|
|
|
|
|
|
Rebecca :
Stick Figure is definitely my cup of tea - especially from the journal writing aspect! If only people & teachers realized that screenwriters couldn't write such dramatic stuff as that written by “free-thinking” children in their journals.
I put quotations around free thinking because so much of what we think about as youngsters is reactive thinking - original thoughts being both anathema & elusive.
How & when did you find these journals? What did it feel like to uncover those long ago memories? Had you remembered you'd been anorexic?
Lori :
I found these journals entirely by accident, a few years ago. I had decided that I didn't want to work in Hollywood anymore, & was considering going to medical school. Problem was, I wasn't at all a pre-med type in college, so I had to take all the science requirements first. One day, I went to my parents' house to look for any science notes that I might have kept from high school. I'm sort of a pack rat, so I found a lot of old schoolwork, love notes, photos, art projects, you name it! Oddly, I never found those science notes, but I did find my childhood diaries. Of course, I never intended to publish them - I simply wanted to read them.
Going back to that time in my life via the diaries was incredible because I
both did & didn't recognize the girl who wrote them. Some entries felt like I'd written them just yesterday & some - which seemed like a big deal at the time - I have no memory of occurring.
What was most interesting (& disturbing) was the fact that many of the issues I was struggling with as a girl on the brink of adolescence are still, to some degree, in my consciousness today. When I found out that every single female friend to whom I read these passages also struggles with these issues on various
levels, I thought: This isn't just my story, it's every woman's story. Or at least many women's story. (& that's the feedback I've gotten since publication.)
Now, the anorexia, that's not every woman's story, or even many women's story, but I don't know a woman on the planet who hasn't looked in the mirror & criticized something - anything! - about her appearance. I remembered that aspect of being anorexic, but I hadn't remembered the details - what went on at the psychiatrist's office, what my teachers and friends at school said or did, the way I wouldn't step on any lines on the sidewalk. Reading the diaries, I remembered them - very distinctly, in fact - but these weren't details I carried around in my head as an adult. They were stored somewhere in my mind, but it took the diaries to call them up again.
Rebecca :
A lot of stuff came up for me while reading your Stick Figure. Most of it arising from your journal writing & how it helped (or did not help) you. What an unsuspecting portrayal of an anorexic-in-the-making, high IQ notwithstanding! It's not about the brains, is it?
In your introduction to your journal (not unlike the introduction I wrote in my very first diary at age 9 when I went away to boarding school) you mention having just read The Diary of Anne Frank & how it had affected you. Did keeping a journal come easy to you?
Lori :
I loved writing in my diary. I still keep one today, although back then it was a “diary” & as you get older you start calling it a “journal.” I felt like I could tell my diary all the things that people around me would dub impolite - I could be me & not be judged. When you're at that age where you have no idea who you are (heck, some days I'm not even sure I know who I am now!), you'll write down all of your hopes & dreams & fears & insecurities in a completely uninhibited way. It wasn't so much a matter of “easy” or “hard” as it was a release. I guess I couldn't not write in my diary once I got it.
Rebecca :
In what ways would you say that Stick Figure is for both young girls & their parents? Do you recommend children keep journals? What kinds of pens did you use?
Lori :
Now that's an interesting question - because the book is actually written for adults. Granted, I edited together my eleven-year-old diaries, but the themes are actually quite “adult.” So adult women were thought to be the main readership, because most adult women can both remember being that girl in the book & still are in some ways that girl in the book. Which is part of what makes the diaries what one reader called: “The first funny book about not just anorexia, but about being a woman.”
Stick Figure was never meant to be a “how-to” for parents or teens, but I can't tell you how many parents have written to me & said, “Now I understand why my daughter says X or does Y.” I think it helps parents to see that girls & young women are very aware of the messages parents are sending, they're highly observational & savvy, & they're taking their cues from the adults around them as they form their own adult identities. So, for instance, mothers who are on constant diets & talk about that will probably influence how their daughters view their own bodies.
Even fathers have said that certain things my father did or didn't do as
related in these diaries has influenced their behavior around their daughters.
The surprise, for me, was that preteens & teens started reading the book,
& several schools are now using it as a text. I've done a number of readings at mother-daughter book groups, & I've found that starting that dialogue between mothers & daughters, with these diaries as the bridge, has been an invaluable experience for them. It opens up a forum & lets girls say: “I also feel the way Lori felt on page 37” instead of having to bring up these issues on their own.
As far as recommending that children keep journals, I think that those who
enjoy writing down their experiences should, & those who don't, well, shouldn't. As an adult, of course, it's fascinating to have this “document“ of a particular time in one's life, so I'm glad I was a kid who enjoyed it. Some of my friends who kept diaries regret having lost them or tossed them long ago.
Pens? I used black ballpoint (pre-existentialist period), red felt tip & lots of purple - had tons of purple pens because I was obsessed with the color purple. I also used erasable ink & invisible ink - just in case. Speaking of “just in case”: even today, before I go on vacation, I hide my journals in case something happens to me & someone comes to clean out my apartment & finds them. Not that I think anyone would give a hoot about what I had to say, it's just that I don't want them to know how truly mad I'd been!
Rebecca :
Being “fat”, becoming “fat” - what is “fat?” In the land of abundance, leisure & available excess - what are the red flags to watch for when a girl, no matter how clever or dull, pretty or plain, becomes obsessed with looking “fat”?
Lori :
I used to work in Hollywood, & the not-so-funny joke was that a size 2 was “fat” - a size “zero” was supposed to be the ideal. Looking at actresses & models today (I discuss all this in the book's Epilogue, so I won't bore you with a rehash here), I wonder how girls & women evaluate “fat” vs. “thin” vs. “healthy.”
I read this great line that went something like: “What women tell themselves about what they see in the mirror has far more to do with how they feel about themselves than with how they actually look.”
I think in our culture the red flags come not from what the scale says so
much as what we say about that reflection.
Rebecca :
Back in the late 1970s, eating disorders were not yet commonly understood - in fact, everyone was pretty clueless - all through your diary there are trails of iridescent bread crumbs that even I could follow - when did you “see” the danger you were in?
Lori :
Clueless is almost a euphemism. We were all clueless - not just the teachers, the well-meaning adults, my family, the doctors, but also me. In fact, Martin Scorsese, who has the film rights to the diaries, describes them as: “It's like Holden Caulfield goes on a misguided diet.” Misguided being the operative word.
As far as I was concerned, I was just on a diet like everyone else at school,
so I didn't see what all the fuss was about. I certainly didn't think I was in any danger (other than the danger of becoming too fat). Gradually, though, especially in Part III of the book, I experienced a few moments of “Whoa -- something's wrong here.” The final straw came when I was in the hospital & I tried to cut the fat off my stomach (an eleven-year-old's version of an “art project”). At that point I realized how far gone I was from the girl I used to be. It was a huge turning point.
Rebecca :
As an 11 year old you wrote about vividly dreaming of “eating air” - with the hindsight of 20 years, could you describe that?
Lori :
I found that passage in the original diaries both fascinating & frightening. In researching this book, I actually spoke with the psychiatrist to whom I'd described that dream back in 1978, & he remembered my telling him that dream! I was the first anorexic patient he'd seen, & that image of a girl dreaming that she could ride off into the proverbial sunset subsisting on air alone was something he never forgot.
While reading that entry for the first time as an adult, it struck me that this “dream” began as a nightmare, i.e., Oh no! How will I live? I'm out in the ocean in a boat by myself, & I open to my mouth to scream, & too much air rushes into my gaping mouth, & I think I'll die of asphyxiation, when suddenly I swallow the air & the fear goes away & I fly up to heaven subsisting on air.
It's so textbook, it's almost cliched. But to think that my fantasy was to subsist on nothing...I'd find it riveting if it hadn't been me.
Rebecca :
Had you been a boy with the same IQ - how differently would you have been treated?
Lori :
Well, you see, I was the girl who competed in chess competitions & joined the math team & played softball - but also loved art & drama & language. Which was fine, until I started developing & people began treating me differently.
All of a sudden it wasn't considered “normal“ for a girl to be so into chess & math & softball & not give a hoot about shopping & makeup & diets. On some level, I was made to feel like a freak for having “boys' interests” - I was told that no boys would like a girl like me. Sadly, when I basically had a personality transplant & became obsessed with dieting (even though I was a skinny little girl to begin with), people thought I was acting “normal” for a girl. At first.
Even today, when I speak at high schools or do book signings for adults, I
hear stories about how girls today are treated differently than boys are; that girls are less nurtured in certain areas despite their interests. I think had a boy been curious & precocious, he would have been encouraged in those pursuits & not made to feel “unique,” as I was called. What I find tragi-comic about the diaries is that later I used my aptitude for math to perform feats of mental gymnastics & calculate calorie counts in my head. So much as I was told: “Concentrate on your appearance not math.” I used my math skills to concentrate on my appearance!
Rebecca :
What have you learnt from the journal writing process & do you still keep a journal?
Lori :
For me it's a way to get the clutter out of my head & sometimes make sense of it. I don't write every day. Some days I write ten pages, then I might go a month & write nothing. More often, though, I write a few entries each week. I may look at what I've written a few days later & by then, I'll have a new perspective on some issue or concern or problem. The urgency dissipates. If anything, the journals have taught me that nothing is ever certain. What we're convinced of one day may turn out very differently the next.
Rebecca :
In what ways has finding your journals of that strange & dangerous time in your childhood, helped you in your life today? What would you like readers to take away from reading this diary of your former self?
Lori :
I think of those journals as both a touchstone for who I am & as a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming someone I'm not. I suppose I'd like readers to take a look at the girl in the diaries & the cultural attitudes she's being fed (no pun intended) and ask: “Do I buy into these values?”
Many people have talked about how they picked up the book after dinner & finished it by bedtime, the implication being, it's a fun, breezy read. I do want people to enjoy the book, to laugh. I'm grateful that people say it's “hilarious” or whatever. But I also hope - & I don't mean this in an earnest way - that it might make them think a little differently the next time they're flipping through Cosmo in the supermarket checkout line.
Rebecca :
From some of what you wrote in your journals, are you surprised you're still alive? What are you now involved in?
Lori :
Given what I wrote, I'm surprised I'm not in a mental institution! No, seriously, I'm extremely grateful that I survived. Now I'm a medical student at Stanford (where, unlike in Hollywood, we wear scrubs every day & don't ask our classmates if we look thinner in the ones with the drawstrings or those with the elastic waistbands!) & I write for a number of magazines & newspapers - mostly first-person columns but also reported pieces. If anyone wants to see a selection of these articles, they can find them on my Web site at www.lorigottlieb.com.
Rebecca :
Respected Author, if I've missed something you want to mention, please go ahead & write it. I have greatly enjoyed this chat & your energy!
Lori :
I've done a lot of interviews for Stick Figure, but I have to say, you've asked the most interesting questions by far! Thank you, Rebecca, for your love of words & for the warmth & insight with which you treat them. You're a writer's fantasy-come-true!
(Published May 13, 2001)
|
|
|
RebeccasiReads.com
