Joseph Weston

Italian author and philosopher Umberto Eco speaking to NPR’s Scott Simon last October. Eco died last week at age 84.

Born in a small Italian town in 1932, Eco is perhaps best known for his 1980 mystery novel The Name of the Rose, which is set in a monastery in the 14th century. It was an unexpected international bestseller, launching his career as an author.

Italian Author And Philosopher Umberto Eco Dead At 84

She was the perfect victim.  Beautiful, charming, intelligent, admired, envied, vain.  So much anxiety and fear.  Was she good enough?  Could she stay that way?  Would another supplant her?  Stress constantly zigzagging across her consciousness.  Needing to be perfect, the prettiest, the best, always always always.  

It got exhausting, so the girl sought release, a way to ease the burden.  

The first time it was a few fluid pills, to solve a small problem.  Swimsuit season.  She’d spent hours torturing herself in mall changing rooms to find a bikini that would make all the boys stare, and all the girls jealous.  She couldn’t let a few pounds of premenstrual bloating ruin it all.  

So she took the pills.  It was nice.  A simple solution.  Like taking tylenol for a headache, she reassured herself.  

When she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying and her stomach was twisted in knots because how dare Brad Johannsen dump her? Was she not worthy?  Wasn’t she the prettiest and the most desirable?  She worked so hard, why didn’t he love her?  She couldn’t go to school looking ugly, it would make her look weak.  So she slipped one of her mother’s sleeping pills.  

It worked like a charm.  The furious spiral of her thoughts couldn’t hold out against it’s power, and she woke looking rested, and lovely as ever.  Even the vultures at school couldn’t find fault with her look.  She started a rumor that it was her that had dumped Brad, and people believed, because he looked way more distraught than she did.

It was never a problem or anything, it was nice, to have the fallback of a variety of pharmaceuticals to deal with little problems like that.  Not a habit or anything.

That was until she found ‘the dress’.  It was perfect.  Designer.  It was her little secret that the perfect clothes she sported came to her second hand.  Her mother was a wizard at finding things cheap, or even free, and gained vicarious thrills from seeing her daughter dressed up, looking so lovely and desired.

The girl had asked her mother to be on the lookout for a showstopper, a dress to make all others pale into the background.  And loving mother that she was, she’d come through.  The dress was perfect in every way, the candy pink taffeta rustled importantly as she handled it, and the girl just knew that if she wore this dress to prom, Brad would regret ever even thinking of leaving her.

It laced elaborately up the back, and as soon as her mother set to work on it the girl could feel there was a problem.  

When she looked at herself in the mirror she looked, odd.  The dress pulled across her hips, and cut in under her arms.  She was too fat to wear it.  

“This isn’t the one, don’t worry, I’ll find something else,” her mother said, reaching for the laces.  The girl wanted nothing more than to tear the dress from her body and sear that horrible unflattering image of herself from her mind.  She closed her eyes, refusing to see her reflection any longer.  

The taffeta slithered around her.  It’s not the dress.  It’s you.  You’re too fat to wear a dress like this.

She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed.  I can fix that.  I can lose a few pounds.  I can be better, she told herself.