First, Do No Harm

Last Monday I made some remarks about myself as I looked in the mirror, especially about the way the buttons were straining on the flannel shirt I was wearing, one of my son’s old Extra Smalls. I mentioned this last to my husband, who was just passing through the room at the time. "Get a breast reduction!" he joked, which seemed weird, since he sees me every day looking like Homer Simpson in his underpants; I figured he should know that the problems was further down, at my stomach and hips.

Posting all this prompted a blogger I had never heard from to connect with me. She is committed to discussing anorexia and the damage anorexia does to young women.

I hadn’t read more than one paragraph on her site before I was wincing over my silly and, let me admit, somewhat mendacious whine. Yes my upper arms sport swags on their undersides nowadays – I call them 'window treatments' – but the fact is I’m 5-foot-6 inches tall and I weight 128 pounds so really I’m not anybody’s idea of fat.

I know that.

And isn’t talking as if I were, even for the sake of getting a laugh, could be downright damaging to the world-view of younger women, who are already being bombarded by message about what the one right body size is. Is damaging.

Besides writing about fashion this woman makes it her mission to warn young woman away from blogs that encourage them to essentially starve themselves.

What I know for sure is how faintly aghast I feel every year at this time, when I watch the parade of young women in my town promenade to the buses that will take them to their proms. They are gorgeous in their youthful beauty, every one of them, as are their prom gowns, strapless or off the shoulder or cut away at the midriff to show a smooth wedge of flesh.

But the thin ones are just tooth inn… I practiced massage for six years and studied a lot of Anatomy. I know what a scapula looks like so well I could draw the bony 3-D puzzle of that area wearing a blindfold. I have worked on my share of them. Ye I have never see the shape and edges of female scapulas so luridly protruding as on Prom Night these last few years.

Here are the bones I refer to as the person faces away, back to the 'camera'

You can obviously feel these bones when you work on a person in massage.  You understand their placement and function. But unless you’re working on a cadaver you don’t see them in such a three-dimensional fashion, all notched and knobby.

I can say more about this tomorrow and point us to the blogger’s posts but for now let’s just tale a step back and think about these young women walking around with so little to protect them. Poor things, so undefended! Poor, poor things, and doubtless hungry too!