They were little patches that you stuck onto your hip or your arm, giving you a badge like that of a recent ex-smokers. The package promised first results within a week, and she was excited to see what happened. After all, it was perfectly safe, or they wouldn't have been allowed to sell it. The package promised five a week, and she actually would only need maybe two weeks, maybe three before she got where she wanted--no extra work involved, no foregoing, no exertion of any kind. In fact, exertion was discouraged, which was fine with her.
And it worked. By Thursday she thought she could feel a difference, felt lighter, livlier, not so weighed down. By saturday she was borrowing Lisa's dress, Lisa, who was at least two sizes smaller--ok, the dress was still to big for Lisa, and a bit tight on her, but whatever.
By Tuesday she had to go shopping, which she did every Tuesday, and Monday and Friday and Saturday and Wednesday and Sunday and Thursday--but she was edging towards the rack of 'smalls', gingerly feeling the patch at her waist. That spot was a bit tender, but you can't have everything, and compared to months at the gym this was nothing.
By Friday she wasn't feeling hungry; an added bonus, making this all the much easier. She didn't have much farther to go before she was perfect, just another week or two. Sunday she passed on ice cream with Sonia, looking at the other girl with a mixture of pity and slight disgust. "Ice cream is the last thing *you* need," she joked, turning away, not noticing that Sonia didn't think it was funny.
Wednesday she didn't feel like getting out of bed. Nauseous and weak she lay there, remembered having read something about side effects. Temporary ones. Friday wasn't much better, and by Monday she was down fifteen, perhaps twenty. Her hipbones jutted out of her skirt and she wore them proudly as long as they hid her patch, and the bluish-purplish bruise that had been there for the last several days.
Thirty down. She was astounded at how well they were working, the little patches. She decided she'd done enough, and stop wearing them. But within the hour she began to feel as if she had been blown up to twice her normal size, and she stuck on another patch and immediately felt better.
Forty-five. Ordinarily she'd be proud of the fact that the size 0 hung loosly from her frame, but to be honest, she couldn't get up the effort to care. She didn't actually have the energy to to anything at all, and though she had resolved to stop using them, after much exertion she managed tiredly to pull back another wrapper of another patch, and to try to find a spot on her body not bony and bruised. Her skin felt loose and listless, but it didn't matter, she was skinny, she was beautiful. She pulled back the wrapper and stuck on the patch, waiting for the exhilirating rush. And she disappeared completely.
DISCLAIMER: I just found this in the archives of my blog, and it is, 100% honestly, a thought experiment. I think I wrote it after seeing a few emaciated pictures of unhappy otherwise well-fed Americans (equally applicable to other OECD countries) who starve themselves to be thin, compared to pictures of emaciated children in Africa who just don't get enough to eat and die of malnutrition. How is it that the US (and some large portions--no pun intended--of the rest of the world) suffer from obesity, and in other places people starve? Here's a new diet plan: spend less on fast food, send the money somewhere where people need it. Even better: stop subsidizing American and European agriculture, make us pay a bit more for food so perhaps we eat less, and allow all those subsistence farmers a market for their goods.
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