Recipe for an Eating Disorder by Amanda ReCupido

​John Brighenti CC



Recipe for an Eating Disorder
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• Take one girl, young.
• Fill her with ideals. Show her the many ways she will never meet these ideals. Have her witness her friends exercise their calves on the elementary school blacktop. Implant doubts. Have the boys in her class, also young, begin to reinforce these ideals and doubts. Have her family project generations of insecurities onto her, but because this family is Italian, feed her well. Confuse her, until her only comfort and enemy is the plate in front of her.
• Mix with silent judgment. The full-faced photo while the growth spurt was still settling. Too many items perched atop a high school lunch tray. Transition from a bagel sandwich to just the deli meat to just a yogurt to just licking the back of the spoon.
• Add a caring boyfriend unequipped for the task. “That’s not a normal lunch,” he’ll tell her, pointing across the table to a mutual friend with big, smiling teeth laughing heartily while eating. But later, when he holds onto her withering waist and she sucks in her breath, he’ll praise her as being “so skinny he can’t take it.” When she inevitably breaks up with him, he will start dating this other girl, the one who is unafraid to take large, healthy bites.
• Fold in a lifetime of ballet classes. Mirrors everywhere. Unforgiving leotards and teachers who comment on who’s “skinny” that week. A gym class that teaches her moves she can do in front of her mirror at night that she’ll carry into her dorm, her first apartment, and so many others like it across different cities and years. Show her the track where she can run and run and run. Hand her the paper where she can make lists of all the things she will and won’t do. Watch her scratch at it in frustration at her failure to live up to her own impossible standards.
• Test to see if she can go a full day without eating anything. Leave behind a pot of her mother’s homemade minestrone soup full to the brim with a savory, thick mixture of beans, vegetables and miniature pasta. Have her commit the worst crime an Italian could do to a mother who spent hours preparing a delicious meal for a loved one and watch her pour a ladle straight into the garbage disposal, so she won’t suspect anything.
• Repeat the boyfriend step, but this time, teach her to hide it better. Keep her busy. Schedule classes over her lunch, or have her retreat to the library or the nurse instead. Tell her to pretend she doesn’t know the meaning of the word “depression.” Remind her to be careful not to accidentally eat too much in her boyfriend’s presence, to tip off how much she is starving. 
• Whisk her away from the college cafeteria and instead instruct her to eat cereal in her dorm. Show her in her schedule how she can spend hours at the gym. Hope all the little things add up, like taking the stairs five flights up to her room instead of the elevator. On her 19th birthday, whisper to her to refuse a piece of cake. When a floormate posts a note on her door making fun of her gym habit, take pride in the fact someone has noticed.
• Simmer on the fact she was so hungry on her wedding day, she ate a leftover sandwich while still in her dress at 2 in the morning before she let her husband touch her.
• Look in the mirror. Beat yourself up about giving up—the wedding and hence, the goal now passed. Gain weight. Eat everything, but still hunger for emotional fulfillment. Figure out what’s missing while you were worried about ever becoming too full.
• Stir in exercise again, but this time, find the joy. Come back to your body. Come back to yourself. Make peace with your enemy. Finally understand the meaning of nourishment.
• Remove those initial seeds that had been planted. Extricate the old beliefs. Find something new and meaningful and beautiful.
• Let it simmer, let it rest. 
• You’ll know when it’s done.

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Amanda ReCupido is an author, book reviewer, playwright, Moth storyteller and podcaster whose work has appeared in Forbes, McSweeney’s, Funny or Die, and various humor and literary publications. Her writing has been recognized in Coverfly’s Launch Pad Top 100 and as a two-time ScreenCraft semifinalist.

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