The most important thing for me was to never, ever, ever deny it. But I didn't really have the courage to talk about it. I was thinking, The people who need to know I'm gay know.

I would eat 300 calories a day - a lot of Jell-O and no-sugar everything, of course. I was doing Pilates, weight-training, circuit training; over lunch I would run on a treadmill in my dressing room with a fan on my face so I wouldn't sweat my makeup off.

Being sick allows you to check out of life. Getting well again means you have to check back in. It is absolutely crucial that you feel ready to check back into life because you feel as though something has changed from the time before you were sick. Whatever it was that made you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start over.

Women in the postfeminist era, while supposedly strong and commanding and equal to men in every sense, looked weaker and smaller than ever before.

I never, ever, restrict food, and I will never go on a diet ever again.

I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, I had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole life. I restricted when I was hungry and in need of nutrition and binged when I was so grotesquely full I couldn't be comfortable in any position by lying down. Diets that tell people what to eat or when to eat are the practices inbetween. And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating.

People might find me attractive, but it's also my job to prove that I can be intelligent.