4
" The fact is, women aren’t having cosmetic surgery to stay beautiful. As Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth more than twenty years ago, many women who undergo surgery are fighting to stay loved, relevant, employed, admired; they’re fighting against time running out. If they simply age naturally, don’t diet or dye their hair, we feel they’ve “let themselves go.” But if they continue to dress youthfully we feel they’re “trying too hard” or brand them as “slappers.” Poor Madonna, who has dared to be in her fifties. In order not to look like a woman in her sixth decade of life she exercises furiously, and is sniggered at by trashy magazines for having overly muscular arms and boytoy lovers. When Demi Moore’s marriage to Ashton Kutcher, fifteen years her junior, recently broke down, the media reaction was almost gleeful. Of course, it was what they had been waiting for all along: how long could a forty-eight-year-old woman expect to keep a thirty-three-year-old man? As allegations of his infidelity emerged, the Internet was flooded with images of Demi looking gaunt and unhappy—and extremely thin. Sometimes you want to say: just leave them alone. Then again, it’s mostly women who buy these magazines, and women who write the editorials and online comments and gossip columns, so you could say we’re our own worst enemies. There is already plenty of ageism and sexism out there—why do we add to the body hatred? "
― , An Apple a Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia
7
" I wondered, Why would you run with someone else? Why would you choose to share this intense, solitary activity, mile after mile, in sunshine and rain, alone with your thoughts, every step making you leaner, firmer, every mile taking you farther from the lazy, lethargic world? Like writing and eating, I couldn’t stand to share my running. It was such a personal thing: a therapeutic punishment, a way to push, push, push myself. "
― , An Apple a Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia
