Dietland

by Sarai Walker

She waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The medication took away my sadness and replaced it with something else—not happiness, but more like a low dull hum, a weak radio frequency of feeling that couldn’t be turned up or down.

There were few visitors to the apartment on Swann Street. My mother came to see me once a year. My friend Carmen visited sometimes, but I mostly saw her at the café. In my real life I would have more friends, and dinner parties and overnight guests, but my life wasn’t real yet.

When I was around women who had grown-up lives, the kind of life I thought I should have, I felt suspended in time, like an animal floating in a jar of formaldehyde.

My hair was nearly black too. For years it had been shaped into a shiny chin-skimming bob, with blunt bangs cut straight across my forehead. I liked this style, but it made my head look like a ball that could be twisted from my round body, the way a cap is removed from a bottle of perfume.

“You’re older than the other girls we’ve considered for the job, and you’re different from them in many ways. Most of them are—Well, you know the type. I hear that you’re smart, but I don’t mind that. You’d write in Kitty’s voice. You wouldn’t have to believe what you’d write; it only matters that Kitty would believe it and write it if she had time. I think you’d have insight into the problems our girls have—that’s what’s important.”

“Euphemisms, that’s what we need.” She looked through the doorway to where Eladio sat. “Think of some euphemisms for vagina,” she shouted to him. “Poontang?” “No, nothing sexual. Medicalized terms. Come up with a list and send them to the author of the tampon article. Tell her she can’t say vagina. Send the list to Plum, too, in case she wants to use it.” It was difficult to believe we were all engaged in real work, for which we were paid. I would have to tell Carmen about this later.

THE WOMEN WHO CAME BEFORE ME were black-and-white. My grandmother, mother of my mother, died before I was born, but there are photographs of her.

The other women and I began to write, but Janine looked stunned. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “I came here to lose a few pounds because of back pain. What kind of

Janine made a door-slamming exit. In her wake there was silence in the room, leaving us to contemplate the departure of the loud, angry woman, disagreeable and huge, what none of us wanted to be.

She turned to me. “Two years ago I got my Ph.D. in women’s studies. No one in this place thinks anything of the fact that I have a doctorate from a prestigious university but now I sort lipstick and mascara in a windowless closet all day. Look at me,” Julia said. “These clothes, these shoes, the highlights in my hair. Please understand that I would never dress this way.”

Her skin was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes, probably from spending her days in a subterranean closet, away from the sunlight. She looked like someone who worked in some sort of fashion-forward coal mine.

The police photos of the battered model’s face were leaked online. Jayson Fox’s punishment was a short stint in the L.A. County jail followed by this: wearing a khaki jumpsuit and riding around in a dirty City of Los Angeles truck, sitting between two burly men with bad prostates, picking up animal corpses. Two months of this would teach him not to beat up his girlfriend. Or at least not to get caught.

“I just want you to experience being Alicia. She wants to meet men. She wants to fall in love, get married, have babies, the whole predictable triumvirate. That’s what you said you wanted.”

“Haven’t you learned anything from your boss, Kitty? Being a woman means being a faker.” Outside, a pigeon limped on the sidewalk, a torn piece of donut lodged in its beak.

The director of the FBI appeared on television to plead for their release: “We urge members of the public to come forward with any information that might lead to the rescue of these twelve men,” he said, sounding official, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it.

My bedroom in the underground apartment contained only the starkest, most minimalist furnishings. The furniture and walls were white, the linens were white, everything was white—I was living inside an aspirin.

You carry a great deal of pain around with you, Plum. Can you envision ever letting it go?” “You can’t let go of pain. It’s not a balloon that can float into the sky.” “Okay, but imagine for a minute that it is. You put your pain into a balloon and you let go of it. It floats away. How do you feel?” If I let go of my pain, there would be a hole inside me that was so vast I would cease to exist. I would be the balloon floating into the sky, not the other way around. There would be nothing pulling me down, nothing keeping my feet on the ground. My pain was my gravity.

She rose from the chair and came toward me. “You and I can never look the way women are supposed to look.” You and I. Only weeks before, such a comparison would have plunged me into despair, but now I could see her point. “Do you think we’re the same?” “In the ways that matter, yes. We’re different in a way that everyone can see. We can’t hide it or fake it. We’ll never fit society’s idea for how women should look and behave, but why is that a tragedy? We’re free to live how we want. It’s liberating, if you choose to see it that way.”

Foxy, hot, fuckable. Whatever it was called, that’s what I’d wanted—to be hot, to elicit desire in men and envy in women. But I realized I didn’t want that anymore. That required living in Dietland, which meant control, constriction—paralysis, even—but above all it meant obedience. I was tired of being obedient.

“She wouldn’t be stupid enough to flee to Texas,” said Sana. “That’s the last place I’d go if the Man was looking for me.”

For what it’s worth, I do not believe she is involved in criminal activity. You might not know that Leeta is quite flighty. I don’t like to speak ill of her, but this facet of her personality always exasperated me. I do not know any terrorists myself, but I imagine being a terrorist requires discipline and focus.

“I think it’s a response to terrorism. From the time we’re little girls, we’re taught to fear the bad man who might get us. We’re terrified of being raped, abused, even killed by the bad man, but the problem is, you can’t tell the good ones from the bad ones, so you have to be wary of them all. We’re told not to go out by ourselves late at night, not to dress a certain way, not to talk to male strangers, not to lead men on. We take self-defense classes, keep our doors locked, carry pepper spray and rape whistles. The fear of men is ingrained in us from girlhood. Isn’t that a form of terrorism?”

As far as he was concerned, if I didn’t make his man parts happy, I had no reason to exist.

ARE MEN REALLY SO BAD? JENNIFER’S OVARY-ACTION, the headline read.

Mason thought he could throw a crumb in the direction of the fat girl and it would make up for everything that had happened to her in her life, most of all what had happened that night. Telling her she’s pretty was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the winning lottery number, the healing hand of Christ on top of her head. He had been made to believe he had such power. It had been given to him by women like her.

Soledad Ayala (Aliases: Jennifer Ayala, Jenny Ayala) was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, the only woman there, with a promise of a $100,000 reward for information leading to her capture. In an interview with The Nola and Nedra Show, Cheryl Crane-Murphy said, “Before we send a lynch mob after this woman, might I remind everyone that Soledad Ayala earned the Silver Star for bravery in Afghanistan? She was not able to collect her award at the White House for obvious reasons, but she still deserves our respect.” “Might one call her an American hero?” asked Nedra Feldstein-Delaney. “One might,” said Nola Larson King.

An early and important source of inspiration for Dietland was Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk’s novel and the film adaptation directed by David Fincher. I would like to think that Dietland would exist even if Fight Club hadn’t provided that initial spark of an idea, but I’ll never know.

Memorandum: From senior vice president [name redacted] to Eulayla Baptist (February 14, 1998): “Pursuant to our last meeting, those fat feminist cunts in Michigan with their ‘Love Your Body’ bullshit are still chanting outside our clinic in Ann Arbor. This movement cannot be allowed to spread. We’ll counter them with our health jargon (did you approve those pamphlets yet?). They won’t be able to refute our death stats with their feel-good crap.