Dialogue: Fine line between vanity and insanity

By SANDY BURGHAM

"You look well!" exclaimed my well-meaning accountant, whom I hadn't seen since the last GST return.

"You've put on a bit of weight around your face!" he continued with absolute sincerity.

I was having a bad month. Some days back our local dairy owner innocently ventured that I might be pregnant again, a gaffe which no doubt she dines out on, and then my accountant was delivering this crushing blow. He pressed on, by now desperate to fill the large hole he had dug himself into.

"I always thought you looked a bit scrawny. You suit it ... " and so on he went back-pedalling wildly, taking gulps of water to wash down his foot.

While I'm not exactly battling the bulge sitting at a size 14, we live in a world where going up a dress size is not taken lightly. Mainly it's a girl thing.

I listen often to conversations where women remark about body image before anything else. "I saw so and so lately. She looks great, she's lost weight."

Now I am destined to be Sandy-who-hasn't-lost-weight-after-the-baby. As much as it might be denied, I would say that 90 per cent of women I know have a thing about their weight.

This skinny narcissism sits aside from the growing issue of mass obesity. We live in a fat-ist society that is paying lip-service to the shock, horror of eating disorders and celebrity skinniness.

It's become de rigueur to be aghast at Calista Flockhart and cronies who look unnaturally thin but one wonders how genuine the concern really is and how much is downright envy.

Popular culture is soaking in the quest to be thinner and it seeps through our every pore by osmosis.

It's impossible to pinpoint the instigators. Is it the fashion designers who use praying mantises on the catwalk, or the fashion retailers who pin back clothing on too-thin mannequins as if to indicate what the clothes should look like?

Should we blame film producers who insist that the only women to be seen having sex must be size 8 or less. (Imagine if they opted only to reflect reality and we were treated to normal-looking people making out - it would seem odd and maybe even distasteful.)

While we can attribute the blame to others, the responsibility to get real lies within each and every one of us ordinary folk.

The frightening regularity of eating disorders is a huge concern. I had read that in the United States alone more than 8 million women have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. So commonplace is the existence of anorexics here that at schools they are often cruelly and casually referred to as "anos."

I had always thought it was other, less stable types who had a distorted body image until my sister reminded me of a time some years ago, before the rigours of motherhood jolted me out of compete self-obsession, that I was aiming to get to 53kg. That's 17 blocks of cheese or a whole small person lighter than I am now.

There will be others out there who, if they care to open the annals of their memories, will realise how fine the line is between vanity and insanity.

My contemporaries are a diet-literate mob, well-versed in the science of metabolism and the maths of calories. We've eaten and exercised through every fad diet approach, from the early 1990s mantra of low-protein, high-carb to the late 90s edict of the reverse.

In a meeting last week, as I drowned myself in rich chocolate cake, my 50-something colleague of regular size confessed he had lost 7kg through a club points system.

Instantaneously, the agenda was pushed to one side as we examined the merits of a dieting club approach and whether you would want to attend group weigh-ins to meet other fat friends.

Across from me, my small and perfectly formed friend nibbled on one of the prepared diet meals she orders in bulk (she has to eat every two hours to keep that metabolism rate up).

I remember watching the Spice Girls at the height of their fame being interviewed by famous yo-yo dieter Oprah.

My favourite Spice, common-as-muck Ginger, all pudgy and outrageously tarty, launched into a memorable motivational rave about why they were such popular role models: "Look, luv, we've got cellulite but like 'oo cares eh?" We're, like, individuals, she seemed to be saying.

A few years later, Ginger has reinvented herself. She is blond and half the size, Posh is downright skeletal and Sporty is rumoured to be suffering an eating disorder. So much for girl power.

Pass the chips.