As a TV news anchor Frances Leland (not her real name) was
well aware that her looks had played a primary role in getting her on air. She
was blond, blue-eyed, tall and shapely as a Barbie doll – perfect for the Texas
market. But that Barbie label also implied a certain air-headedness, which she
fought mightily.
Frances first wrote to me shortly after the release of Gaining, and I was so fascinated by her
take on the beauty myth that we began corresponding. Then I interviewed her for a book I was
developing around the phenomenon that sociologist Catherin Hakim calls “erotic
capital” – meaning essentially that the more attractive you look, the more
you’re worth economically.
Since this phenomenon is a prime contributor to the anxiety that perpetuates
eating disorders, I thought you might like to hear Frances’s story.
“Just because I was a beautiful woman didn’t mean I was an
idiot,” Frances told me, looking back over her TV career. “I went out of my way to prove my worth in
the newsroom. I worked my way up as a reporter to the anchor chair. I
knew how to shoot and edit my own stories and I’d produced my own newscasts. I
was damned if I’d let anyone think I was going to skate on my looks.”
Nevertheless, her bosses made it clear that all that experience
wouldn’t save her career if she let her looks fail. In particular, she was expected to maintain
an ultra-lean body that would still look slim despite the illusory five pounds
added by the camera. Although a
dedicated runner, Frances couldn’t sustain her “perfect” weight without
resorting to unnatural means. Bulimia became her coping mechanism, a way to
keep up that idealized front while “letting herself go” behind the scenes. “I couldn’t handle the intense scrutiny of
being the ‘TV lady’ and living up to others' expectations.” Her eating disorder continued in secret,
gradually intensifying over her fifteen years in front of the camera.
The secrecy made her cringe whenever her co-workers’
complimented her on her appearance. “Look!
She can eat whatever she wants and she doesn’t gain weight!” Those watching her every move were often
overweight women who worked off camera in lower-paying jobs that didn’t depend
on their looks. Frances sensed that
their envious but objectifying remarks were fueled by the myth that anyone who
looks good must also have a perfect life.
Because she was, in a sense, being paid to support this myth, Frances
felt she had no choice but to go along with it.
But this made it impossible for her to relax around the people with whom
she spent twelve hours a day. She didn’t
dare reveal the vulnerabilities that made her human.
The myth of pretty perfection reflects a prejudice that either
ignores or trivializes the real lives of people who look good. “It was
incomprehensible to others that I might have insecurities or my own fears,”
Frances recalled several months after leaving the news business. But those hidden insecurities and fears began
to dominate her life. “Thinking someone
else I love will make me a whole person. Never feeling like I do enough,
that I'm not worth all the good things I’ve earned -- I've always wondered how
I actually GOT to where I am.” She
was trapped in the pretty paradox: how could she address her problems if she wasn’t
allowed to have any problems?
“As my name and face became better known in the
community, I pulled further and further into myself and away from people.” She
also got angrier and more resentful of her beauty. “My TV career was based in
large part on my looks. Fine, I accepted that. But, I didn’t go out of my
way to preserve that illusion of TV anchor perfection in my personal life.
On weekends I didn’t get dolled up. I didn’t wear much makeup or style my
hair as I did at work. Maybe I rebelled against the whole outward
beauty thing because that’s what people expected me to be.”
Worst of all, she found, were the proprietary attitudes of
men who had risen to positions of power without regard for their looks, yet who
treated Frances’s appearance as a commodity that they had the right to control. One incident still made her blood boil years
later. She’d stopped in the studio kitchen for a snack. Despite the emphasis on looks and glamour for
the on-air talent, spreads of sugary baked goods are standard fare in most TV
newsrooms, and Frances was reaching for a chocolate chip cookie when her male
producer (who, Frances said, “was no shining example of health”) snapped, “Don’t
eat that. I don’t want my anchor getting fat.”
Stunned, Frances retorted, “Don’t you ever tell me what I should be eating.”
Storming away from him that day was the beginning of the
end. “I left TV at the height of my
career and a lot of people couldn't understand why. Of course, I know I
left because I’d reached a point where I
could not live the way I was living anymore.”
Today Frances works in community relations in the
energy industry, earns less money, and endures considerably less public
scrutiny. She’s been treated for her
eating disorder and no longer binges or purges. She runs marathons. And her
concept of beauty has radically shifted.
“I’m most comfortable in my running clothes, stinky and
sweaty after a long run in Houston’s legendary summer heat. I don’t wear
makeup when I’m on the roads. But I’ll tell you that I feel strongest
when I’m running and looking like hell. Out there on my own I’m
proud not to be ‘beautiful.’”
In other words, money and status aren’t everything,
especially when the price is “perfect” beauty.
