And you, my dear woman, are no Marilyn Monroe....

Having been there and done that, I can tell you honestly that there is no practice in this world that will ruin your health as quickly as self-starvation. I for one, at the ripe old age of 30-something, nearly starved myself to death, and having just barely failed at that, did manage to push myself into early menopause, set my digestive, endocrine, and circulatory systems on their ears, and completely siphon the joy out of any and every eating-related social occasion (and that pretty well covers 'em all) for the foreseeable future. Quitting my 100-600 calorie/day diet and its related binge-purge episodes was the only way I could guarantee myself life beyond 40, and so I reluctantly did it. I am not 'in recovery'....I don't believe there's actually such a thing....but I am eating well over 1000 calories daily now, albeit purging them in a totally different way.....exercise.

This is not to say I'm after turning into one of those body acceptance freaks, either. That's something I've also tried and failed miserably at and wouldn't recommend to anyone. What I'm getting at here is pretty simple, actually, and looking at it clearly as I am now, I wonder why the hell I didn't see it years ago. Let's see if you pick it up quicker.....what do self-starving, half-dead, Auschwitz-reminiscent waifs and giant, fat, laboured-breathing sows who can't stuff themselves fast enough have in common? Give up? They're all self-hating maniacs who believe that they'll someday, with the help of their miserably unhealthy lifestyle and miserably unrealistic goals and dreams, wake up and be hopelessly in love with their disgusting, genetically-damned carcass. They'll one day see perfection in themselves, they believe, and then and only then will they be happy.

Fucking hell. I'm here to tell you all the only way you'll ever be happy....or satisfied, even....is if you wake the hell up and realise you'll never bloody well be happy.

See, some of us are just naturally miserable and know full well we're reaching toward unattainable goals. I, for one, am ugly as all hell and fat or skinny as I've ever been, the only way I'm ever going to be perceived as attractive is if I pretend I am, and then go on to tell everyone else I am....because the public is so fucking stupid they believe everything they're told. Unfortunately, the vast majority of young ladies, whether they go so far as to resort to an eating disorder or simply sit around and sulk, don't seem to get how hopeless this dream of being gorgeous really is. 'If I starve myself long enough', they tell themselves, 'I will one day be a supermodel like Cindy Crawford'. 'I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want', others think, 'Because big can be beautiful....I will be another Emme or maybe even another Marilyn Monroe'.

Do these chicks understand what they're missing? Obviously not. Perhaps I should clue them in.

What do Cindy Crawford, Emme, and Marilyn Monroe have in common (besides bleached hair)? Clearly, they're all built drastically differently, so it sure ain't their figures. Could it maybe be that they're all really, really pretty? And how about some other sources of 'thinspiration', as the pro-ana sites are so fond of calling them? Courteney Cox? Christina Ricci? Halle Berry? And more plus-size beauties? Catherine Zeta-Jones? Queen Latifah? Beyoncé Knowles? Yep....all very, very attractive women. Not a one of them whose appearance would send folks running in the other direction if they were to gain or lose 20 or 40lbs. Not a one of them as butt-ugly as your sorry ass.

I hate to break it to you all, but if you're already over 15 and you aren't a supermodel, it very simply is never going to happen. You can wither away to 75lb or balloon to 375, but it isn't going to make a lick of difference, because until they invent a scale that measures ugly, those numbers will be virtually useless to you (though they'll tell volumes to your cardiologist).

So you want to look like a model or a screen legend? Fuck the diet. Work from the neck up. My advice to most comes in two words....plastic surgery.

Seriously. Think about it.