”Eat more, Beautiful,” said Gita, to my eight-year-old cousin Zoreh. And with that, she put another portion of rice on Zoreh's plate.
”Eat more, Beautiful,” said Gita, to my eight-year-old cousin Zoreh. And with that, she put another portion of rice on Zoreh's plate.
My cousin and I were at Gita’s luncheon. She was my mother’s bestie and as two well-behaved and polite girls, we had to do as we were told. With more food in front of Zohreh, her face looked desperate.
Throughout the entire time, I was very confident in her ability to control overeating because I had made sure the leather belt on Zoreh’s waist was very tight, preventing her from eating too much and becoming a fat girl.
My cousin and I were very close. We both wanted to have sisters, but instead, we both had brothers and for that reason, we had become sworn sisters. “Until death sets us apart.” We were going to never be separated. And I was the older sister, always coming up with ideas about how to stop us from becoming fat girls. For that luncheon, my amazing plan was to put a restricting leather belt on Zoreh’s waist.
As soon as we had arrived at the luncheon, I whispered into Zoreh’s ear;
“Let us disappear. I have something great to stop your overeating.”
We had gone upstairs to a small room that the host used as their study. In my bag, I had a black leather belt that might have been my father’s, and showed it to Zoreh.
”Oh thank you, dear sister. You always have amazing things for me.” Zoreh had said.
She was as enthusiastic about it as I was, but then as I tightened the belt by pushing one leg against the table telling her to exhale so that I could cinch the belt to the last hole her enthusiasm waned, and she started to breathe a little heavier.
“You will see that, with this belt, you will not be able to eat very much!” I reassured her, trying to be supportive as I saw the expression of discomfort.
I explained that I put the belt on myself all the time, but did not think about the fact that I could not tighten the belt on myself as I could on hers. I was confident of my various techniques for avoiding weight gain, from taking major quantities of laxatives after a big meal to skipping dinner and chewing gums instead of eating, there was no doubt about my expertise. Depending on the occasion, one of these methods always worked. And since I was older and had more experience, and we had both agreed that we were too fat, Zoreh needed my help, especially when it came to eating rice. My stepbrother, who my mother always referred to as the source of fashion and beauty, had repeatedly told me that I should quit ballet because of my rice-eating body. He had told me that I was fat!
“You will never be a dancer, with that kind of rice-consuming body,” my older stepbrother had warned me when he caught me practicing ballet. I eventually gave up ballet, knowing he was right. My body would never dance the lead in Swan Lake.
As for Zoreh, she did not envision herself as a ballet dancer, but still, we both knew and were convinced that we were two potentially obese girls. She was a little taller than I even though she was two years younger, I was ten years old at the time. Zoreh had a much heavier body structure than me and was always eager to learn about my latest weight management skills. I had taken it upon myself to be the watchdog food for both of us and continued offering various food policing, and preventive measures. In reality, these measures sounded a lot better than they worked but we did not know that.
“You girls are not eating enough. This is the age you grow, and you mustn’t deprive yourselves of food,” Gita warned as she piled more rice with gourmet meat sauce on our plates.
I had no idea how she knew we were on a diet. Gita belonged to the underground socialist feminist movement and was very learned. She was aware that since Twiggy became famous, millions of young women and teenagers started to hate their bodies. Gita had openly criticized the media’s portrayal of the perfect woman’s body.
At school and among my peers, I witnessed how swiftly we all became unfashionable when Twiggy, a young British model, became the ideal and perfect symbol of womanly beauty. During the mid-1960s, she was a top model and a fashion icon. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Twiggy was a woman with a “short boyish bob with big darkly lined eyes and false eyelashes. Twiggy’s adolescent physique was ideal for the rising hemlines and unisex patterns that were then in vogue….” She was 5 foot 6 and weighed 90 pounds.
During that luncheon, different delicious food was served, and as part of Iranian cultural heritage we were obliged not to refuse extra food the hostess offered, we had to continue eating. Somehow, Gita put less on my plate than Zoreh’s. I thought that was because she had a bigger body than I did. "They do not have the right to make her eat more." But as I said to myself my stepbrother’s words—"you have a rice eater's body"—reverberated in my head. “If I become fat, I will never be able to be a good dancer or good at anything to do with my body.”
Zorah and I exchanged eye contact, and we knew we had to come up with a plan as the belt on her waist was getting tighter. We excuse ourselves to go to the bathroom, where I tried hard to unbuckle the belt but to do that, I would have to pull it a little tighter, and that was not happening. The belt could not be a little tighter for unbuckling. We tried harder and harder, Zoreh, kept exhaling all the air inside her but we could not unbuckle and returned to the table. Zoreh’s blushing face was slowly turning pale.
My mother decided that she and I would leave early. For some reason, we left Zoreh behind at Gita’s house. To this day, no one has ever divulged my part in the “leather belt mystery“—where the belt came from and who placed it on Zorah’s waist was shrouded in the mists of time. Mark Twain once said that a secret can be kept by three people only if two of them are dead. But I know, I can trust my reader to keep this little secret.
A few weeks after the ill-fated luncheon, I found out that Gita’s husband had to cut the belt with a pair of scissors. Each time the incident was mentioned, I adamantly denied any knowledge of it, and in sisterhood, my cousin did not give all the details.
****
Years and decades have passed and now settled in Canada, I ask myself am I able to bypass feminine beauty standards? For how long will I be holding on to unachievable goals that we see in the media, especially now with yellow psychology and love yourself. With all the selfies, with instagram posts and photoshopped pictures far from reality of our everyday lives? Can I come to terms with who I am as I really am?
Where do I find myself ?
In the lost and found?
A drop in the ocean,
I am bound!
The other day when my hairdresser asked if I was ready to let my hair grow natural and for the whites to show, I paused and said “no”, with a million questions passing in my head.
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