So You Want To Be Hollywood Skinny?

     T his is a chapter of a book I'd written and was subsequently published in 1997. It is my own account of a first of several life-threatening eating disorder nightmares. I have decided to post this work as a personal experience that began in 1969, well before the media had heard of this insidious and deadly mental illness. By the time my sixteenth birthday came around, the erratic high school behaviour had begun to take a particularly ominous turn. Always somewhat obsessive about body size and weight, such as comparing myself constantly to other girls and feeling massive beside them, I decided that I would finally do something about it. Thus began my initiation into the wonderful world of dieting, a place that would nearly be my eventual mausoleum six months later. Society was still very much, in 1971, reeling giddily from the impact of Twiggymania. As the fashion industry gained more and more influence over young girls and women in Western civilization, it became inc...