"You're the Fattest Ballerina"
Photo: Mark Andrew
PAGE 3
Mary Wilshire, 54, is an illustrator who has drawn female superheroes for comic books. Thoughtful and frank in conversation, with a girlish voice, she has delicate features and an elfin quality.
I've been addicted to food and had issues with compulsive eating all my life. My background was all English. It's a whole set of values and it's all based on how you appear to other people. If you grow up in a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant setting, the way you appear to other people is everything. You must appear perfect. You must be well-groomed. Your table manners must be impeccable. You must not have any problems. The message I received as a child was that it's wrong to be who you are.
My father was a very scary, active alcoholic, with guns in the house, who had been severely beaten as a boy. My mother started to withdraw into depression when I was about 7 years old. They gave her shock treatments. She was in and out of institutions. I'm 10 years old and there's nobody there. No one is taking care of you. I have to take care of my dad and my sister and myself. I couldn't deal with that.
At 13 I felt I was the most loathsome, unattractive creature in the whole world. I was alone in the house without a mother. Food was there for me. Food made me feel better. The fatter I got, the more loathsome I felt. Ten days after my 13th birthday, my mother committed suicide. I knew it was coming. I didn't cry. There were no tears. I was alone with my insane father. The night of my eighth-grade graduation ceremony, the little girl sitting next to me said, "Where is your mom sitting?" And I said, "Oh, my mom committed suicide last year." She began crying. I was so disconnected from my feelings, that was my coping mechanism. I had to be the perfect robot. I was also eating a lot. The grief, the terror, the rage that I was not allowed to express, it came up in my body.
My father's message was: "Take care of me, take care of my emotional needs. And suppress your own feelings, your needs, at all costs. Do not behave like a child." The idea was that women are meaningless and unimportant. With my father, there was emotional incest. Maybe I wasn't trying to cover myself with fat to protect myself from a creepy dad, with no mother to protect me—but that was the result.
Raising daughters, I've tried to protect them from the negative messages I received. Many of us are unmothered mothers. So instead of feeling you're a bad person because you eat too much, you give yourself permission to cultivate unconditional friendship with yourself. Feel compassion for yourself. What God wants from a girl is for her to be who she is. This is your highest spiritual purpose.
I've been addicted to food and had issues with compulsive eating all my life. My background was all English. It's a whole set of values and it's all based on how you appear to other people. If you grow up in a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant setting, the way you appear to other people is everything. You must appear perfect. You must be well-groomed. Your table manners must be impeccable. You must not have any problems. The message I received as a child was that it's wrong to be who you are.
My father was a very scary, active alcoholic, with guns in the house, who had been severely beaten as a boy. My mother started to withdraw into depression when I was about 7 years old. They gave her shock treatments. She was in and out of institutions. I'm 10 years old and there's nobody there. No one is taking care of you. I have to take care of my dad and my sister and myself. I couldn't deal with that.
At 13 I felt I was the most loathsome, unattractive creature in the whole world. I was alone in the house without a mother. Food was there for me. Food made me feel better. The fatter I got, the more loathsome I felt. Ten days after my 13th birthday, my mother committed suicide. I knew it was coming. I didn't cry. There were no tears. I was alone with my insane father. The night of my eighth-grade graduation ceremony, the little girl sitting next to me said, "Where is your mom sitting?" And I said, "Oh, my mom committed suicide last year." She began crying. I was so disconnected from my feelings, that was my coping mechanism. I had to be the perfect robot. I was also eating a lot. The grief, the terror, the rage that I was not allowed to express, it came up in my body.
My father's message was: "Take care of me, take care of my emotional needs. And suppress your own feelings, your needs, at all costs. Do not behave like a child." The idea was that women are meaningless and unimportant. With my father, there was emotional incest. Maybe I wasn't trying to cover myself with fat to protect myself from a creepy dad, with no mother to protect me—but that was the result.
Raising daughters, I've tried to protect them from the negative messages I received. Many of us are unmothered mothers. So instead of feeling you're a bad person because you eat too much, you give yourself permission to cultivate unconditional friendship with yourself. Feel compassion for yourself. What God wants from a girl is for her to be who she is. This is your highest spiritual purpose.
NEXT STORY
