I would be as small as possible

"There weren't many choices for my birth mother, when she was pregnant with me, unmarried, in 1959, in that small town. She could have used a knitting needle or rat poison and tried to end it herself. She might have run away to an anonymous town where nobody knew her and passed herself off as a widow with a child. But that would have meant tearing herself away from her family, her community, and everything she knew. Instead, she bought a girdle. She ate like a bird. She did what she could do to ensure that I would be as small as possible."

~~ from I Would Meet You Anywhere in the World by Susan Kiyo Ito