rushing up from the +servant’s quarters as you, in your bedroom, sip black unsweetened +coffee or gulp orange juice. + +I was reared to like breakfast. I still like breakfast. Heaven my +witness, I have not eaten a breakfast in twelve years. + +Because it was about twelve years ago that the first whirrings of the +dietary chant of the dieting women began to assail my ears. In fact, +glancing back, it becomes apparent that about the time rolls-and-coffee +became synonymous for the old noun breakfast, was launched the dietary +era of my life. + +It was all insidious, it was all as the humming of locusts, it was all +as the fluty wings of the voice of my sex. + +What had hitherto been only the vague unease at the poor, or rather the +ample, showing put up by my externalities of figure; an unease which +had been sweetly soothed by parents, now began to assert itself more +positively. + + * * * * * + +Suddenly, or so it seemed to a languidly awakened awareness, the +biology of my entire sisterhood seemed to have undergone an evolution. +Female silhouettes began to take on the concavity of the letter +C. Curves, only as they collapsed inward upon the anatomy, were +apparently fit to be visible to the naked eye of the beholder. The +bust measurements of the potential and actual mothers of the race +dropped to the proportions of their young sons and brothers. The old, +well-nourished ideal of the Venus de Milo became a lummox. Something +actually rodential began to characterize the upper lips of the women of +the slimming era as they gnawed at the raw carrot and the herbaceous +green. + +Out of the stuff of enameled rolling-pins for kneading too, too solid +lady-flesh, rubber reducing girdles, bathroom scales to match any color +scheme, reduction salts in the pastel shades, electric-light cabinets, +rowing-machines, _et al._, new industries were born. Restaurateurs +became Melba toast, spinach, and saccharine conscious. Spas began to +find obesity, real and imagined, more profitable than liver complaint, +gall stones, and gout rolled in one. Came the dawn of a dark hour when +public opinion demanded that a grand-opera diva must be able to look +down and see her own toes. + +Such diet-derivative expressions as incompatibility, mental cruelty, +fanaticism, irritability, cussedness, began more and more to creep into +the phraseology of the divorce courts. + +Overnight, as it were, that quick barometer, the show girl, achieved +the biological phenomenon of shedding her hips, and measurements +fluctuated more violently than a falling stock market. Figures began to +slump and tip the scales at far below the Venus de Milo par. The way to +compute your approach to the norm of the current ideal of beauty was +to divide Lillian Russell’s adult weight by two, her measurements by +three, and her vitality by four. + +A favorite hypothesis has it that, in the main, women dress and +adorn themselves primarily for the appraising eye of women. It is +then also fair to assume that women reduce for women. Until his eye +and arm became trained to the lesser lines of his womanhood, the +male-in-the-streets’ reaction was scarcely nothing at all. + +You’re all right as you are. What you want to reduce for? What’s the +idea? You look good to me. Never did like skinny women. Cut out the +dieting. + +The very new crop of adult young men, a generation born and reared in +the slimming era, probably cerebrates about it not at all, except that +by now our new male adults are trained to like their fair sex, should +they stop to think at all, slab-like, flat-chested, hipless, and with +skin tones of emacia carefully smeared over with sunburn, real or +artificial. + +Next, starting from proportions which at first had seemed no more +ominous than that cloud no larger than a man’s hand, the home-wrecking, +nerve-wracking noun of the age burst explosively upon the scene. +_Calories!_ And the counting of the women within the shadow of a +guillotine became as naught, compared with the counting of the dieting +women. + + Five medium slices pickled beet 25 calories + One cup black unsweetened coffee 0 calories + One medium-sweet pickle 25 calories + Two tablespoons lemon juice 10 calories + Average helping lettuce, no oil 0 calories + One plum 30 calories + One-half one small peach 30 calories + Five strawberries 25 calories + One stalk celery 3 calories + One slice cucumber 1 calorie + Four ounces consommé, no fat 15 calories + +It was along about then, free, white, and over twenty-one, that the +rabies-like foam of the slimming phobia of my era began to fleck me. + +In fact, it is possible to lay finger upon the very occasion of my +surrender to the caloric age. + +Suddenly, and at one fell swoop, as they would have put it back in the +days when Venus de Milo was not considered a stylish stout, all the +inchoate unease of my overweight lifetime burst forth. + + * * * * * + +A slim and lovely woman invited me to lunch with her at one of the +town’s smart hostelries. As we walked through crowded dining-rooms, +heads turned to the rhythm of her svelte grace. With the prerogative of +the guest, I ordered first, off a menu the size of a tabloid newspaper. +About my usual. A creamed celery soup (specialty of this particular +hotel). A grilled chop rolled around a kidney. Green salad with an +oil dressing. A sweet and coffee. Mine hostess, whose neck, so slim, +was like a swan’s, ordered plain spinach (en branch please--not even +buttered) and a demi-tasse. + +“Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m dieting. Came back from White +Sulphur last week one hundred and nine pounds, which is just exactly +nine more pounds than this five-feet-nine is going to drag around. I’m +foul with overweight.” + +Reader, as they would say back in the days when Lillian Russell +attached her corset strings to the bed post and took three deep +breaths, I died that day. Of shame. Suddenly it seemed to me, sitting +there in the abundant coverage of thrice nine pounds overweight, +that of grossness I must perish before the very eyes of the waiter +so solicitously placing my four hundred calories of cream of celery +before me. The hand with which I toyed at the tablespoon designed to +convey them to my stiffened lips became as a pale and flaccid ham. +The dead hammish hand of a lady who had suddenly died of the shame of +her overweight. From every corner of that opulent dining-room, there +appeared the delusion of the slim hands of slim ladies mocking at one +of their sex who permitted indenture space for dimples on the backs of +her hands, whose neck seemed shorter than it need have, who was fair, +fat, and alas! size forty. + +And all the while, the waiter never even suspected that the lady toying +with her cream-of-celery soup was dead. Of shame. And neither did her +rodential hostess, nibbling at her spinach with her quivering little +upper lip. + +So out of this moment of this dream of slenderness honing herself +still further on a diet of a concoction that looked like a small +portion of boiled green tissue paper, was born resolution. + +Mine no longer to reason why, mine but to do and diet. + +To be sure, over a period of years dating back to days when a college +senior who detested basket ball had played it vociferously, and had +swapped her cream pie at dormitory for abominated jello, there had been +varied and expensive attempts at reduction. + +Subsequently, one unsuccessful experiment followed another. I had +eighteen-dayed, counted calories, lamb-chopped-and-pineappled, sat in +an elegant electric cabinet, and been treated exactly like a fowl in +a Dutch oven; taken punishment from a famed Hollywood masseuse, that +put me in the red, the black and blue; immersed my too, too solid +self in baths of paraffine and mud; walked around reservoirs in sweat +shirts; and without making appreciable inroads, had indulged in every +out-and-indoor sport dear to funny-paper compilers. + +But this day of the spectacle of the dream of slenderness honing +herself down on boiled green tissue-paper, something toward which the +not inconsiderable bulk of me had doubtless sub- or unconsciously been +traveling since the basket-ball-jello days, was suddenly bang up in +front of me. + + * * * * * + +Life, except on the basis of a lesser me, was no longer endurable. +The fulsome sensation of being me, of having the vendeuse in the +shop smear me, as I approached, with her appraising eye: “Blouse? +Er--yes--er--size forty?” had reached its limit. + +Invalid, suddenly intolerable, were the years of the benignity of +friends: “But you are really not too stout, my dear. You’re just +plump. Nonsense! You wouldn’t be you, thin. Don’t you go dieting and +ruin your health. Why, my sister-in-law got herself down to a bag of +bones and died of getting herself there, that’s what happened to my +sister-in-law. Yes, of course _I_ diet, but I wouldn’t if my weight was +as becoming to me as yours is.” + +Apple sauce! I found myself hissing to myself in the days when that +elegant compound noun was eloquent. Apple sauce! (without sugar in it). + +Suddenly the too, too solid flesh and I were in the death grapple. + +Latently, beneath my poor numbed powers of logic where this faddistic +subject of diet was concerned, there stirred insurrection. + +Beneath the superficial layers of puerile and sometimes pernicious +panaceas, eighteen-day ones, rolling-machine ones, sweat-shirt and +hair-shirt ones, must somewhere lurk a fundamental truth. + +Casting aside, except as subsidiaries, the dumbbells, the +static bicycle in its sweat-cabinet, the vibratory machine, the +rowing-machine, the electric horse, I set up a fundamental truth for +myself. + +Food makes fat. + +Exercise may aid and abet its con- or destruction, baths, massage, +health waters and what not, be its handmaidens, but fundamentally, +chemically, irrefutably, it is certain foods which make fat! And so +it came about that the lesser me that corresponds to the one you +see in reduction advertisements etched in dotted lines beside the +before-taking silhouette, rose to the supreme heights of decision. +Casting away the cluttering paraphernalia of the blue-enameled +rolling-pins, the indoor bicycle, the five-foot Diet-book shelf, I +decided to set out afresh upon the single supposition that in the +normally functioning human being, _food makes fat_. + +I sought out the most all-around wise man of my acquaintance. He, in +turn, directed me to a man especially wise in the highly specialized +field of dietetics. + +There was little in this physician’s laboratory-like office to suggest +what I had come to regard as part of the sumptuous adjuncts of slimming. + +The address was not good. + +I arrived there finally, to be received by a tall, rangy man with no +manner at all, who promptly proceeded to take from me what had never +been taken before, my metabolism. + +Metabolism is something that you surrender with a clothespin on your +nose and what seems to be the cork end-piece of a bicycle handle bar +inserted into your mouth. + +This walling up of the two major points of egress of what is known +to the laity as your breathing, results in an inner panic which is +recorded by an automatic pen attached to the apparatus which records +the goings-on of your trapped breath. + +You do not give your metabolism standing up. You lie prone, first +thinking you are going to die, then hoping it. + +The results of this sudden internal commotion, as recorded by the +metabolism-machine, established my metabolistic processes as normal. +This fact, in turn, established the further fact that there were no +glandular alibis or pathological peculiarities to exonerate this case +of overweight. + +To put it bluntly, food in wrong selection, proportion, and combination +was the root of the evil. + + * * * * * + +Now if the motif of my words seems to have chiefly to do with food and +editorial we, please bear in mind that these words have chiefly to do +with food and editorial we. The sum, substance and portent which give +whatever justification I may be able to eke out of the penning of these +pages of adjectives and split infinitives, being food and editorial we. + +This, however, is neither the time nor the place to go into the details +of this new post-metabolism regime, except to emphasize that after +years of dangerous and rudderless experimentation, I had at last found +a man who seemed to understand the science of food as it applied to my +human envelope. + +The lesser me (who now purchases her blouses in the misses’ +department) has not got it left in her to display the behaviorism of +your true hero. “It was nothing at all. I saw my duty and I did it.” +It _was_ something, let me tell you that. It was lean and rocky going, +full of thorn. Rocky going and slow and uphill and torturous and to a +dreadful sing-song rhythm that more and more frequently got into my +way: What-of-it-what-of-it---- + +Neither is the transformation from my hitherto normal attitude toward +food as a pleasant means of subsistence, pretty telling. + +There were hours, there were days, during the long lean siege of +the post-metabolism era, when part of a newly developed form of +self-torture was to rise from the pickings of my table and retire to +a solitude I sought chiefly in order to visualize, while the tortured +saliva ran, the meal it might have been. Instead of the soulless and +fatless broth, consisting of the water off boiled greens, creamed soup +to cling warmingly to cold ribs; instead of the cube of boiled beef +(three ounces, cooked), a filet of sole, lying tenderly beneath a +velvety sauce and sprinkled through with capers, like the black tips of +little ermines; hot rolls slit on the side and then pressed down again +on a cube of sweet butter to fit into the aching void of no bread. A +sweet, preferably souffléd, or even a lowly, a sugared and cinnamoned +baked apple under cream, to take the place of eight gulps of water. + +There was to come a time, fallen so low had I, when to stand with my +nose plastered against the plate-glass windows of lunch-room emporiums, +where flapjacks, later to be smothered under melting butter and golden +syrup were being juggled, became one of my favorite outdoor sports. + +Time has healed those aching voids. Alas! one of the cruel anachronisms +of this whole cruelly anachronistic business is that deep within the +lesser me nests regret that my palate, doubtless also leaner, has lost +much of its fine gusty capacity to yearn. + +Today a dish of flapjacks beneath a golden blanket of maple syrup; +a Roquefort dressing flowing off the smooth red flank of a stuffed +tomato, a soufflé, a marron glacé, a crêpe suzette, a marzipan, leave +me cold and without zest. Before them now I stand bowed with a regret +that I have lost my capacity to regret them. + +But there is no denying the fact that there was that period when my +secret absorption upon the subject of food (food denied me) became +shamefully dominant. Not the fierce legitimate hunger pangs of one +starving for lack of the ability to obtain food, but the flabby, rather +shameful spectacle of one in the midst of the plentiful prerogatives of +three meals a day, self-denied them. + +Frightening, mental traits began to creep upon me. + + * * * * * + +Living chiefly upon myself, stoked on the low fuel values of lean +meats and five-per-cent vegetables boiled in water, going through my +pallid days always conscious of a catherine wheel of desire spinning +somewhere within the center of my denied and shrinking anatomy, I began +to take on a quite horrible and private pleasure in watching other +people eat, or preferably, overeat. + +Myself relentless in passing up a toothsome dish, often as not +especially prepared by a gracious hostess, I showed neither mercy nor +consideration. But let that same hostess sit down at my own board and I +became sly and spider-like, luring my victim into my gastronomic den of +rich foods. + +Eat and overeat, something devilish within me seemed to shout. Eat, in +order that I may all the more exultantly deny and work myself up into +the ecstasies of martyrdom. How the saints must have learned to love +their sweet agonies! + +Nor were these macabre mental processes to remain unsuspected. Chilly +laughter began to greet the dreadful might of my hospitality. Glances +flashed between my guests as sawing away at a thin slice of especially +prepared lean beef, fried in mineral oil, I importuned, nay commanded, +my futilely resisting guests to more of this and that richly devised +concoction; pressed upon them the au gratin potato, the sherry-flavored +tart, while I tinkled ice water against denied but omnivorous teeth, +dallied with my chaste unused dessert spoon and rammed persuasion and +second helpings of pistachio Melba down my friends. + +“Dammit,” cried one of my obese guests one night, goaded (and tempted) +beyond endurance, “I won’t overstuff myself with another helping of +this delicious bouillabaisse in order to enhance your lean inner spirit +of self-righteousness! Dammit, I tell you, no! Well, just a little +more--just a damn little more.” + +Reader, as they used to say in the days when ladies “padded,” my +friend, alas! spoke too truly. Hungry, whetted with a desire for foods +that hitherto had never interested nor particularly tempted me, I +schemed for the obesity of my lean friends and the greater obesity of +my obese ones. Schemed, Reader! The sense of rising from my board, +feebly stoked on lean meats broiled in mineral oil, five-per-cent +vegetables (the ones that grow on the wrong side of the gastronomic +railroad tracks; parsnips, cabbage, spinach, beets, greens, leeks, +dandelions) brought me the strange sadistic martyr-like delights herein +elsewhere described. I began to lose my friends. + +Neither, alas! did it stop here. As week by week, under a +scientifically ordered regime which I partially defeated by overdoing +my doctor’s dietary orders, the coverage began to diminish too rapidly +to please him, and the strange psychology of a lady in the throes of a +too rigid diet continued its baffling manifestations. + + * * * * * + +About the time that my slimming success began to be apparent to the +appraising eyes of the sisterhood, my entrance into a room was the +occasion for a gust of Oh’s and Ah’s, How-did-you-do-it? Why, I +wouldn’t have known you! My dear, you’re marvelous! The heady wine of +my success (on an empty stomach) began to induce giddiness. + +Hollow-eyed and a bit necky, I began to indulge in the private +procedure of posing before my mirror, pinning in my loose waistband and +twisting about a slightly loose-fleshed neck for the Jean Harlow angle +or the Hepburn line of jaw. The first faint knob pushing out through my +neck was something on which to hang high hope. + +It was during this period that, after having goaded her with food, +I would remark maliciously to a friend: “Look over there at that +spectacle! It is enough to cause a scientist to faint! A stout woman +eating a potato!” + +Oh, I was the subject for inclusion in the rows of introspective ladies +waiting in the outer rooms of smart Park Avenue psychoanalysts, I can +tell you! + +It enraged me to see my friends eat, or, for that matter, drink, +although a taste for alcohol or spirituous liquors had never made them +part of my problem. It enraged me to see them eat; I could not bear not +to see them overstuff. + +I now pitied obesity in others, and did all in my power to either +induce or encourage it. + +Smoldering rage began within me if my entrance into a group of friends +failed to elicit pæans of surprised admiration. In the twelvemonth of +fanatical defiance of my doctor’s admonitions for temperance, I became +a narrow-looking, bony individual with a disproportionately large head, +wide, uninhabited-looking shoulders, old-looking hands, and a cold kind +of chic. + +There was not a laugh in a carload of me. + +I had been through a grim, hungry, cold, and lonely fight, and always +to that insistent tom-tom of rhythm, relentless as a drum-beat: +What-of-it-what-of-it-what-of-it. + +I had won my spurs and they stuck out all over me. + +People with two chins and plenty of laughter above and below them said, +without rue, that I had character. Friends, to my face at least, said I +had “looks,” although toward the end even some of them began to admit +that they had liked me better “before.” + +I had lost pounds and my sense of humor. + + * * * * * + +The miracle of it, cheating my doctor as I did, was that I had not lost +my health. Perhaps the funniness of me came rushing over me just in +time to avert that. Perhaps the spectacle on all sides of women almost +deliberately throwing the incomparable asset of their health away upon +the absurd altar of slimming, for no other reason than the desire to +be slim, helped, Reader, to snatch me from the jaws of a dieting lady +novelist’s more or less untimely death. + +Not that I have come far enough along the line of mental readjustment +to relinquish my diet. Slimming is a battle that is never won. But at +least I am on to myself. I can laugh it off. And the spectacle of me to +myself in the mirror is really nothing to leave home about, nor, so far +as I can see, has there been the impulse on anyone’s part to indulge +in that drastic measure in my behalf. I have not observed that those +nearest and dearest, or that friends in general, like me any the more +or less. If anything, you may deduce, less. + +Now this is not to convey that all diets for æsthetic ends are +pernicious and that all slimming is vicious. + +On the contrary, excess baggage of flesh is not only unwieldy and +unbeautiful, but it is more usually a health liability than an asset +(see life-insurance-risk charts). + +As a matter of fact, undereating may generally be counted as a cardinal +virtue. A wise and disturbing man it was who first passed out the +golden advice to always leave the dinner table a little unsatisfied. +Particularly since nature has seen fit to pester the human race with +various appetites which are so far and away beyond requirements, are +food and drink restraints to be regarded on the benign side. + +Moderation is one of the nicer practices. + +It is upon the widespread perils of the abuses of moderation in +reduction diets that I would dwell. + +My average daily allotment of food allowed by a careful dietitian might +not have always been to my liking, but it was ample to accomplish the +slimming desire and at the same time maintain and nourish. + +Here is an average day’s menu; a menu which I advise no one to emulate +without first consulting a physician. It is simple to understand its +component parts. Proteins and minerals are emphasized; carbohydrates, +fats, minimized: + + + _Breakfast_ + + 1/2 small grapefruit + 2 eggs (boiled poached) + 1 tablespoon milk for coffee. + + + _Lunch_ + + 1 portion lean meat, fish, or fowl (3 oz.) + 5 per cent vegetables (the wrong-side-of-the-railroad-track ones). + + + _Dinner_ + + Same as lunch. + +Six to eight glasses of water per day. + +Do not take additional foods unless otherwise specified. + +“Not so bad,” you observe, “more than I usually consume during an +average day.” + +Perhaps more food, but not more nourishment. But the point is that on +this prescribed diet, with certain highly conservative expeditions +after appreciable reduction had taken place, over into carbohydrates +and fats, results would almost undoubtedly have been achieved. In time! +But as the poundage begins shyly to retreat, the frantic psychology, +characteristic of the thousands of the slimming women, present company +included, sets in. + +Ours not to reason why. Ours but to diet and sometimes die. + +Despite physician’s admonitions to the contrary, fascinated by the +gradual retreat of a hitherto more or less immutable, excess poundage; +egged on by the appraising women; goaded by the diminishing story of +the bathroom scales--the fascination for speed began to cause this eye +to glitter. + +More pounds per week. Faster. Quicker. Slimmer! + + * * * * * + +The daily menu, about which I not infrequently lied to my doctor, began +to read something like this: + + + _Breakfast_ + + Black unsweetened coffee + 1/2 small orange. + + + _Eleven A. M._ + + Black unsweetened coffee. + + + _Lunch_ + + 1 head lettuce or + 1/2 head cabbage-slaw, mineral-oil dressing. + + + _Three P. M._ + + Black unsweetened coffee. + + + _Dinner_ + + 1 portion lean meat, fish, or fowl (3 oz.) + 5 per cent vegetables. + +Lean pallid days had arrived along about now; days when I went about +with the strained face of a plucked fowl, brittle-looking skin sagging +for want of some place to go. + +No conversation survived my entrance into a room. The men might +struggle a bit to carry forward with a bit of technocracy, Muscle +Shoals or World Series, but the following two or three minutes carried +a guarantee that one subject alone would predominate. + +How did you do it? Tell me what you eat. Are you taking medicine? +Awfully dangerous, you know. Now tell me what you had for breakfast. Do +you mix your starches and proteins? Awfully bad for you! Now isn’t that +curious, somebody told me you were living on some sort of a reduction +tea made by an East Indian and had not touched solid food for two +months. But my dear, you mustn’t let yourself get haggard. Not that you +are! + +Oh no, not that I was. + +Sometimes dragging myself to bed, triumphant, faint, cold, tired, +uncertain whether to laugh or cry, with not quite the energy to do +either, I dared not glance at the white rattletrap my mirror would have +revealed to me. + +Instead I crept to rest, gladly, exhaustedly, and, to keep from +laughing or crying or both, fell to contemplating the slight ridge my +body made beneath the coverings, or trying to crowd back across my +darkness not, “fancies freed, transient and exploring,” but fancies of +a froth of café parfait foaming down the flank of a long slim goblet or +of a slice of four-layer cream cake in which to sink teeth was denied, +in order to remove taste and memory of liver fried in mineral oil and +lettuce with its cutting dash of lemon juice. + +I must have been as easy to live with, during that period before I lost +both appetite and desire for the foods that used to haunt me, as a lady +in a padded cell. + + * * * * * + +Strangely, the vigor for work did not desert. It was an escape, to +sit down at a desk and throw off the gnawing awareness of the human +envelope. One can almost concoct the fantastic doctrine that the brain +is a favorite child of the human body and before any other part is fed, +is given the cream (or in this case skimmed milk) of the intake. + +However, just what mental processes might have resulted from that same +period, corn fed, must remain forever, to those who palpitatingly would +know, in the limbo of the hypothetical. + +Like almost everything else in moderation, slimming has its points. Its +excellent points. Outside moderation, and ’tis of thee I sing, it takes +on the proportion of menace to that half of the race which is intrusted +with incubation and delivery of the species. + +Biological years move slowly and science does not pretend to offer +up prematurely compiled data to prove that slenderized women are +necessarily better or worse breeding-machines. + +Besides, my own paternal ninety-eight-pound grandmother, who produced +six two-hundred-pound sons was remarked, but scarcely remarkable, for +it. + +On the other hand, it requires no barrage of data to logically assume +and conclude that a race of undernourished, highly nervous women with +a low resistance to disease and an abhorrence of bust measurements, is +going to leave its mark upon tomorrow’s child. + + * * * * * + +In Italy, Il Duce openly commands that women be big, ripe, fecund, +intimating, with no particular authority for it, that these processes +go together. As a rule he assumes, and rightly, that women who have +many children stop being slender in the process. And so he extols the +robust mother who concedes that her beauty lies not in her shape, but +in her rôle as mother. + +I see no reason why it cannot lie in both, unless the beauty standards +of the female of an era drop so low that the proportions of a fertile +adult woman must hover around those of a fourteen-year-old boy.... + +To be sure, for the moment, in America at least, the movement away from +the boyish figure seems to be on the up and up, although the Mae West +atavism seems to be little more than a half-hearted fad, and millions +lie waiting for the chemist or alchemist who can present the human race +with the miracle of a slimming serum. + +Perhaps after that day comes we will be a happier and a healthier race +and the laugh will be on nature, who for thousands of years had made +us the butt of her old joke on the fats and the thins, plying some of +us with her too, too ample coverage, condemning others to an immutable +destiny of skin and bones. + +Of the two evils, the latter, by insurance companies at least, is +reckoned the least hazardous. + +For myself, alas! I cannot even claim that I feel better slim than I +did, not so slim. I felt vigorous then. I feel almost as vigorous now. +Overweight in excess is beyond controversy an undesirable and dangerous +state. If the male more easily escapes its æsthetic menace, he falls +rigidly within its pathological perils. The female of the species, +more’s the pity, is its social, biological and æsthetic victim. + +But now that the laugh has come back to me, I want to reach out a +deterring, an ancient-looking hand, to the hordes of slimming women +as I observe them nibbling at celery stalks over lunch tables, +swapping their diets across bridge tables, baring their backs to the +rolling-machine and their breasts to camphor rubs. + +And even to those who are dieting for good and authentic reason of one +sort or another, I want to reach out that same ancient-looking hand to +impress upon them the danger of the short-cut food fad; of following +any diet regime outside a physician’s prescribed one; of succumbing to +the perils of the pineapple and lamb-chop group of fantasies; of the +terrible risks involved in accepting what is almost certain to be the +he-says and the she-says dietary word of their not always thoughtful +dieting sisters; of the falseness of current æsthetic values as they +fluctuate to the season’s fashion; of the absurdity of a woman weighing +one hundred and nine pounds undernourishing herself on boiled green +tissue-paper. + +Whether it is to his credit or due to just plain lack of +self-discipline, the fact remains that with his middle-aged +susceptibility to embonpoint, the male has not gone to extremes in +combating his foe. True, too often he self-indulgently tolerates its +perilous and heavy folds about his heartbeat, and rather than suffer +the weary battle of reduction, allows himself to take on the convexity +of a barrel. The spas are crowded with him, he is not beautiful, and +one doubts if he is as happy as he pretends to look. But at least he +had not reduced the dietary habits of a nation to roughage, bulk and +greens. In fact, watching his women totter past him on their fanatical +way to the altar of the emaciated false goddess of their passion, he is +apt to look back rather wistfully upon the good old days when Pauline +Hall was the hour-glass beauty of his dreams. + +Observe the shopkeeper catering to this psychological invalidism of +his women customers. The gown he hangs in his show window is shrewdly +pinned back at the waist line to one third its natural size, thereby +capturing with its suggestion of anemia, the eye of the woman who +visualizes herself commensurate with it. + +The measurements of the mannequins upon whom are draped the models of +the couturières and by way of whom the measurement standards for women +are devilishly established, are usually those of underdeveloped boys. + +The woman of average proportion who enters such a shop in the hope +of finding a ready-to-wear gown is apt to depart feeling herself +Gargantuan in a land of Lilliputians. + + * * * * * + +What thousands of normal healthy women have been driven to starvation, +illness, even death, in order to more nearly conform to the adolescent +standards established by the pale little mannequins who stand hours in +workrooms while the standardizers and glorifiers of their puniness, +drape their poor little flat chests, wind around the knobs of their +sparrow-like hips, and wrap their little concave stomachs in fabrics +designed to accent emacia! + +One wonders what place the boyish-breasted flapper of half a decade +ago, or the scarcely less spare female of today, will ultimately have +alongside the respective ideals of Ruth among the corn, Mme. de Staël, +Signorina Mona Lisa, Laura, Venus, Winged Victory, Lillian Russell. + +More and more, today’s standards of American Beauty are being set +up and authorized by the bizarre little so-called civilization known +as Hollywood, home of the eighteen-day diet, the orange juice, the +skimmed-milk-and-baked-potato, the liquid bread, the thyrodic bath +salt, the paraffin sweat, the holy rolling-machine, the pugilistic +massage, and almost every reduction fad known to this tormented year of +our Lord. + +By way of Hollywood, the young man is thereby automatically trained to +accept his female of the species slinky, low in vitality, and concave +in curve. In fact, a plump débutante in the family is more of a problem +than a mental delinquent. + +And meanwhile, the slimmed, the irritable, the hungry woman takes +on the proportion of one of our minor menaces. She does not add to +the gaiety of the nation or of the home; she is no healthier, she is +prettier only according to the frail standards of a papier-maché city +on the west coast where the human envelope is the stock in trade. She +is a success chiefly to herself and to her sister of similar standards. + +Now I am aware of a certain perverse psychology which you may suspect +I am beginning to manifest. My definition of white hair is something +you admire only when it is on another woman. + +This is not a plea for the tolerance or toleration of excess weight, +just so it is on the other fellow. It is a plea for intolerance of +excess underweight. + +I am personally too infected with this slimming phobia to hope for +complete redemption. I may come back, but probably not all the way. As +a matter of fact, I would not come all the way. My struggle is to find +the moral courage to make the partial return. The slimming years have +been so long. I have won my battle knowing that it is a battle that is +never truly won and that the helmet and the spurs cannot be laid aside. + + * * * * * + +It remains practically impossible for me to sit down whole-heartedly +to a meal among whole-hearted folk. What has long since become the more +or less rare spectacle of an American woman partaking of potato is +still sufficient to send chills down this spine. By now, expert in that +strange branch of lower mathematics, the counting of the calories, I +can compute on sight the heat and food value of a helping of filet of +sole (3 × 2-1/2) or of one slice of zwieback (3-1/2 × 1-1/2 × 1/2). + +To violate by one calorie is to invite regrets out of all proportion to +the delights of the transgression. One suck off the sugared sides of +a candy sour-ball can cause one to scuttle to the scales in fear and +trembling, or one spoonful off the side of the pyramid of ice-cream on +your dinner partner’s dessert plate, transform you into a distrait and +regretful guest. + +But at least mine hungry eyes have a certain sharpened clarity which +enables them to see the funniness and the menace of the spectacle of +the slimming women. + +We are funny. Realizing that, we might long since have learned to +laugh it off, except, alas! laughter is supposed to be fattening! + +It is not a simple matter to get a laugh out of a slimming woman. It is +the easiest thing she does not do. + +My laughs have come back slowly, mere spurts at first, as from a spring +gone dry but about to yield again. + +It means that even while, with me, meal-time still remains largely +a process of omission and elimination, I am at least on to myself. +Ladies, really, it is to laugh. + + * * * * * + +Today, four unrelenting years after the episode of the boiled tissue +paper, I now enter a shop to have a vendeuse glide up to me with: “For +yourself? Misses department across the aisle.” + +Well, what of it? + +This much of it! If a slimmer, a sadder, and perhaps a wiser me has +succeeded in helping to convey to the slimmers of today and the +potential slimmers of tomorrow some of the ridiculousness and some of +the perils of the slimming age, then the public sacrifice of myself +upon the altar of mine own absurdities will not have been in vain. + +Would I do it all over again? + +“Well,” I reply, as I continue to count my calories, “well--er----” + +In conclusion, Reader, as they used to say in the days when ladies +munched chocolates in bed, I desire to make public the following +acknowledgments: + + To a husband who bore with me during a period when a snapping-turtle + shared roof with him. + + To my doctor to whom I lied. + + To my many friends upon whom at my supposedly hospitable board, my + greenly glittering eye rested in one hatred or another. + + To a cook who learned to defile her art in order to brew me dishes + unwanted and unsavory. + + To the books written during this period which abound perhaps unduly + in foods coveted by their author. + + To hosts and hostesses who offered me their hospitality only that I + might wave aside with supercilious celery stalk their good meat and + wassail. + + To my comfortably stout friends upon whom my disdainful eye rested + not kindly. + + To my slender friends upon whom my good-as-you-now gaze has + assailingly glared. + + To the human race for bearing with me. + + To myself for finally realizing that I am funnier than any character + I have ever succeeded in depicting in fiction. + + +THE END + + + + + =Transcriber’s Notes= + +Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected. + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78225 *** diff --git a/78225-h/78225-h.htm b/78225-h/78225-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09b6007 --- /dev/null +++ b/78225-h/78225-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1671 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title> + No food with my meals | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td, +table.autotable th { padding: 0.25em; } + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.xlarge {font-size: x-large;} + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +p.drop-cap { + text-indent: 0em; +} + +p.drop-cap:first-letter { + float: left; + margin: 0em 0em 0em 0em; + font-size: 250%; + line-height:0.85em; +} + +.illowe4 {width: 4em;} +.illowe30 {width: 30em;} + </style> +</head> + + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78225 ***</div> + +<figure class="figcenter illowe30"> + <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p class= "center xlarge"> +NO FOOD<br> +WITH MY MEALS +</p> + +<p class= "center xlarge"> +O</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> + BOOKS BY</p> +<p class= "center xlarge"> +FANNIE HURST</p> + + +<p class= "center xlarge"> +O</p> + +</div> + + + +<p class="smcap center"> +JUST AROUND THE CORNER<br> +EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG<br> +GASLIGHT SONATAS<br> +HUMORESQUE<br> +STAR DUST<br> +THE VERTICAL CITY<br> +LUMMOX<br> +APPASSIONATA<br> +MANNEQUIN<br> +SONG OF LIFE<br> +A PRESIDENT IS BORN<br> +PROCESSION<br> +FIVE AND TEN<br> +BACK STREET<br> +IMITATION OF LIFE<br> +ANITRA’S DANCE +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h1> + NO FOOD<br> + WITH MY<br> + MEALS + </h1> +</div> + +<p class="center"><i>by</i></p> + +<p class= "center xlarge">Fannie Hurst</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowe4"> + <img class="w100" src="images/ititle.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<p class="center">1935</p> + +<p class="smcap center">HARPER & BROTHERS<br> +PUBLISHERS<br> +NEW YORK AND LONDON</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak"> + NO FOOD WITH MY MEALS + </h2> +</div> + +<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1935, by Fannie Hurst</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>All rights in this book are reserved. It may not be used +for dramatic, motion- or talking-picture purposes without +written authorization from the holder of these rights. +Nor may the text or part thereof be reproduced in any +manner whatsoever without permission in writing. For +information address: Harper & Brothers, 49 East 33rd +Street, New York, N. Y.</i></p> + +<p class="center">FIRST EDITION</p> + +<p class="center">A-K</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> + + + <h2> + NO FOOD<br> + WITH MY MEALS + </h2> +</div> + +<p class= "center xlarge"> +O</p> + + +<p class="drop-cap">Sometimes, +regarding my slimmed human envelope, +which at best seems designed more for service +than beauty, I do ponder.</p> + +<p>Not so much upon its frailty, which has +been achieved at the cost of no food with +my meals, but upon the frailty of the spiritual +inhabitant of that envelope.</p> + +<p>Regarding that spiritual inhabitant at the +restless business of trying to learn to live in +her house of clay, faint ironic laughter, the +kind apt to be induced by a breakfast of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>lemon juice and hot water, rumbles along +the inner me.</p> + +<p>Some women are born frail. Some have +frailty thrust upon them. Still others achieve +it, and at what price glory!</p> + +<p><i>Trivia</i>, you say?</p> + +<p>Not at all.</p> + +<p>What is <i>trivia</i>, and what is not?</p> + +<p>If, by virtue of its relativity to my concerns, +the dahlia in my garden, the color of +my tweeds, the nick in my dining-room +table, or the market price of strawberries become +important, then they <i>are</i> important. +Everything or nothing matters.</p> + +<p>When even half of one hundred and +twenty-three million human beings on a +North American continent begins to care +passionately about adhering in standards of +beauty to formulae concocted somewhere +between anywhere and Hollywood, then +that state of mind becomes important. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>Sufficiently so to create neurosis, psychosis, and +acidosis.</p> + +<p>No state of mind or body flecked with +evidence of phobia can remain trivial, no +matter how trivial the minds and bodies +themselves.</p> + +<p>It was about four years ago that the slimming +phobia of my sex and era first began to +fleck me with its rabies-like foam.</p> + +<p>Up to that period, although overweight +by a not inconsiderable poundage, I had not +given complete rein to the latent unease +which sporadically smote me at my abundance.</p> + +<p>In fact, overweight from my advent as an +eleven-pound baby, there was a brief period +around adolescence when my opulence +seemed something of an asset.</p> + +<p>“Guess how much she weighs,” I can hear +my grandfather proudly challenging, as he +stood me on the sitting-room table and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>named a good eight or ten pounds over and +above the most conservative estimate.</p> + +<p>Ladies called me apple-cheeked, and +gentlemen pinched them. I strutted, but +even back there, there was unease in that +strut.</p> + +<p>But generally speaking, up to the time of +my acute surrender to my sex’s phobia for +slimming, the matter of anatomical distinction +or peculiarity was scarcely within the +pale of discussion. You were fat or slim, narrow +or wide, dark or blond, according to a +divine appropriation over which you had +little control. To be sure, there was usually +a “Fatty” in the schoolroom or on the block, +but generally speaking, one did not dwell +upon the flesh, or lack of it.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Beauty, had it not been parceled out in +your direction, was something that could be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>brewed within the spirit in a manner to offset +the external lack. This you were taught at +the parental knee. Although it was not very +satisfactory, you let it go at that. Except, why +were hearts of gold and curls of gold so rarely +supposed to strike simultaneously. How odd +of God....</p> + +<p>Now take this matter of being a plump +little girl. You were apple-cheeked and got +pinched for their cuteness, but then, you had +to go and be a fat little girl, too. Why +couldn’t one be a slender little girl—and +apple-cheeked!</p> + +<p>If you were unduly slim, you were simultaneously +apt not to be apple-cheeked. There +God went again, being odd. Slim, your portion +was usually the bitter one of cod-liver +oil and shoulder braces, whereas in plump +reverse, you were called the picture of health +and encouraged in your natural predilection +for the creamed potatoes and marshmallow +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>fillings which were usually anathema to the +slim cod-liver oilers.</p> + +<p>There was to come an adult time however, +in the life of this narrator, when as the hum +of a swarm of locusts over the peace of her +mind, the dietary chant of the dieting women +began to separate itself into a specific and +ominous roar all its own.</p> + +<p>Gradually, and oh, so insidiously, the spectacle +of you, going your somewhat robust +routine of three normal, if perhaps unscientific +meals a day, in a state of taken-for-granted +health that made it no theme for +discussion; gradually you became to yourself +a not edifying spectacle.</p> + +<p>There was too much of something with +you. Yourself.</p> + +<p>Awareness, faint as the footsteps of a fly +along the back of a neck, began to creep upon +you so lightly at first that it was scarcely more +than a tickling across your consciousness.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p> + +<p>It began from who knows what remote +scratchings of unease, in a changing attitude +toward such cardinal institutions as +breakfast.</p> + +<p>There had recently arrived a newcomer in +our Middle West midst, a Mrs. de Lisle from +New York, a slim, pretty little lady much +criticized by the impeccable housewives on +the pretty residential street of our pretty city, +for lax housekeeping, and who was openly +known to have her breakfast (roll and coffee) +in bed.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Now you take what has since become this +more or less national institution of roll and +coffee in the morning. It has its points æsthetically +and doubtless gastronomically. But +along about ten-thirty in the affairs of a busy +morning those points, during the first period +of the transition from more substantial +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>matinal fare, begin to reside chiefly in the aching +void at the pit of the stomach.</p> + +<p>Breakfast tradition dies hard, particularly +if that tradition happens to have been born +and bred in the Middle West.</p> + +<p>We lived not on a farm mind you, in these +years of my late teens when too much of the +corporeal me first began to seem too much +with me, but in a large Middle West metropolis +of urban habits of a most complicated +nature. We ate our corn on cob from +silver end-pieces, traveled east in a manner +your Easterner seldom traveled west, and +were among the first of the American communities +to be stricken with such respective +epidemics as burnt wood, honitan, ping-pong, +Kinloch telephones, horseless carriages +and hobble skirts.</p> + +<p>At seven-thirty o’clock during the first +eighteen years of my life spent there, a family +of three, consisting of my father, the president +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>of a fair sized shoe factory, but who +nevertheless, punctiliously slid back his roll-top +desk at eight o’clock; an alert and brainy +housekeeper, my mother, and a slightly overweight +youngster, myself, sat down to a +breakfast worthy of the name. Literally we +broke fast. Oatmeal in a covered dish was +served out with plentiful additions of butter, +sugar and yellowish cream. A platter of bacon +and eggs, the eggs not necessarily portioned +out along the conventional lines of two per +person. My father was not adverse to a third, +the frailer members of the family usually +contenting themselves with two. Toast or hot +biscuits or both arrived in a wicker basket, all +tucked in under a red-and-white napkin with +a fringed edge. There was usually hominy or +grits or stacks of griddle cakes with apple +jelly or molasses. Coffee and plenty of it in a +beautiful old “Meissen” china pot with a +gilt snout, and, more often than not, crumb +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>coffee cake, still hot, and thickly sprinkled +with cinnamon and sugar.</p> + +<p>You ate, aided and abetted, it is true, by +maternal duress of the most insistent nature, +to have more of this, and another helping of +that, on the respective suppositions that a +business man was facing a long and exacting +day, a growing child her school, and a housekeeper +her arduous routine.</p> + +<p>You ate! And thereby were to become susceptible +for life to a tickling of the nostrils +at the smell of frying bacon rushing up from +the servant’s quarters as you, in your bedroom, +sip black unsweetened coffee or gulp +orange juice.</p> + +<p>I was reared to like breakfast. I still like +breakfast. Heaven my witness, I have not +eaten a breakfast in twelve years.</p> + +<p>Because it was about twelve years ago that +the first whirrings of the dietary chant of the +dieting women began to assail my ears. In +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>fact, glancing back, it becomes apparent that +about the time rolls-and-coffee became synonymous +for the old noun breakfast, was +launched the dietary era of my life.</p> + +<p>It was all insidious, it was all as the humming +of locusts, it was all as the fluty wings +of the voice of my sex.</p> + +<p>What had hitherto been only the vague +unease at the poor, or rather the ample, showing +put up by my externalities of figure; an +unease which had been sweetly soothed by +parents, now began to assert itself more positively.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Suddenly, or so it seemed to a languidly +awakened awareness, the biology of my entire +sisterhood seemed to have undergone an +evolution. Female silhouettes began to take +on the concavity of the letter C. Curves, only +as they collapsed inward upon the anatomy, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>were apparently fit to be visible to the naked +eye of the beholder. The bust measurements +of the potential and actual mothers of the +race dropped to the proportions of their +young sons and brothers. The old, well-nourished +ideal of the Venus de Milo became a +lummox. Something actually rodential began +to characterize the upper lips of the +women of the slimming era as they gnawed +at the raw carrot and the herbaceous green.</p> + +<p>Out of the stuff of enameled rolling-pins +for kneading too, too solid lady-flesh, rubber +reducing girdles, bathroom scales to match +any color scheme, reduction salts in the pastel +shades, electric-light cabinets, rowing-machines, +<i>et al.</i>, new industries were born. Restaurateurs +became Melba toast, spinach, and +saccharine conscious. Spas began to find +obesity, real and imagined, more profitable +than liver complaint, gall stones, and gout +rolled in one. Came the dawn of a dark hour +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>when public opinion demanded that a grand-opera +diva must be able to look down and see +her own toes.</p> + +<p>Such diet-derivative expressions as incompatibility, +mental cruelty, fanaticism, irritability, +cussedness, began more and more to +creep into the phraseology of the divorce +courts.</p> + +<p>Overnight, as it were, that quick barometer, +the show girl, achieved the biological +phenomenon of shedding her hips, and measurements +fluctuated more violently than a +falling stock market. Figures began to slump +and tip the scales at far below the Venus de +Milo par. The way to compute your approach +to the norm of the current ideal of +beauty was to divide Lillian Russell’s adult +weight by two, her measurements by three, +and her vitality by four.</p> + +<p>A favorite hypothesis has it that, in the +main, women dress and adorn themselves +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>primarily for the appraising eye of women. +It is then also fair to assume that women +reduce for women. Until his eye and arm became +trained to the lesser lines of his womanhood, +the male-in-the-streets’ reaction was +scarcely nothing at all.</p> + +<p>You’re all right as you are. What you want +to reduce for? What’s the idea? You look +good to me. Never did like skinny women. +Cut out the dieting.</p> + +<p>The very new crop of adult young men, a +generation born and reared in the slimming +era, probably cerebrates about it not at all, +except that by now our new male adults are +trained to like their fair sex, should they stop +to think at all, slab-like, flat-chested, hipless, +and with skin tones of emacia carefully +smeared over with sunburn, real or artificial.</p> + +<p>Next, starting from proportions which at +first had seemed no more ominous than that +cloud no larger than a man’s hand, the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>home-wrecking, nerve-wracking noun of the age +burst explosively upon the scene. <i>Calories!</i> +And the counting of the women within the +shadow of a guillotine became as naught, +compared with the counting of the dieting +women.</p> + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Five medium slices pickled beet</td> +<td class="tdr">25 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">One cup black unsweetened coffee</td> +<td class="tdr">0 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">One medium-sweet pickle</td> +<td class="tdr">25 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Two tablespoons lemon juice</td> +<td class="tdr">10 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Average helping lettuce, no oil</td> +<td class="tdr">0 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">One plum</td> +<td class="tdr">30 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">One-half one small peach</td> +<td class="tdr">30 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Five strawberries</td> +<td class="tdr">25 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">One stalk celery</td> +<td class="tdr">3 calories</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">One slice cucumber</td> +<td class="tdr">1 calorie</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Four ounces consommé, no fat</td> +<td class="tdr">15 calories</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p>It was along about then, free, white, and +over twenty-one, that the rabies-like foam of +the slimming phobia of my era began to +fleck me.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> + +<p>In fact, it is possible to lay finger upon the +very occasion of my surrender to the caloric +age.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, and at one fell swoop, as they +would have put it back in the days when +Venus de Milo was not considered a stylish +stout, all the inchoate unease of my overweight +lifetime burst forth.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>A slim and lovely woman invited me to +lunch with her at one of the town’s smart +hostelries. As we walked through crowded +dining-rooms, heads turned to the rhythm of +her svelte grace. With the prerogative of the +guest, I ordered first, off a menu the size of +a tabloid newspaper. About my usual. A +creamed celery soup (specialty of this particular +hotel). A grilled chop rolled around a +kidney. Green salad with an oil dressing. A +sweet and coffee. Mine hostess, whose neck, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>so slim, was like a swan’s, ordered plain spinach +(en branch please—not even buttered) +and a demi-tasse.</p> + +<p>“Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m dieting. +Came back from White Sulphur last +week one hundred and nine pounds, which +is just exactly nine more pounds than this +five-feet-nine is going to drag around. I’m +foul with overweight.”</p> + +<p>Reader, as they would say back in the days +when Lillian Russell attached her corset +strings to the bed post and took three deep +breaths, I died that day. Of shame. Suddenly +it seemed to me, sitting there in the abundant +coverage of thrice nine pounds overweight, +that of grossness I must perish before the +very eyes of the waiter so solicitously placing +my four hundred calories of cream of celery +before me. The hand with which I toyed at +the tablespoon designed to convey them to +my stiffened lips became as a pale and flaccid +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>ham. The dead hammish hand of a lady who +had suddenly died of the shame of her overweight. +From every corner of that opulent +dining-room, there appeared the delusion +of the slim hands of slim ladies mocking +at one of their sex who permitted indenture +space for dimples on the backs of her hands, +whose neck seemed shorter than it need +have, who was fair, fat, and alas! size +forty.</p> + +<p>And all the while, the waiter never even +suspected that the lady toying with her +cream-of-celery soup was dead. Of shame. +And neither did her rodential hostess, nibbling +at her spinach with her quivering little +upper lip.</p> + +<p>So out of this moment of this dream of +slenderness honing herself still further on +a diet of a concoction that looked like a small +portion of boiled green tissue paper, was +born resolution.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p> + +<p>Mine no longer to reason why, mine but +to do and diet.</p> + +<p>To be sure, over a period of years dating +back to days when a college senior who detested +basket ball had played it vociferously, +and had swapped her cream pie at dormitory +for abominated jello, there had been varied +and expensive attempts at reduction.</p> + +<p>Subsequently, one unsuccessful experiment +followed another. I had eighteen-dayed, +counted calories, lamb-chopped-and-pineappled, +sat in an elegant electric cabinet, and +been treated exactly like a fowl in a Dutch +oven; taken punishment from a famed Hollywood +masseuse, that put me in the red, the +black and blue; immersed my too, too solid +self in baths of paraffine and mud; walked +around reservoirs in sweat shirts; and without +making appreciable inroads, had indulged +in every out-and-indoor sport dear to +funny-paper compilers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p> + +<p>But this day of the spectacle of the dream +of slenderness honing herself down on boiled +green tissue-paper, something toward which +the not inconsiderable bulk of me had doubtless +sub- or unconsciously been traveling +since the basket-ball-jello days, was suddenly +bang up in front of me.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Life, except on the basis of a lesser me, +was no longer endurable. The fulsome sensation +of being me, of having the vendeuse +in the shop smear me, as I approached, with +her appraising eye: “Blouse? Er—yes—er—size +forty?” had reached its limit.</p> + +<p>Invalid, suddenly intolerable, were the +years of the benignity of friends: “But you +are really not too stout, my dear. You’re just +plump. Nonsense! You wouldn’t be you, +thin. Don’t you go dieting and ruin your +health. Why, my sister-in-law got herself +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>down to a bag of bones and died of getting +herself there, that’s what happened to my +sister-in-law. Yes, of course <i>I</i> diet, but I +wouldn’t if my weight was as becoming to me +as yours is.”</p> + +<p>Apple sauce! I found myself hissing to +myself in the days when that elegant compound +noun was eloquent. Apple sauce! +(without sugar in it).</p> + +<p>Suddenly the too, too solid flesh and I were +in the death grapple.</p> + +<p>Latently, beneath my poor numbed powers +of logic where this faddistic subject of +diet was concerned, there stirred insurrection.</p> + +<p>Beneath the superficial layers of puerile +and sometimes pernicious panaceas, eighteen-day +ones, rolling-machine ones, sweat-shirt +and hair-shirt ones, must somewhere lurk a +fundamental truth.</p> + +<p>Casting aside, except as subsidiaries, the +dumbbells, the static bicycle in its sweat-cabinet, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>the vibratory machine, the rowing-machine, +the electric horse, I set up a fundamental +truth for myself.</p> + +<p>Food makes fat.</p> + +<p>Exercise may aid and abet its con- or destruction, +baths, massage, health waters and +what not, be its handmaidens, but fundamentally, +chemically, irrefutably, it is certain +foods which make fat! And so it came +about that the lesser me that corresponds to +the one you see in reduction advertisements +etched in dotted lines beside the before-taking +silhouette, rose to the supreme heights +of decision. Casting away the cluttering paraphernalia +of the blue-enameled rolling-pins, +the indoor bicycle, the five-foot Diet-book +shelf, I decided to set out afresh upon the +single supposition that in the normally functioning +human being, <i>food makes fat</i>.</p> + +<p>I sought out the most all-around wise man +of my acquaintance. He, in turn, directed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>me to a man especially wise in the highly +specialized field of dietetics.</p> + +<p>There was little in this physician’s laboratory-like +office to suggest what I had come to +regard as part of the sumptuous adjuncts of +slimming.</p> + +<p>The address was not good.</p> + +<p>I arrived there finally, to be received by a +tall, rangy man with no manner at all, +who promptly proceeded to take from me +what had never been taken before, my +metabolism.</p> + +<p>Metabolism is something that you surrender +with a clothespin on your nose and +what seems to be the cork end-piece of +a bicycle handle bar inserted into your +mouth.</p> + +<p>This walling up of the two major points +of egress of what is known to the laity as +your breathing, results in an inner panic +which is recorded by an automatic pen +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>attached to the apparatus which records the +goings-on of your trapped breath.</p> + +<p>You do not give your metabolism standing +up. You lie prone, first thinking you are +going to die, then hoping it.</p> + +<p>The results of this sudden internal commotion, +as recorded by the metabolism-machine, +established my metabolistic processes +as normal. This fact, in turn, established the +further fact that there were no glandular +alibis or pathological peculiarities to exonerate +this case of overweight.</p> + +<p>To put it bluntly, food in wrong selection, +proportion, and combination was the root of +the evil.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Now if the motif of my words seems to +have chiefly to do with food and editorial +we, please bear in mind that these words +have chiefly to do with food and editorial +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>we. The sum, substance and portent which +give whatever justification I may be able to +eke out of the penning of these pages of +adjectives and split infinitives, being food +and editorial we.</p> + +<p>This, however, is neither the time nor the +place to go into the details of this new post-metabolism +regime, except to emphasize that +after years of dangerous and rudderless +experimentation, I had at last found a +man who seemed to understand the +science of food as it applied to my human +envelope.</p> + +<p>The lesser me (who now purchases her +blouses in the misses’ department) has not +got it left in her to display the behaviorism +of your true hero. “It was nothing at all. I +saw my duty and I did it.” It <i>was</i> something, +let me tell you that. It was lean and rocky +going, full of thorn. Rocky going and slow +and uphill and torturous and to a dreadful +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>sing-song rhythm that more and more frequently +got into my way: What-of-it-what-of-it——</p> + +<p>Neither is the transformation from my +hitherto normal attitude toward food as a +pleasant means of subsistence, pretty telling.</p> + +<p>There were hours, there were days, during +the long lean siege of the post-metabolism +era, when part of a newly developed form of +self-torture was to rise from the pickings of +my table and retire to a solitude I sought +chiefly in order to visualize, while the tortured +saliva ran, the meal it might have been. +Instead of the soulless and fatless broth, consisting +of the water off boiled greens, +creamed soup to cling warmingly to cold +ribs; instead of the cube of boiled beef (three +ounces, cooked), a filet of sole, lying tenderly +beneath a velvety sauce and sprinkled +through with capers, like the black tips of +little ermines; hot rolls slit on the side and +then pressed down again on a cube of sweet +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>butter to fit into the aching void of no bread. +A sweet, preferably souffléd, or even a lowly, +a sugared and cinnamoned baked apple +under cream, to take the place of eight gulps +of water.</p> + +<p>There was to come a time, fallen so low +had I, when to stand with my nose plastered +against the plate-glass windows of lunch-room +emporiums, where flapjacks, later to +be smothered under melting butter and +golden syrup were being juggled, became +one of my favorite outdoor sports.</p> + +<p>Time has healed those aching voids. Alas! +one of the cruel anachronisms of this whole +cruelly anachronistic business is that deep +within the lesser me nests regret that my +palate, doubtless also leaner, has lost much +of its fine gusty capacity to yearn.</p> + +<p>Today a dish of flapjacks beneath a golden +blanket of maple syrup; a Roquefort dressing +flowing off the smooth red flank of a +stuffed tomato, a soufflé, a marron glacé, a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>crêpe suzette, a marzipan, leave me cold and +without zest. Before them now I stand bowed +with a regret that I have lost my capacity +to regret them.</p> + +<p>But there is no denying the fact that there +was that period when my secret absorption +upon the subject of food (food denied me) +became shamefully dominant. Not the fierce +legitimate hunger pangs of one starving for +lack of the ability to obtain food, but the +flabby, rather shameful spectacle of one in +the midst of the plentiful prerogatives of +three meals a day, self-denied them.</p> + +<p>Frightening, mental traits began to creep +upon me.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Living chiefly upon myself, stoked on the +low fuel values of lean meats and five-per-cent +vegetables boiled in water, going +through my pallid days always conscious +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>of a catherine wheel of desire spinning somewhere +within the center of my denied and +shrinking anatomy, I began to take on a quite +horrible and private pleasure in watching +other people eat, or preferably, overeat.</p> + +<p>Myself relentless in passing up a toothsome +dish, often as not especially prepared +by a gracious hostess, I showed neither mercy +nor consideration. But let that same hostess +sit down at my own board and I became sly +and spider-like, luring my victim into my +gastronomic den of rich foods.</p> + +<p>Eat and overeat, something devilish within +me seemed to shout. Eat, in order that I may +all the more exultantly deny and work myself +up into the ecstasies of martyrdom. How +the saints must have learned to love their +sweet agonies!</p> + +<p>Nor were these macabre mental processes +to remain unsuspected. Chilly laughter began +to greet the dreadful might of my hospitality. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>Glances flashed between my guests as sawing +away at a thin slice of especially prepared +lean beef, fried in mineral oil, I +importuned, nay commanded, my futilely resisting +guests to more of this and that richly +devised concoction; pressed upon them the +au gratin potato, the sherry-flavored tart, +while I tinkled ice water against denied but +omnivorous teeth, dallied with my chaste unused +dessert spoon and rammed persuasion +and second helpings of pistachio Melba +down my friends.</p> + +<p>“Dammit,” cried one of my obese guests +one night, goaded (and tempted) beyond +endurance, “I won’t overstuff myself with +another helping of this delicious bouillabaisse +in order to enhance your lean inner +spirit of self-righteousness! Dammit, I tell +you, no! Well, just a little more—just a damn +little more.”</p> + +<p>Reader, as they used to say in the days +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>when ladies “padded,” my friend, alas! +spoke too truly. Hungry, whetted with a desire +for foods that hitherto had never interested +nor particularly tempted me, I schemed +for the obesity of my lean friends and the +greater obesity of my obese ones. Schemed, +Reader! The sense of rising from my board, +feebly stoked on lean meats broiled in mineral +oil, five-per-cent vegetables (the ones that +grow on the wrong side of the gastronomic +railroad tracks; parsnips, cabbage, spinach, +beets, greens, leeks, dandelions) brought me +the strange sadistic martyr-like delights +herein elsewhere described. I began to lose +my friends.</p> + +<p>Neither, alas! did it stop here. As week +by week, under a scientifically ordered regime +which I partially defeated by overdoing my +doctor’s dietary orders, the coverage began to +diminish too rapidly to please him, and the +strange psychology of a lady in the throes +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>of a too rigid diet continued its baffling manifestations.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>About the time that my slimming success +began to be apparent to the appraising +eyes of the sisterhood, my entrance into a +room was the occasion for a gust of Oh’s and +Ah’s, How-did-you-do-it? Why, I wouldn’t +have known you! My dear, you’re marvelous! +The heady wine of my success (on +an empty stomach) began to induce giddiness.</p> + +<p>Hollow-eyed and a bit necky, I began to +indulge in the private procedure of posing +before my mirror, pinning in my loose waistband +and twisting about a slightly loose-fleshed +neck for the Jean Harlow angle or the +Hepburn line of jaw. The first faint knob +pushing out through my neck was something +on which to hang high hope.</p> + +<p>It was during this period that, after +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>having goaded her with food, I would remark +maliciously to a friend: “Look over there at +that spectacle! It is enough to cause a scientist +to faint! A stout woman eating a +potato!”</p> + +<p>Oh, I was the subject for inclusion in the +rows of introspective ladies waiting in the +outer rooms of smart Park Avenue psychoanalysts, +I can tell you!</p> + +<p>It enraged me to see my friends eat, or, +for that matter, drink, although a taste for +alcohol or spirituous liquors had never made +them part of my problem. It enraged me +to see them eat; I could not bear not to see +them overstuff.</p> + +<p>I now pitied obesity in others, and did all +in my power to either induce or encourage +it.</p> + +<p>Smoldering rage began within me if my +entrance into a group of friends failed to +elicit pæans of surprised admiration. In the +twelvemonth of fanatical defiance of my doctor’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>admonitions for temperance, I became +a narrow-looking, bony individual with a +disproportionately large head, wide, uninhabited-looking +shoulders, old-looking hands, +and a cold kind of chic.</p> + +<p>There was not a laugh in a carload of me.</p> + +<p>I had been through a grim, hungry, cold, +and lonely fight, and always to that insistent +tom-tom of rhythm, relentless as a drum-beat: +What-of-it-what-of-it-what-of-it.</p> + +<p>I had won my spurs and they stuck out +all over me.</p> + +<p>People with two chins and plenty of laughter +above and below them said, without rue, +that I had character. Friends, to my face at +least, said I had “looks,” although toward +the end even some of them began to admit +that they had liked me better “before.”</p> + +<p>I had lost pounds and my sense of humor.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p> + +<p>The miracle of it, cheating my doctor as I +did, was that I had not lost my health. Perhaps +the funniness of me came rushing over +me just in time to avert that. Perhaps the +spectacle on all sides of women almost deliberately +throwing the incomparable asset +of their health away upon the absurd altar +of slimming, for no other reason than the +desire to be slim, helped, Reader, to snatch +me from the jaws of a dieting lady novelist’s +more or less untimely death.</p> + +<p>Not that I have come far enough along +the line of mental readjustment to relinquish +my diet. Slimming is a battle that is never +won. But at least I am on to myself. I can +laugh it off. And the spectacle of me to myself +in the mirror is really nothing to leave +home about, nor, so far as I can see, has +there been the impulse on anyone’s part to +indulge in that drastic measure in my behalf. +I have not observed that those nearest and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>dearest, or that friends in general, like me +any the more or less. If anything, you may +deduce, less.</p> + +<p>Now this is not to convey that all diets for +æsthetic ends are pernicious and that all slimming +is vicious.</p> + +<p>On the contrary, excess baggage of flesh is +not only unwieldy and unbeautiful, but it +is more usually a health liability than an asset +(see life-insurance-risk charts).</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, undereating may generally +be counted as a cardinal virtue. A wise +and disturbing man it was who first passed +out the golden advice to always leave the +dinner table a little unsatisfied. Particularly +since nature has seen fit to pester the human +race with various appetites which are so far +and away beyond requirements, are food and +drink restraints to be regarded on the benign +side.</p> + +<p>Moderation is one of the nicer practices.</p> + +<p>It is upon the widespread perils of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>abuses of moderation in reduction diets that +I would dwell.</p> + +<p>My average daily allotment of food allowed +by a careful dietitian might not have +always been to my liking, but it was ample +to accomplish the slimming desire and at the +same time maintain and nourish.</p> + +<p>Here is an average day’s menu; a menu +which I advise no one to emulate without +first consulting a physician. It is simple to +understand its component parts. Proteins and +minerals are emphasized; carbohydrates, fats, +minimized:</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Breakfast</i></p> + +<p class="center">1/2 small grapefruit<br> +2 eggs (boiled poached)<br> +1 tablespoon milk for coffee.</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Lunch</i></p> + +<p class="center">1 portion lean meat, fish, or fowl (3 oz.)<br> +5 per cent vegetables (the wrong-side-of-the-railroad-track ones).</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Dinner</i></p> + + +<p class="center">Same as lunch.</p> + +<p>Six to eight glasses of water per day.</p> + +<p>Do not take additional foods unless otherwise +specified.</p> + +<p>“Not so bad,” you observe, “more than I +usually consume during an average day.”</p> + +<p>Perhaps more food, but not more nourishment. +But the point is that on this prescribed +diet, with certain highly conservative expeditions +after appreciable reduction had +taken place, over into carbohydrates and fats, +results would almost undoubtedly have been +achieved. In time! But as the poundage begins +shyly to retreat, the frantic psychology, +characteristic of the thousands of the slimming +women, present company included, sets +in.</p> + +<p>Ours not to reason why. Ours but to diet +and sometimes die.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p> + +<p>Despite physician’s admonitions to the +contrary, fascinated by the gradual retreat of +a hitherto more or less immutable, excess +poundage; egged on by the appraising +women; goaded by the diminishing story +of the bathroom scales—the fascination for +speed began to cause this eye to glitter.</p> + +<p>More pounds per week. Faster. Quicker. +Slimmer!</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>The daily menu, about which I not infrequently +lied to my doctor, began to read +something like this:</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Breakfast</i></p> + +<p class="center">Black unsweetened coffee<br> +1/2 small orange.</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Eleven A. M.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Black unsweetened coffee.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Lunch</i></p> + +<p class="center">1 head lettuce or<br> +1/2 head cabbage-slaw, mineral-oil dressing.</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Three P. M.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Black unsweetened coffee.</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Dinner</i></p> + +<p class="center">1 portion lean meat, fish, or fowl (3 oz.)<br> +5 per cent vegetables.</p> + +<p>Lean pallid days had arrived along about +now; days when I went about with the +strained face of a plucked fowl, brittle-looking +skin sagging for want of some place to +go.</p> + +<p>No conversation survived my entrance into +a room. The men might struggle a bit to +carry forward with a bit of technocracy, Muscle +Shoals or World Series, but the following +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>two or three minutes carried a guarantee that +one subject alone would predominate.</p> + +<p>How did you do it? Tell me what you eat. +Are you taking medicine? Awfully dangerous, +you know. Now tell me what you had +for breakfast. Do you mix your starches and +proteins? Awfully bad for you! Now isn’t +that curious, somebody told me you were +living on some sort of a reduction tea made +by an East Indian and had not touched solid +food for two months. But my dear, you +mustn’t let yourself get haggard. Not that +you are!</p> + +<p>Oh no, not that I was.</p> + +<p>Sometimes dragging myself to bed, triumphant, +faint, cold, tired, uncertain whether +to laugh or cry, with not quite the energy +to do either, I dared not glance at the white +rattletrap my mirror would have revealed to +me.</p> + +<p>Instead I crept to rest, gladly, exhaustedly, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>and, to keep from laughing or crying or both, +fell to contemplating the slight ridge my +body made beneath the coverings, or trying +to crowd back across my darkness not, “fancies +freed, transient and exploring,” but fancies +of a froth of café parfait foaming down +the flank of a long slim goblet or of a slice +of four-layer cream cake in which to sink +teeth was denied, in order to remove taste +and memory of liver fried in mineral oil and +lettuce with its cutting dash of lemon juice.</p> + +<p>I must have been as easy to live with, during +that period before I lost both appetite +and desire for the foods that used to haunt +me, as a lady in a padded cell.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Strangely, the vigor for work did not desert. +It was an escape, to sit down at a desk +and throw off the gnawing awareness of the +human envelope. One can almost concoct +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>the fantastic doctrine that the brain is a +favorite child of the human body and before +any other part is fed, is given the cream (or +in this case skimmed milk) of the intake.</p> + +<p>However, just what mental processes might +have resulted from that same period, corn +fed, must remain forever, to those who palpitatingly +would know, in the limbo of the +hypothetical.</p> + +<p>Like almost everything else in moderation, +slimming has its points. Its excellent points. +Outside moderation, and ’tis of thee I sing, +it takes on the proportion of menace to that +half of the race which is intrusted with incubation +and delivery of the species.</p> + +<p>Biological years move slowly and science +does not pretend to offer up prematurely +compiled data to prove that slenderized +women are necessarily better or worse breeding-machines.</p> + +<p>Besides, my own paternal ninety-eight-pound +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>grandmother, who produced six two-hundred-pound +sons was remarked, but +scarcely remarkable, for it.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, it requires no barrage +of data to logically assume and conclude that +a race of undernourished, highly nervous +women with a low resistance to disease and +an abhorrence of bust measurements, is going +to leave its mark upon tomorrow’s child.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>In Italy, Il Duce openly commands that +women be big, ripe, fecund, intimating, with +no particular authority for it, that these processes +go together. As a rule he assumes, and +rightly, that women who have many children +stop being slender in the process. And +so he extols the robust mother who concedes +that her beauty lies not in her shape, but in +her rôle as mother.</p> + +<p>I see no reason why it cannot lie in both, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>unless the beauty standards of the female of +an era drop so low that the proportions of a +fertile adult woman must hover around those +of a fourteen-year-old boy....</p> + +<p>To be sure, for the moment, in America +at least, the movement away from the boyish +figure seems to be on the up and up, although +the Mae West atavism seems to be little more +than a half-hearted fad, and millions lie waiting +for the chemist or alchemist who can +present the human race with the miracle of +a slimming serum.</p> + +<p>Perhaps after that day comes we will be a +happier and a healthier race and the laugh +will be on nature, who for thousands of years +had made us the butt of her old joke on the +fats and the thins, plying some of us with +her too, too ample coverage, condemning +others to an immutable destiny of skin and +bones.</p> + +<p>Of the two evils, the latter, by insurance +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>companies at least, is reckoned the least +hazardous.</p> + +<p>For myself, alas! I cannot even claim that +I feel better slim than I did, not so slim. I +felt vigorous then. I feel almost as vigorous +now. Overweight in excess is beyond controversy +an undesirable and dangerous state. +If the male more easily escapes its æsthetic +menace, he falls rigidly within its pathological +perils. The female of the species, +more’s the pity, is its social, biological and +æsthetic victim.</p> + +<p>But now that the laugh has come back to +me, I want to reach out a deterring, an ancient-looking +hand, to the hordes of slimming +women as I observe them nibbling at +celery stalks over lunch tables, swapping +their diets across bridge tables, baring their +backs to the rolling-machine and their breasts +to camphor rubs.</p> + +<p>And even to those who are dieting for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>good and authentic reason of one sort or another, +I want to reach out that same ancient-looking +hand to impress upon them the +danger of the short-cut food fad; of following +any diet regime outside a physician’s +prescribed one; of succumbing to the perils +of the pineapple and lamb-chop group of +fantasies; of the terrible risks involved in accepting +what is almost certain to be the he-says +and the she-says dietary word of their +not always thoughtful dieting sisters; of the +falseness of current æsthetic values as they +fluctuate to the season’s fashion; of the absurdity +of a woman weighing one hundred +and nine pounds undernourishing herself on +boiled green tissue-paper.</p> + +<p>Whether it is to his credit or due to just +plain lack of self-discipline, the fact remains +that with his middle-aged susceptibility to +embonpoint, the male has not gone to extremes +in combating his foe. True, too often +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>he self-indulgently tolerates its perilous and +heavy folds about his heartbeat, and rather +than suffer the weary battle of reduction, allows +himself to take on the convexity of a +barrel. The spas are crowded with him, he is +not beautiful, and one doubts if he is as happy +as he pretends to look. But at least he had not +reduced the dietary habits of a nation to +roughage, bulk and greens. In fact, watching +his women totter past him on their fanatical +way to the altar of the emaciated false +goddess of their passion, he is apt to look +back rather wistfully upon the good old days +when Pauline Hall was the hour-glass beauty +of his dreams.</p> + +<p>Observe the shopkeeper catering to this +psychological invalidism of his women customers. +The gown he hangs in his show window +is shrewdly pinned back at the waist +line to one third its natural size, thereby capturing +with its suggestion of anemia, the eye +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>of the woman who visualizes herself commensurate +with it.</p> + +<p>The measurements of the mannequins +upon whom are draped the models of the +couturières and by way of whom the measurement +standards for women are devilishly established, +are usually those of underdeveloped +boys.</p> + +<p>The woman of average proportion who +enters such a shop in the hope of finding a +ready-to-wear gown is apt to depart feeling +herself Gargantuan in a land of Lilliputians.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>What thousands of normal healthy women +have been driven to starvation, illness, even +death, in order to more nearly conform to +the adolescent standards established by the +pale little mannequins who stand hours in +workrooms while the standardizers and glorifiers +of their puniness, drape their poor little +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>flat chests, wind around the knobs of their +sparrow-like hips, and wrap their little concave +stomachs in fabrics designed to accent +emacia!</p> + +<p>One wonders what place the boyish-breasted +flapper of half a decade ago, or the +scarcely less spare female of today, will ultimately +have alongside the respective ideals +of Ruth among the corn, Mme. de Staël, Signorina +Mona Lisa, Laura, Venus, Winged +Victory, Lillian Russell.</p> + +<p>More and more, today’s standards of +American Beauty are being set up and authorized +by the bizarre little so-called civilization +known as Hollywood, home of the +eighteen-day diet, the orange juice, the +skimmed-milk-and-baked-potato, the liquid +bread, the thyrodic bath salt, the paraffin +sweat, the holy rolling-machine, the pugilistic +massage, and almost every reduction fad +known to this tormented year of our Lord.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> + +<p>By way of Hollywood, the young man is +thereby automatically trained to accept his +female of the species slinky, low in vitality, +and concave in curve. In fact, a plump +débutante in the family is more of a problem +than a mental delinquent.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile, the slimmed, the irritable, +the hungry woman takes on the proportion +of one of our minor menaces. She does +not add to the gaiety of the nation or of the +home; she is no healthier, she is prettier only +according to the frail standards of a papier-maché +city on the west coast where the human +envelope is the stock in trade. She is a +success chiefly to herself and to her sister of +similar standards.</p> + +<p>Now I am aware of a certain perverse psychology +which you may suspect I am beginning +to manifest. My definition of white hair +is something you admire only when it is on +another woman.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></p> + +<p>This is not a plea for the tolerance or +toleration of excess weight, just so it is on +the other fellow. It is a plea for intolerance +of excess underweight.</p> + +<p>I am personally too infected with this slimming +phobia to hope for complete redemption. +I may come back, but probably not all +the way. As a matter of fact, I would not +come all the way. My struggle is to find the +moral courage to make the partial return. +The slimming years have been so long. I have +won my battle knowing that it is a battle +that is never truly won and that the helmet +and the spurs cannot be laid aside.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>It remains practically impossible for me to +sit down whole-heartedly to a meal among +whole-hearted folk. What has long since become +the more or less rare spectacle of an +American woman partaking of potato is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>still sufficient to send chills down this spine. +By now, expert in that strange branch of +lower mathematics, the counting of the calories, +I can compute on sight the heat and +food value of a helping of filet of sole +(3 × 2-1/2) or of one slice of zwieback (3-1/2 × +1-1/2 × 1/2).</p> + +<p>To violate by one calorie is to invite regrets +out of all proportion to the delights of +the transgression. One suck off the sugared +sides of a candy sour-ball can cause one to +scuttle to the scales in fear and trembling, or +one spoonful off the side of the pyramid of +ice-cream on your dinner partner’s dessert +plate, transform you into a distrait and regretful +guest.</p> + +<p>But at least mine hungry eyes have a certain +sharpened clarity which enables them +to see the funniness and the menace of the +spectacle of the slimming women.</p> + +<p>We are funny. Realizing that, we might +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>long since have learned to laugh it off, except, +alas! laughter is supposed to be fattening!</p> + +<p>It is not a simple matter to get a laugh out +of a slimming woman. It is the easiest thing +she does not do.</p> + +<p>My laughs have come back slowly, mere +spurts at first, as from a spring gone dry but +about to yield again.</p> + +<p>It means that even while, with me, meal-time +still remains largely a process of omission +and elimination, I am at least on to myself. +Ladies, really, it is to laugh.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Today, four unrelenting years after the episode +of the boiled tissue paper, I now enter +a shop to have a vendeuse glide up to me +with: “For yourself? Misses department +across the aisle.”</p> + +<p>Well, what of it?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> + +<p>This much of it! If a slimmer, a sadder, +and perhaps a wiser me has succeeded in +helping to convey to the slimmers of today +and the potential slimmers of tomorrow +some of the ridiculousness and some of the +perils of the slimming age, then the public +sacrifice of myself upon the altar of mine +own absurdities will not have been in +vain.</p> + +<p>Would I do it all over again?</p> + +<p>“Well,” I reply, as I continue to count my +calories, “well—er——”</p> + +<p>In conclusion, Reader, as they used to say +in the days when ladies munched chocolates +in bed, I desire to make public the following +acknowledgments:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p>To a husband who bore with me during a +period when a snapping-turtle shared roof +with him.</p> + +<p>To my doctor to whom I lied.</p> + +<p>To my many friends upon whom at my +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>supposedly hospitable board, my greenly glittering +eye rested in one hatred or another.</p> + +<p>To a cook who learned to defile her art in +order to brew me dishes unwanted and unsavory.</p> + +<p>To the books written during this period +which abound perhaps unduly in foods coveted +by their author.</p> + +<p>To hosts and hostesses who offered me their +hospitality only that I might wave aside with +supercilious celery stalk their good meat and +wassail.</p> + +<p>To my comfortably stout friends upon whom +my disdainful eye rested not kindly.</p> + +<p>To my slender friends upon whom my good-as-you-now +gaze has assailingly glared.</p> + +<p>To the human race for bearing with me.</p> + +<p>To myself for finally realizing that I am funnier +than any character I have ever succeeded +in depicting in fiction.</p> + +</blockquote> + + +<p class="center">THE END</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + + + +<div class="transnote"> +<p class="center"><b>Transcriber’s Notes</b></p> +<p>Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.</p> +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78225 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/78225-h/images/cover.jpg b/78225-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..33fa97b --- /dev/null +++ b/78225-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/78225-h/images/ititle.jpg b/78225-h/images/ititle.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f31244 --- /dev/null +++ b/78225-h/images/ititle.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d065660 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78225 +(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78225) |
