Ridiculously Good Looking

“I’m sorry that us models made you feel bad about yourself and throw up.” – Derek Zoolander

It would be much easier to blame things on Kate Moss. I don’t think models are the cause of eating disorders, but the cultural glorification on thinness certainly doesn’t help. Sleek, skinny bodies sell luxury, date rock stars and stare at us from the eternally glossy world of magazines. And the main reason they are in that fairytale is because of their looks. It is an intoxicating mix of love and hate, creating the sort of justifying paradigm girls with eating disorders cannot resist.

So being in a photo shoot last week was an interesting experience.

I was not a true model, more of a living prop, one of five girls that were supposed to be prancing through an Austin girl’s weekend. All of us had friends who worked for the magazine and it was supposed to be a fun little favor for us. But for me, taking pictures is a stressful experience. What if I lean the wrong way, tilt my head just so, hold my arm wrong… what if I look fat? What if other people see me looking fat? Does that mean I am indeed fat?

For a few days leading up to the shoot I started staring in the mirror more critically. I realized I was subconsciously restricting food and trying to make my dog’s walks more intense. We had to bring our own clothes, so I spent time figuring out what made me look slimmer. In other words, the idea of being captured in a magazine triggered ED behaviors. I wasn’t in the danger zone, not yet, but the slope between recovery and illness is slippery.

Because I acknowledged my crazy thoughts, I could rein them in for the actual shoot. I was able to step back and treat it as a brief insight into a rather unglamorous activity that has been glorified in the ED world. I still fear the final photos will capture some unknown roll of flesh, but after nine hours of repetitive and contrived posing I didn’t care as much. I suppose my Zoolander quandry has been answered. “Well, I guess it all started the first time I went through the second grade. I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, you’re ridiculously good looking, maybe you could do that for a career’ … Be professionally good looking.”