Voices
ISABELLA
HUFFINGTON
GETTY IMAGES/AMANA IMAGES RF
Underfed
THERE ARE ONLY two types of
women who are excited to get
their periods: those who are afraid
they’re pregnant, and those who
have lost it prematurely. I lost my
period the way other women lose
their car keys, not once or twice,
but habitually. I kept losing it, because I have spent most of my life
dangerously underweight, struggling from ages 11-20 with anorexia of varying levels of intensity.
Getting my period meant I was
healthy. And that was the problem. I didn’t want to be healthy; I
wanted to be skinny more than I
wanted to be anything else. When
I was 11, a friend asked me what
superpower I wanted. I told her I
wanted to be invisible.
I was surprisingly perturbed the
first time I got my period. I was at
dinner with my father. We were
eating steaks, mine well-done, his
medium-rare. I watched the blood
drip, drip, drip, drip out of his
steak like a broken fauce и