:: Caricatures ::

I ran into L the other day at the supermarket―the shopping mall equivalent of a church, as I like to say, where all and any are welcomed, and the chances of you running into long-lost friends or an estranged relative are actually higher than seeing your favourite brand of no-fat yogurt restocked.

L and I―we've known each other for a long time now, and it's that sort of friendship that you don't invest too much in. You see each other once in every few months, you text each other once in a while, and you always make a mental note to make the gap between one meeting to the next shorter, but somehow it never happens. And you don't even feel bad about it, because lord knows, you're busy; there's work, there's school, there's the family, and there's always another lunch or dinner or coffee of a higher social value.

She doesn't even know about the breakup, and when the proverbial 'how's Sam?' popped up I wished once again we could subscribe to some sort of Break Up agency, where a media advisory explaining the event in brief strokes can be circulated to your first and second degree friends. That way, you never need to be straddling a basketful of fruits and granola bars at Cold Storage while you rack your brains for a suitably PC reply that tells it as it is without sounding all pity-me.

'Is that why you're going on a diet?' she asked, casting a sympathetic eye at my shopping basket. I glanced at my purchases and muttered something about my unfortunate obsession with fruits and whole-wheat products.

'That's great, it's all very healthy―I need to go on a fucking diet,' she said, tossing back her long streaked hair with practice.

'You?' I was incredulous. L looked like she was starving herself into oblivion. She was a vision of skeletal grace, and her wrists looked like brittle matchsticks.

'Yeah, I eat too much, you know, entertaining my clients and all that. I'm trying out this new diet pill―it's not too bad, except I'm constipated all the time,' she finished matter-of-factly. 'And the other pill I'm taking for my skin is causing me to bloat. It's like I'm fucking pregnant,' she rolled her eyes―kohl-lined and beautifully-lashed with triple-volume action mascara, I was sure―dramatically.

For a while I was speechless: is this the caricature of a modern woman? You're never thin enough, you're never fair enough, you're never good enough to rival the glossy goddesses mocking you from the pages of a magazine with their pert bodies and flawless faces―and you punish yourself for it.

You pump yourself with pills that promise a paradise of feminine perfection. You don't believe that you're ever beautiful enough, so whenever L'oreal tells you that you're worth it, you buy another useless stick of lipstick. There's no dignity in having cellulite or being flat-chested either, so you galvanise the cosmetic industry further by buying creams and bust-enhancement gels and stretch-marks-erasing lotions.

What's happening to us? I remember lunches with L at NYDC where baked rice and cheesy pasta would be followed by coffee and cheesecakes. Dinners were rowdy affairs with the rest of our art-school gang filled with jokes and laughter, as well as copious amounts of greasy fries or local hawker fare that cares about being low GI as much as they do hygiene.

Now I look at her―and in some ways, at myself as well―and I know if we did ever find the time to catch up, we'd most likely 'do a salad'. If we go for coffee, it would be one of those overpriced low-fat no-whip concoctions. We'd play with our food, and push the last bit of carrot cake for the other party to finish.

Daughters of Eve―and of grief. We hugged each other goodbye; she felt like an autumn branch, willow-thin and tragically delicate. Yet as she walked away and I saw the appreciative male glances thrown her way―her black strappy dress was hugging her concave stomach and her fair skin, so cherished in the Oriental consciousness, gleamed with an alluring fraility in the harsh lights of the supermarket―I knew why women like myself could never look in the mirror and be completely happy with our size 8 figures. We are in a society where the idea of beauty was not unlike the supermarket―it's everywhere you go, an agora of mass produced ideologies, packaged with promise and sold in family-sized packs.

With childlike defiance I bought a bar of chocolate to celebrate the inner acceptance of my own flaws. I'll never be a size zero, I'll always have that little extra bit of flesh and I will always, always want that goddamned slice of cheesecake even if I'm mocked to death by stick-thin models flaunting their power in the mass media universe of sex and slavery to a fabled perfection.