For as long as I can remember, I have been hounded to “eat more” and “finish all your food”. The type of food didn’t matter – I was offered chips, doughnuts and fried food to help me put on weight.
“Ow, you’re so pokey, you bag of bones,” my mother would exclaim when I sat on her lap as a child.
In primary school, I was placed on the “milk programme” in my school. Every recess, underweight children like me would meet at the assigned canteen table, be handed a packet of milk to drink before we were allowed to buy food. But the milk made me too full to eat after.
In Primary Six, I was 1.56m tall and weighed 37.5kg.
I was given vitamins to increase my appetite and even went to the doctor for a stool test to check if I needed to be dewormed (parasitic worms can cause poor eating). Our family doctor concluded there was nothing wrong with me. His advice: “Just eat more.”
So, I did. During the school holidays, I ate every four hours – McDonald’s Big Macs were my go-to, mainly because of the fast food chain’s S$5 meal promotion. Nutrition was not the goal – weight gain was.
ENCOUNTERING THE MALE GAZE AS A TEENAGER
Moving to secondary school, the male gaze was now upon me. The cousin closest in age to me was a boy, so I inherited his group of friends as well.
They would say things like: “Jill, whatever you do, don’t turn sideways or we won’t be able to see you!” “Quick, lie down, that plane looks like it needs to land.”
In Secondary Three, my body mass index (BMI) was 16.2 – I was underweight. While other girls were gaining womanly curves, I became the butt of flat-chested jokes.
