Weighty Matters

What woman, fat, thin, or in between, isn't obsessed with her weight? I know this is a blog about singing, but I'm mentioning this because I believe that my (largely misplaced) obsession with thinness was one of many things that undermined my singing, most notably starting to smoke (and becoming very quickly addicted) at the age of 13 because I was told it was an appetite suppressant.

Here is a photo of me when I was about 5. An old childhood friend, in a belated condolence letter, sent photos of a vacation our parents took together back in, I guess, 1955. (I cropped him out of this photo to protect privacy.)

At this age I already thought of myself as hugely fat, which I was not. I huffed and puffed a lot during any sort of physical exertion (there's another photo, which I can't bear to look at, of me at the same age, swinging from a bar, which most children thought was fun, with my face contorted in pain, and my feet only three inches off the ground), but that was because I needed my adenoids out, and also because I have scoliosis so running and similar forms of exercise are uncomfortable.

In any event, based on the demographics of my childhood, I definitely was fatter than other little girls my age, whose mothers only knew how to stick a tv dinner in the oven, and who were deprived of dessert as a punishment for misbehavior (not because anyone back then worried about the effects of sugar on the brain). But I certainly wasn't medically obese.

By the time I was 13, I was definitely no longer overweight in any medical sense. I was 5 foot 6 (ah, if I could still be that tall!) and my weight fluctuated between 140 and 155. But I was never a gangly ectomorph, which many girls that age are. I was built like Kim Novak, who, no longer an ideal, was now referred to as "husky" and everyone wanted to look like Twiggy or Mia Farrow.

At 13 (I have no pictures of myself at that age because I felt so fat and ugly I wouldn't let anyone take one) I was a very attractive young woman and if I had left myself alone, I might have really done something with the voice that everyone was starting to notice.

At that age I sounded like Julie Andrews and could actually sing staccato up to an E flat (I asked my teacher if I lost that range because of smoking - even though I haven't had a cigarette since 1982 - and he said no, often children with high voices lose that range, even girls.)

At the same time that my friend emailed me this photo, he also emailed one of my parents, sitting with some other adults outside our summer colony in the Adirondacks. My mother (although she wore a size 18 back then, and was 5 foot 2, 165 pounds) doesn't look hugely fat either although I remember being ashamed of her when I compared her to the other adult women and I notice in the photo she is wearing a long cotton skirt and the other women are wearing shorts.

Well, that's all water under the bridge.

When I started singing again at 54 I said that no matter what I was not going to starve myself to maintain a weight that is uncomfortably low. When I do that, yes, I look better, but I feel awful, get tired easily, have problems with blood sugar swings, and don't sing well.

This time I am giving myself the absolutely best shot at doing everything I can to sing well. Other than having to earn a living and care for my aging loved one, this is my number one priority. Needless to say, if I'm serious about my body-as-instrument, I'm not going to be stuffing myself with sugary junk food. But if the waistband on my size 10 skirt is too tight, so be it. I sing so much better now than when my waist was so small I looked like I would break in half.