Facing her demons

Long the victim of poor self image and yo-yo weight, a streamlined Cindy Gibbons tells DITA DE BONI how she freed herself from shame and blame.

Cindy Gibbons, plus-size clothing entrepreneur and author, hates having her photo taken.

More than two hours after we arrive at her Onehunga house, after much prevaricating, she relents and reclines on her sofa, to the relief of the photographer and everyone else. It turns out she has nothing to worry about. She is a striking woman who wears beautiful clothing and a wide smile - and this is exactly what is captured on film.

We point out to Gibbons that our aim is simply to capture a realistic portrait - no funny tricks, no angles that build up or play down.

"I know, I know, but ... " she wails. Media photos taken previously have "devastated" her, and certainly her grouse about unnecessarily unflattering angles which seem to add the weight of a whole extra person is one many women would leap to sympathise with.

But Gibbons - who claims to be more at ease with herself and her weight than ever before - has looked worse. At her biggest, when she had been labelled "morbidly obese", the entire nation was watching. An hour-long Documentary New Zealand account of her efforts to lose weight, broadcast in 1999 and again this month, contained more unflattering visual material than anything a single Herald photograph could reveal.

The highly popular documentary, Cindy's Diary, was excruciatingly frank, showing Gibbons puffing away at the gym, struggling to manoeuvre on an aeroplane, and her doctor running a stretched-to-breaking-point tape measure round her size 30 stomach.

Some of the photos from those times are reprinted in her new autobiography, Cindy: Breaking the Cycle (Random House, $29.95).

While Gibbons, the founder of plus-size clothing chain Precious Vessels, would still qualify as a "plus-size woman", she is a streamlined version of her former self. She is also super-fit, cycling long distances each week in the hopes of completing the full Taupo cycle marathon in November. Long, pink nails, immaculate makeup and blonde-streaked hair belie the image of an athlete, however, and she admits with a giggle that she still struggles some mornings to get herself up and on her bike, choosing instead to curse and turn over in bed.

But the toned body and increased vitality are happy side-effects of something much more profound, says Gibbons: a measure of freedom from the ghosts of an often troubled past and the resounding pain of sexual abuse. She writes: "No more shame. No more blame ... No more self-defeating fears. No more being the victim. No more self-destruction."

After plumbing the depths of bad health and binge eating in her 44 years, she realises that she will have to keep reasonably fit for the rest of her life to maintain her weight and her health. Mastering the bike and competing in marathons - she did half of the Taupo cycle marathon last year - are points of pride for the woman who, a few years ago, could not walk a block without gasping for breath.

Gibbons agreed to make bike training part of her stab at fitness for the Cindy's Diary documentary, and the comic pathos of her getting back on a bike after 30 years was caught by a film crew who were "threatened with bodily harm" if they filmed her backside.

She doubted the puny-looking bike would be able to support her, refused to get on it at first, and then needed a couple of phone books to stand on to get her leg over the seat.

Initially, even while up and away on her bike, the fear of looking foolish followed her. One day she caught a look at her shadow while riding and was alarmed to see a generous overhang in the seat area reflected back at her - not one of her happiest memories of getting fit.

Gibbons' bravery in revealing her hardest moments of despair, pain and humiliation has endeared her to many women, who constantly approach her to share their own stories of lifelong struggles with weight loss. Her book goes further, addressing the possible genesis of her overeating - sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her father when she was about 5 years old, a string of violent relationships as well as financial breakdowns, a failed marriage, drug use, rape and abortion.

Gibbons prefaces her story with typical modesty. "I'm Cindy, a pretty ordinary woman ... who's lacked self-esteem virtually all her life. A woman who dropped out of school at 14, was pregnant at 16, spent nine years in a violent relationship, then moved on to a situation where she was emotionally abused. I lived for 15 years on a domestic purposes benefit, raising two children as a single parent.

"And throughout those years, throughout my life, I've gained and lost hundreds of kilos."

Although stories of women whose emotional traumas underpin lifelong battles with excess weight are not uncommon, public interest in Gibbons' story has shown no sign of abating. And it will undoubtedly grow again after another documentary about her, which chronicles her efforts to master the Taupo cycle marathon, screens on April 8.

It seems that no matter how many times this kind of story is told, it has a resounding emotional effect on its audience. "I stayed up all night to read your book," wrote one young woman to Gibbons in a note she proudly quotes. "I laughed, I cried and I smiled at so many things that I could relate to. What an inspiration it was to see you ... you are 'doing it' and have changed your lifestyle, meaning I can 'do it' too."

"If even one person can turn their life around because of [my] book, that would be enough," Gibbons - who doesn't think of herself as an author - says. "I didn't do it to get sympathy from anyone or to air my dirty linen. It's that I had always felt compelled to write about my experiences but I had felt blocked. It was really hard to write the book with everything else going on but it was worthwhile, I think."

There were plenty of tears and "breaking down" during the writing of the book, especially during the first half. Cycle not only looks at the sexual abuse as a precursor to troubled relationships and, of course, yo-yo weight, but Gibbons' beloved mother's legacy on her life, the mother who also struggled with weight and abuse and who near the end of her life - she died in 1999 - exhorted her daughter to break free from stifling, low self-esteem and lowered expectations, saying, "Cindy, if only I'd known."

Why does Gibbons think her father resorted to abuse at the family's childhood home in Fiji?

"At the time Dad had lost his job; Mum had taken him back after they were separated. He'd lost some of his power, I suppose, and may have felt a failure, misunderstood. I don't think it was about sex, but about regaining some of that lost power," she says.

Lifelong shame was the price of the abuse, shame that was "absorbed into the psyche" and played out on Gibbons' body. "Most of my life I've felt a sense of shame, a crippling feeling that I was not good enough. That's probably a big factor in lots of people's lives - that low self esteem." She is not concerned about revealing personal details in her book. "I'm not ashamed any more. There's too much hiding that goes on."

It's certainly not that she has "everything sorted", she stresses. She still misses her mother greatly, wishing she had been alive to see the strides she's made. She has her bad days.

In the book, Gibbons tells of becoming a Jehovah's Witness in the mid-80s and marrying a church man who was "shy, detached and nervous" - a man entirely different in temperament and physique to her previous lovers. The marriage failed and her church attendance has waned, although she says faith is still an important aspect in her life.

She is now single but her ideal man is "totally comfortable with [him]self, has a sense of humour, and God help them if they try to change me."

She is, in any case, preoccupied with her business, Precious Vessels, which has a store in Hamilton and two in Auckland and does more than a million dollars in sales each year.

And there's a new project in the offing - an exercise and healthy eating programme called eXceL she has developed in conjunction with the man who has guided her own exercise regime, Vince Powell. The programme will aim to help people to develop the tools they need for a proper exercise programme, and Gibbons is clearly excited by it.

Despite the media attention, the successful businesses and the sense of personal victory, Gibbons still seems the type who pinches herself periodically to remind herself she's not dreaming. Mostly she feels happy to have stopped a cycle of muted dreams and self-punishment which plagued her mother. Gibbons feared she was repeating the patterns of her mother's life and also feared her own daughter was about to do the same.

"This book is dedicated to my mother, Pansy Maryrose Mulelly," she writes in her dedication. "My mother struggled with her weight all her life ... she never fulfilled her dreams. She never recognised her talents. For years before she died she isolated herself.

"Even now, two years after her death, I feel bad she didn't stretch her wings or believe in herself. but her memory also gives me courage. I have picked up the baton for Mum and I want to carry it because of what she wanted, both for me and, truly, for herself."