vol. 4 issue 1
Greetings!
It’s really lovely to be back. It was even better to be gone.
So, where did I go?
To a tropical island, lapped by waters of many blues and greens, the beauty of which my dinky phone photograph below can only offer a hint. Daily, I breathed in the salty, soft air, sweetly perfumed by fragrant orchids and gardenias, turned my face east toward the Trade Winds, and did pretty much diddly squat else.
For all the lush, abundant beauty there on that heavenly isle, I couldn’t help but notice the local inhabitants are disproportionately malnourished, especially the women. There is no statistical way that even a self-selecting set could naturally produce this many genetically thin human beings.
Munching heartily on a French pastry and sipping creamy rich coffee, I considered this one morning as I sat watching them walk past purposefully, but without much energy. Then again, no one is in much of a hurry on Palm Beach.
Generally speaking, there are two sets of the underfed, sorted according to cash, and sadly, gender.
There are the women with old money, who also tend to be older themselves. Their dress code approximates toile upholstery: powdery blues, crisp whites, neat grey hair, not too long, swept tidily off the face. The one glamorous indulgence they tend to allow are their blinding diamond rings set in platinum. Maybe an understated Cartier if the wrist is not too insubstantial to support it. How have they lived this long on gin and tonic alone? Those must be some limes.
Then there are the women with new money, many of them Russian or Slavic, with long, tanned legs extending from what when I was a kid we called hot pants, which are really just short shorts. If they weren’t in short shorts, then they were in tight white capris, often paired with toney cork soled heels, which gave the effect of wraiths on stilts. Their hair was long and silky straight, never gray.
A few of them eyed me eying them. Maybe they envied my pastry. Who knows? I sure didn’t envy them, though, and that, I realized was saying something remarkable about me and how far I have come in my life.
No, it’s not special because I could spend time away on Palm Beach, although believe me when I say that I cherished every second of that. It’s because I have less than zero compunction about the fact — the fact — that I L-O-V-E butter, especially when it is baked into a flaky French pastry.
The last time I had the luxury of spending a month in Florida was in the mid-1980s when I checked myself into an eating disorder clinic. I was seeking a cure for my years-long bout with anorexia and bulimia, once and for all. I had already wasted my college years either starving myself or gorging and puking.
At the time, the freak show that is today’s rehab industry wasn’t yet a “thing”. Still in its infancy, the predicate was that people like me were deluded that we can control that which is actually beyond our control. It was the for-profit version of Betty Ford’s original non-profit vision of helping people by showing them how to Let go and let God! As usual, once someone heard a little cha-ching chime after invoking our Lord, Florida being what Florida is, an evangelical industry was born.
I don’t have fond memories of my rehab experience, the sum of which was that by the time I left with my typewritten instructions to attend as many Overeaters Anonymous meetings as possible, and to eat regular meals, especially breakfast — try more yogurt with fruit! — I was certain I would never be as nuts as the people who’d held me captive for those 30 days of hell. Any longer, and my insurance wouldn’t pay for it — the one time I might actually say Thank God to the unnatural amount of power the insurance industry has over the lives of its so-called “beneficiaries”.
During my time in captivity, I was instructed by despotic weirdoes to adjust my bad attitude, if I wanted to end my misery. I distinctly recall feeling that I was to blame for being there in the first place.
Fire and brimstone, I mean blaming the patient, is not in vogue now. After more than three decades of exploiting pain for profit, rehab outcomes remain iffy, so now much of the industry is swapping its commodification of the spiritually oriented, if patriarchal, 12 Steps model for one that combines brain science with psychotherapies, assiduously avoiding any talk of spirituality.
The predicate now, like in so much of the healthcare industry, is that patients are defective rather than deluded, victims of their biology and their circumstances, in need of fixing.
This model is at least more humane in that it takes into account the traumas so often at the root of self-hating behaviors. Is it more effective? Depends on who you ask and what their angle is (‘cause you know, selling). Still, I do give credence to the 12 Step model which demands you not feel sorry for yourself if you’re going to succeed. It’s all in how that message is delivered, however. There are a lot of power-hungry wackos who want to dress you down when you’re weak.
Those were the kinds of people who worked in that place where I found myself freaked out and pissed off yet stuck, because now I had to prove to the insurance company that I wasn’t going to “fail” treatment.
I aced that test, and now some 35 years later, I can say I left rehab cured and let me be clear about it: I take full credit. None, zero, is due to any person hiding behind a frilly sign that spells out a name evocative of a Sandals Resort with social workers.
The pathology that led me to my so-called “eating disorders” was the pathology of my culture, not my biology. It was most definitely not of any supposed spiritual depravity. And that is what made my escape narrow, but complete.
Uh, what? Um, no. My life has not been a string of amazing skinny bitch successes. Instead, my life’s work, every failure and every win, has been spent in service to understanding what makes for a true clinical diagnosis and how to treat it, and I do know from the academic medicine company I keep, that I am considered a kind of unicorn when it comes to not “needing” further “interventions” for “eating disorders” or any of the other diagnosis suggested to me over the years.
So, I’ll put down the buttered snacks for a moment and maybe say something helpful.
For me, the solution to my problem had been, and remains, to keep asking: why would I hate myself so much that I would gather necessary resources such as food, and then punish and excoriate myself for enjoying it?
That is not a natural behavior, it is a learned one.
Once you understand how this kind of perversion gets acculturated, it’s so easy to spot. It’s everywhere. I mean, it’s really just schtick.
Before the body dysmorphia diagnosis crowd harangues me, let me say that the experience of the pain is real. But whatever constellation of causes we assign to it, without abjectly calling out our culture that profits off people’s pain as part of the constellation of that duress, we are never, ever, ever going to truly embrace a paradigm of wellness. Did I say never? I meant NEVER.
The perversion occurs when we are distracted enough to vacate the space in our minds where our imagination should be.
What rushes to fill that vacuum are commercial interests that profit off of conflating our needs with our wants. Mad men, if you will, tell us what we “need” — You need these beauty treatments! You must be skinny enough to fit in a size 0! You are sick and in need of treatment! — and pretty soon we forget that what we want is not what we need, and what we need is not always what we want, or even that sometimes what we need and want are in fact the same thing. You know, like tasty and nutritious food.
I thought about this as I observed the elegantly tanned but starving denizens of paradise. Why would these women who have so very much, more than nearly everyone else on the globe where starvation is not a choice but a daily peril, why would they punish themselves this way?
I suspect it’s a lack of imagination. If the interior of your mind is covered with 1,000 billboards filled with messages of what you should and need to do, it’s easier to just do what you’re told than to imagine something new. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels!
That’s not a judgement on these women. It makes me sad and angry. It’s why no matter what I do or don’t do with the rest of my life, if I accomplish getting enough of you to consider how your minds are hijacked into believing that what you think you need is actually a nonessential thing so often engineered by some schmo with no regard whatever for what you do actually need — and help you understand that what you do actually need, which is every ounce of your powerful imagination, is stolen from you every time you do as your inner-billboards tell you to do, I will have fulfilled my destiny. How much is enough? I don’t know — but hopefully you reading this is among that number!
Anyway, back to the island.
Dipping the last of my chocolate croissant into my coffee, it occurred to me I might just be the fattest woman in all of Palm Beach that day. This made me laugh out loud. I also was probably the most liberated given that I can say with certainty that I was utterly unconcerned about anyone else’s opinion of what I should be thinking I needed and/or wanted at that moment.
There was a time I would have died, quite literally, to be underfed and fabulous. Never in my limited imagination of 35 years ago would I have believed I would one day envision myself running after these women, begging them to let me buy them a croissant and a coffee — with whole milk! — because my God, they sure look like they needed it.
NEW PODCAST!!!!!
While the docu-mental podcast is still temporarily on hold, I am so very excited to share that on February 17, news analyst and astrologer Elisabeth Grace, and I will debut our new podcast Off the Charts, offering you aspects on newsmakers and current events like you will get absolutely nowhere else.
The podcast is part of the re-fashioned Ensouled: The Journal of Cultural Astronomy.
Be sure to subscribe to Ensouled so you don’t miss it!
OTHER IMPORTANT UPDATES…
I have revamped the whole site and utilized the excellent features Substack has added recently. Please visit the home page to see how I have highlighted some of the best of this publication.
Also:
I have created sub-section newsletters so you can choose what streams you want to subscribe to
For subscribers only, there is now “you make me sick”, which I will put behind the paywall on February 17. It’s free for now, so that you can see what it is. I’ll tell you: it’s a round-up of ways the pharma-insurance cartel makes us think our minds and bodies are the problem and they are the solution. Plus, the private equity vultures who feed off our rotting healthcare system.
The logo is updated. Isn’t it cute?
Subscriptions are now unpaused, so if you were wondering why you weren’t getting billed, now you are again. The billing cycle is starting wherever it left off for your subscription.
AND A FAVOR TO ASK…
Thousands of people read docu-mental and listen to the podcasts, and hundreds are subscribers. But! Whenever you comment, you comment directly to me. And so many of you write such thoughtful things. Could I ask that you go ahead and put your comments in the comments section more frequently so we can use this publication to spark community conversations whenever possible?
When I did the survey, a few of you noted that you didn’t think you had anything others would find of interest, but I disagree.
Please consider it. Just, you know, be nice. But I know you will be!
Thanks, folks. I needed the break. Glad you hung in there with me!
Peace,
Whitney
Came to this entry via a link from today's (9/26/2022) emailed newsletter, and ...
"and a coffee — with whole milk!"
OMG, YES! For so many reasons. Enjoy!
Hey Whitney! New subscriber here. I love your commentary in this piece. Especially the way you talk about breaking free from the mental billboards and cultural imperatives.
The last few months, I've been mulling over how to reconnect with my imagination and creativity. I keep coming back to writing, but I don't know how to get started. I have a bit of a mental block... I keep getting stuck thinking about the "correct" way to express myself, the "correct" words to use, and the grammar rules I must follow.
Do you have any tips for getting started, or have any go to writing resources you've used to stimulate free flowing creativity and inspiration? I felt so much of your voice coming through this piece and it got me really excited to continue exploring writing for myself