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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
I joined Jenny Craig to do research for my novel. Instead I came face to face with all of my prejudices against the obese.
Jun 14, 2005 | I first joined Jenny Craig to become a better writer. At least that's what I told myself in the spring of 2003 when, in an effort to reach a new spiritual state of pennilessness, I was drafting a novel. My heroine was a suburban mom, her hands full with an array of psychic, gay children. Though increasingly pudgy due to a harrowing string-cheese addiction, she worked as a diet counselor at the fictitious "Right-for-Me Weight Loss Center." How neatly mortifying, I thought: a chubby diet expert. She might as well have been a vegetarian werewolf, compelled to ravage endive.
My attempts to render the supportive yet bitchy atmosphere of my imagined diet center, however, were ringing false. ("Have you been completely honest with us, Myrna? It says here you've been limiting yourself to six popcorn kernels, popped, for your daily snack.") I grew blocked, writing less each day, too easily diverted by pizza and life's rich pageant of dust. To get off my impasse'd ass, I decided I better check out a real diet center, maybe even go undercover as a client, assuming I could pass as fat.
At 6 feet, I'd never been more than fattish. I had my own weight-management system based on sound principles of nutrition and terror: If the scale edged toward 190, my fear of becoming obese -- which, to my neurotic mind, meant slothful and repulsive in a Jabba the Hutt way -- would kick in. I'd panic and buy celery-flavored rice cakes and rice-cake-flavored celery, and, as somber as Sean Penn, inscribe the words "Workout Log" in a notebook and systematically shrivel my pillowy self into a leaner, meaner 175-pound throw cushion.
I'd been too preoccupied with dust that spring to hop on a scale, but I was pretty sure I was at least semi-pillowy.
First I considered Weight Watchers, but then I remembered my mother's lurid experiences at Weight Watcher group meetings circa 1973, where she was forced to fondle a pound of pig fat to visualize her weekly goal. I recalled her weighing fish fillets, squinting at a tiny wobbly scale; measuring apples with a measuring tape to ensure they were "small"; collecting recipe cards for pukey delicacies like Fluffy Mackerel Pudding; chewing every bite about 1,000 times as I stared at her suddenly cowlike jaw. Though I suspected Weight Watchers had evolved, this all seemed too exacting -- and the Duchess of York's desperate attempts to make the algebraic "points system" sound like jolly fun in her TV commercials didn't help.
So when I passed a poster inviting me to "Lose 16 pounds for $16 -- with personal counseling" in the window of my local Jenny Craig in New York City, that sounded promising. Back then, before Kirstie "Fat Actress" Alley's Rabelaisian endorsements made Jenny Craig hard to ignore, I knew nothing about the company, except that it had reportedly offered Monica Lewinsky $10,000 for every pound she lost. That suggested poor judgment, but, on the plus side, I doubted anyone perkily named Jenny would try to scare me straight with pig fat.
That first day is a blur. I recall pastel chairs. Gigantic daffodil posters. A phallic object that stood about 3 feet high, printed with the words "You Can Do It!" Forms that required me to "honestly" check off my reasons for joining. I wavered between "a desire to be attractive" and "a desire to regain control." (A desire to stop receiving online personals responses from overweight people who sell themselves as "famine-resistant" and consider you a match was not an option.)
The woman who took me through my free consultation had a used-car-salesman aggression and seemed eager to sign me up for life. "For you," she said, "I'd recommend the Platinum Membership, which offers unlimited support during the maintenance phase." I needed unlimited support? Hadn't she noticed that I was merely pillowy, not fat?
"I only want the $16 thing," I gasped assertively and escaped her clutches.
