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When Mallary Tenore Tarpley was 11 years old, her mother died from breast cancer. Her father, who was reeling from his wife’s death and at a loss to guide his daughter through puberty, gave Tarpley a subscription to a teen magazine.
Instead of finding helpful advice about her changing body, Tarpley saw models with big hair and emaciated figures. In a school health class, Tarpley and her classmates were lectured about their food choices, so she began eliminating what she saw as “unhealthy” foods. Then she reduced portion sizes, reasoning, in her grief, that if she stayed small she could keep her mother close. That quickly spiraled into severely restricting her food intake.
“I found that calorie counts gave me some semblance of control in the aftermath of my mother’s death; I couldn’t control what happened to her body, but I could regulate what I put in mine,” she writes.
In her new book, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, which combines memoir and research, Tarpley, now 40, writes about living with an eating disorder and the insights she’s gained as an adult.
Previously, I would quickly grab the remote or lower the volume in the car, but now I use that moment as a chance to connect with my loved ones. I take the opportunity to have important conversations with them.
I explain to them that they will encounter many messages telling them how they should look, but they don’t have to conform to those standards. I want them to understand that they should never feel pressured to change their appearance just to fit in with society’s expectations. While I am doing my best to shield them from these pressures now, I know it will only become more challenging as they grow older.
Alicia Garceau is a journalist based in Indianapolis, covering topics such as health, caregiving, and identity. She shares her insights through her Substack newsletter The Wonder Years.
provided sentence: The cat sat lazily in the sun, enjoying the warmth on its fur.
