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And Why It’s Finally Time to Throw It Out

“You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin”

Talk about manifestation.

Fifty years after this decorative pillow adorned the sofas of our youth and infiltrated our psyches, what do we have? Oligarchs and anorexics…

That snarky aphorism clearly challenged the universe to prove it wrong. And it did.

The “too rich” have taken over our country, infiltrating our democracy with power that has rendered us near defenseless.

Meanwhile, psychotherapy offices are filled with patients, many of them women, struggling with eating disorders.

And my generation, Baby Boomers, seems disproportionately preoccupied with body image, weight, and, in general, the nagging obsession to weigh less than we currently do.

I only have anecdotal evidence of this, which amounts to nearly every woman my age I talk to. And I suffer from this disordered thinking myself.

The two limiting beliefs of discontent, “not rich enough” and “not thin enough,” have become psychological obstacles, bordering on obsessions, to thriving in the second half of life.

These beliefs have their fingerprints all over our culture’s complicated relationship with weight, health, and self-worth.

I am suggesting that a Pharma-industrial complex has capitalized on our insecurities and our seemingly endless pursuit of self-improvement. The diet, fitness, beauty, and wellness industries have flourished alongside a growing market for medications and treatments, including GLP-1s.

Many of these treatments are genuinely beneficial, even lifesaving. But there is an enormous amount of money to be made from convincing people that something about them needs fixing.

But I digress… back to the pillow that wrecked a generation.

The psyche of Baby Boomer women was marinated in, and perhaps permanently imbued with, a sick sentiment expressed in needlepoint by the social elite on a small, seemingly innocuous decorative pillow placed on meticulously staged formal sofas in the living rooms of our youth in the 1960s and 1970s.

Hence, an obsession I hear out of the mouths of so many of my peers—an endless battle to be thin enough.

For the purpose of this piece, I’m not touching on too rich, yet.

I’ll start with the one that personally affected me for most of my post-pubescent life.

It felt as though the door to happiness was locked, and the only way to get through it was to be “thin enough” to slide through the tiny gap at the threshold.

I’m standing outside a locked door. From inside, music, laughter, and the percussion of dancing can be heard.

I’m saying to myself, “I would be there if I could just lose 10 lbs! Okay, 20 lbs., maybe 30, maybe 100.”

It doesn’t matter. I slink away, knowing I don’t deserve to be on the other side. The “thin enough” are inside, oblivious to my misery.

I sigh and turn away from happiness until the day I am finally “thin enough” for admission to the happy club.

The cycle continues with self-soothing indulgences… savory, sweet, salty, greasy, whatever my disordered heart desires.

I knew deep down I wouldn’t be allowed to be happy until I could demonstrate my ability to control my weight.

Controlling my weight equated to controlling my life.

Meanwhile, I’ll placate my misery…

The upshot of this is a generation of women whose sense of self-worth has been corrosively diminished.

Now, we’re getting old.

Desperately grasping at youth and our ideal of beauty, we’re stoking the anti-aging industry fires with the same vigor we once devoted to weight loss, fitness, and pseudo-health-and-wellness businesses.

This enriches the “Candy Man,” impoverishes the victims, and perpetuates the problem.

It does not fix the problem of unhappiness. It doesn’t get to the source.

The place to begin is acceptance.

Start where you are. Look in the mirror.

What you see is YOU.

Self-love is a tall order for most of us. Start with self-acceptance.

I have seen mostly the same thing in the mirror for years.

I learned that I didn’t appreciate what I had until I lost it.

That had to stop.

My thoughts of “Someday I want to be…” turned to “Not bad. I’ll take this.”

After several experiences of finding old pictures from when I thought I was fat and thinking, “I’d love to be that weight NOW!” I finally said:

“Today is good! I am going to appreciate it while I’m living it.”

It sounds trivial. It’s not.

It’s transformational thinking.

I know NOW, you CAN be too rich or too thin.

Why would I continue to live under the psycho-judgment of Wallis Simpson, to whom that infamous quote has so often been attributed?

She’s dead to me!!