“Oh my God you look great … I can’t believe it’s you. Turn around: shit, girl: you’re a mere shadow of your former self.”

Yeah right. What am I supposed to say? Thanks? It’s so embarrassing. I smile and kind of giggle, and I stop Natalie’s viewing by reaching in to hug her. We say it’s been ages and I tell her I have to catch the bus.

I adore the admiring looks of strangers. So impulsive and honest. Their eyes say I’m looking good. But I hate the compliments of friends.

See, I’m likely to backslide. Of course I am. My name is Jill and I have an eating disorder. Currently it’s in remission. I’ve been dealing with it (I almost said “in control” – as if) for a year and a half and I’ve lost 40 pounds. But I can gain it back. I have before. And if I do, today’s sweet phrases will twist like daggers in my swelling belly. They’ll become sentences of reproach and self-contempt.

I cross the street next to a suited man on a cell phone, and I acknowledge his courtesy with a nod as he waits for me to step up to the bus stop ahead of him.

My name is Jill and I have a bad body image. My problem is so common it has no glamour. Go ahead: try to make me exotic. I’m not from the South, my parents are still together, nobody in my family even drinks too much. I’m just fat within. I hate puking too much to purge. Not that anorexia or bulimia would do it … any disorder that no one of color gets is not ill enough for words.

On the other side of the street an electric bus loses its connections. It’s just made the turn onto Market and both poles leave their wires. The driver has to get off and manipulate the pulleys into place by pulling on dusky black cords. The man at my side has finished his call and tries to start a conversation, but I’m saved by the approach of the trolley. The driver hands me a transfer with a smile. There aren’t any vacant single seats, so I take the best double: the one right behind the rear door. I settle in with my pack on my lap.

My name is Jill and I am a straight female, so I have an eating disorder. My problem is so common that when I succeed at overcoming it (no matter how temporarily), I get booted out of the club. You know the one I mean: it has no name; there’s a branch everywhere women gather; women gather everywhere.

It’s omnipresent and insidious. Researchers are just starting to notice how pre-adolescent girls police each other: none of that boyish violence – instead, the girls reform by sneer and rebuke by snub and, whether it’s innate compliance in the sex or the effectiveness of the facial gestures, girls succeed more than boys do at civilizing their group.

I joined in 1964 but I was prepped for years. I was apprenticed by my mother before I saw the sorting. Wise mistress, she showed me how to fix my physical flaws long before I understood I had any.

I knew not to wear horizontal stripes. To select a skirt length that would hide fat knees, a shoe that would make the foot look smaller. It’s not like I then had big legs or feet, but my mother was an instinctive geneticist and prognosticated body shape almost as well as eyesight (myopic) and hair (dark curly).