Happy International Women's Day! Pull up a chair.

There comes a point in every girl's life when, suddenly, it begins.

Maybe it's an offhand comment, a commercial that you can't forget, a shirt you realize looks terrible on you. Maybe you remember it or maybe you were too young to really know what it meant, but there's just no escaping...The Trickle.

I don't remember the very first time I noticed The Trickle, but I do remember certain droplets. I remember a distant cousin telling me, when I was 6, that when I grew up I was gonna be "a knockout." I didn't know what a knockout was, but it sounded awesome, like a superhero (you can imagine my disappointment). I remember my grandma saying, when I was maybe 10, that my mom should get me into modeling, and I'd "only have to lose a few pounds." I remember Santa in my elementary school gym looking me up and down and pointedly telling me I looked like I'd been "a very good girl this year."

I was in sixth grade. My mom got him extremely fired.

The worst part about The Trickle is that the little droplets don't really register until it's too late and The Trickle becomes The Deluge. Puberty hits and suddenly you're playing a game where everyone but you seems to know the rules. The Trickle means that suddenly the things you loved - tickle fights with your uncle, chatting with the single man who lives up the street, walking around in costume on Halloween - take a sinister turn. Being a girl is now a full-time job, complete with a Customer Service aspect where you must now process dozens of comments, glances, and touches with a smile, unless you think they might lead to Something Bad, in which case you need to run for the hills. But be careful! Overreact once, and no one will believe you if something really does happen in the future. We're thrown onto a tightrope with no training, told that this is now just how the world is, and the easiest way out is to be a good, sweet girl with a can of pepper spray clutched between her tiny fingers.

Not everything about The Trickle is bad, of course, but that only makes it harder. There isn't much that makes a little girl feel better than being told how pretty she is, because being pretty is the required cost of admission to any of the other good things she might want in life. Sure, you can be smart and athletic, but those things are way more fun when you're also pretty! Pretty is the foundation, the primary directive for girlhood. Be pretty first, and if the other stuff doesn't work out, you've always got your looks for backup. Aren't you lucky!

Though my raging feminist mother refused to let me wear makeup, shave my legs, or wear tight clothing (I did all of those things the second I got through my school's doors), it quickly became clear: I was going to be pretty. I was still very weird and I never stopped talking, which definitely held me back from being too popular, but it was irrefutable. The summer between freshman and sophomore year, I sprouted C-cup breasts, but I had no idea how to manage them. I'd been wearing unlined bras for years, since there wasn't much shaping or support needed yet, but suddenly my breasts became a topic of conversation. I remember walking into the band room one morning (see above re: coolness), and boys who I'd talked to every day for a year stopped their conversations to stare. I was wearing a shirt that said "Vote for Me," and my nipples were poking through my shirt. The guys made sure to tell me, repeatedly, that they would definitely be voting for me now. I spent the weekend picking out heavily padded bras, and I still have an irrational fear of my nipples showing through.

The Trickle was officially The Deluge.

As I grew, I got better at handling my shiny new job, though there were plenty of pitfalls. Men started hanging out of car windows to shout at me and mime sex acts. My high school guidance counselor told me I shouldn't apply to Ivy League schools because "nobody wants some girl from a rural Southern town" (fuck you, Mr. B!). A classmate asked me on a date, instead drove me to his house and pushed me to give him head (even rated me out of ten points afterwards), drove me home, and never spoke to me again. I cried myself to sleep that Saturday, and by Monday, every guy in my grade looked at me differently.

College was a shining city on a hill for me. Despite what I'd been advised (fuck you, Mr. B!), I managed to get into Yale, and I couldn't wait for the refined, mature discourse I would finally get with Yale guys, who wanted me for my body, sure, but mostly for my mind (lol). By Christmas break freshman year, I'd lost my virginity to my Freshman Counselor. A year later, I would be sexually assaulted. These are in no way equal things (when I told my mom about the first one, she gave me a high five; I told my dad first about the second one, to minimize my mom's chances of a stroke), but they proved that once again, the landscape was quickly shifting under my feet. My grades were slipping. I was woefully underprepared for Yale, having coasted all my high school life to a high GPA and ACT score, and I couldn't fake it anymore. I failed a class. I didn't make it into any of the extracurriculars I had auditioned to join. A guy I liked told me that I while I was pretty, I wasn't nearly as pretty as my friend, before asking me to move over so he could try his luck with her.

I started drinking at least three times a week and, far more frightening for 20-year-old-me, I started binge-eating.

First it was just a really bad day. I told myself "Fuck it. I'll order a pizza and sit in my room for dinner tonight." Since things kind of sucked at the time, my "fuck it" days quickly became a weekly occurrence. The Papa Johns guy started recognizing my face, and I would dart up to my room as fast as I could so that no one would see me with my own large pizza box. I ate the whole thing, getting so full that there was really only one clear choice to feel better, physically and emotionally. Purging became a near-daily occurrence, and suddenly I found myself battling full-blown bulimia. I was far from the only girl with a visible eating disorder, in fact I once ran into my roommate in the bathroom as she was finishing up her own purge. "I had pizza tonight," she said. "Yeah that was me yesterday," I replied, like we were commenting on the weather.

My biggest issue with bulimia, as I studiously ignored the millions of ways it screws with your head and health, was that it didn't really work. I had all the unhealthy eating habits of bingeing, but the purging wasn't enough to keep my waistline from expanding. My friends and I would joke about wishing we had the self-discipline to be properly anorexic. I sat next to a girl in class once whose laptop background was just the words "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." I ate two bagels for breakfast that day. My relationship with food was becoming so bad I couldn't hide it anymore, and I started noticing my friends' glances at my plate, brimming and shameful. I went out less, because only some of my dresses fit. While home for breaks, my mother started commenting more and more on how I was eating, which made me feel worse, so I ate more. I was drinking almost every night. I hadn't had sex in nearly a year, and I hadn't had a relationship in at least two.

I wish I could say that, when I hit bottom, I took a long hard look in the mirror and got my shit together. I wish I had an 80's montage of me getting into shape like Rocky, punching frozen vegan meat and running up a bunch of stairs. But I didn't rescue myself, not really. Somehow, carrying an extra forty pounds and a really thick layer of barely contained self-loathing, I had managed to get someone to fall in love with me. This idiot loved me for all the reasons little girls want to be loved, before they start drowning in Deluge. He loved my wit, my heart, my singing, and, unbelievably, my body. He sat quietly at 2am, as my drunk ass poured out my girlhood story of sadness, fear, and losing control. He encouraged me, but didn't push me, to see someone who specialized in eating disorders. He helped me get up the courage to tell my parents, who love me more than anything in the world, that I'd failed them. I wasn't smart enough to succeed at Yale, I wasn't strong enough to avoid the unbelievable cliché of an eating disorder, and I was no longer pretty enough to let the other weaknesses slide. The Deluge had broken me, upended my priorities, and left me deeply damaged.

Nearly a decade later, the damage remains, but I am recovering. I've only broken my No Purge rule a handful of times since college, and I treated each incident as an emergency for my mental health. I built a thriving career for myself, chubbiness notwithstanding, finally internalizing the crocheted throw-pillow lesson that there's value in me beyond the way I look. I had the good sense to marry the boy who helped me save myself. And very, very slowly, I lost the weight. Well, not all of the weight, because I will never be 18 again and cheese is a thing, but for the first time in years, I don't actively avoid the mirror when I get out of the shower. There's been a horrifying/gratifying uptick in people staring at me on the subway, and my wedding ring is no longer the deterrent it was when it was paired with the extra weight, but I pay that price to feel like myself again.

So what does that feeling of reclaiming my body mean? Was I not really myself during the lost Chubby Years? What does it mean to be a woman who is no longer committing the crime of being less pretty than she could be? Did I screw up my honeymoon period because I deleted half my wedding album, unable to bear looking beyond my face's roundness to see the delight that lightened my gaze? Did I ruin my relationship with my mother, when I screamed at her that her own complicated relationship with food caused my bulimia (it didn't, but it didn't help)? Am I doomed to be taken less seriously, as the pretty wife of a brilliant scientist and future doctor? Or maybe, if I'd stayed chubby, I would have been doomed to whispers of "Wonder what he sees in her" at holiday parties. There is no winning The Deluge, and all the damage it brings. There is only surviving, and thriving enough to try to hold back the waters for the next generation of girls to thrive after you're gone.

We can all do our part to dam The Deluge. It takes a lifetime of work, and mine is ongoing. I try to tell little girls how smart they are, rather than how cute or pretty (this is hard when the girl is either extra pretty or not that smart, so hone your improv skills). I try to limit the beauty articles I read to the ones that keep makeup and styling fun for me, rather than a debt I owe to society for being female. I stay away from my own triggers for disordered eating, and try to help my friends and family do the same. Having a kid is gonna be an absolute nightmare for trying to dam The Deluge, so I'm putting that off for as long as I can before tumbleweeds start blowing through my uterus.

Here, I'm publicly acknowledging my strengths and weaknesses, in the hopes that hearing my words might help others feel less hopeless. 

I'm calling myself pretty and not apologizing for it, which genuinely feels like a revolutionary act. Girls are expected to be pretty, to groom and sway and starve, but never to really know it about ourselves, because that confidence gives us power. The word "pretty" has been used to reward, punish, and manipulate me since The Trickle began. I'm taking it back, to use and define however I want. It's mine now, just as all the damage it's caused is mine forever as well.

Dormant or active, I will always have an eating disorder. I will always be working to minimize its impact on my life and the lives of those around me. Effectively fighting the crushing weight of expectations starts internally, only safely spreading outwards when you're ready. This International Women's Day you owe it to yourself (or the women in your life) to feel that burden. Recognize how much it holds you back. Try to remember who you wanted to be before someone placed it on your shoulders, and work to get there. Get fucking livid. Build that dam.

-T.

P.S. If anyone wants to discuss their issues with disordered eating, I'm 100% happy to listen. You can also Google a counselor or hotline. (You know how to Google.) I believe in you!