Sun-Sentinel:
Actress, author offers personal look at teen weight issues.
By John Tanasychuk
Alcoholics Anonymous invented the language of recovery.
While many other recovery hooks have followed, Jessica Weiner’s autobiographical a Very Hungary Girl: How I Filled Up on Life…and How You Can, Too! (Hay House $14.95) may be the first to appeal to a long-neglected group: teens.
Weiner’s also developing a TV talk show that will take her experience to an en\even wider audience.
“My bottom line is we can take action today,” says the 29-year-old. “Not five pounds form now. Not when you’re married. Not when you get better grades.”
Weiner grew up in Kendall and graduated for Miami’s New World School of the Arts. Her parents, Jane and Michael, moved to Pembroke Pines just as she headed off to Penn State, where she graduated in 1985 with degrees in women’s studies, theater and classics.
Weiner had always battled with her weight. But it was in college that she realized her obsession with exercise and restrictive food intake was problematic. A nutritionist recognized that Weiner had an eating disorder (bulimia) and recommended group therapy.
Weiner soon discovered her relationship with food was just an outward symptom of her inner pain of being a young woman deemed too big to fit in. But her life and career direction changed forever when a woman in her eating disorders group committed suicide. “To me, that was the crystallizing moment where I knew I couldn’t stay silent anymore. When you see a piece of truth, you can’t go back and pretend you don’t know it anymore.”
After the suicide, Weiner wrote a performance piece called Wake Up World, which dealt with the emotional, social and political issues facing the women in her group. Something strange happened after the show. Instead of the audience leaving, they wanted to ask questions. They wanted to talk. At this point, Weiner became more that an actor. She became a confessional of sorts, a facilitator for discussion. She became what she now calls an “actionist.”
She was 18 and went on to write other performance pieces. After graduation, she moved to Indianapolis, where she formed the ACT Out Ensemble. For six years, the group presented its social issues theater to high school and college students across the country. She counseled survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
Weiner’s activism doesn’t surprise Barry Kur, one of her theater professors at Penn State. A version of her Wake Up World is still being performed at the college.
“This is the first time that many of the student are truly living independently,” he says. “So they’re confronted with a lot of life issues that they haven’t had to deal with on their own before. If you’re not functioning well in your personal like, you’re not functioning well in your student life.”
Weiner believes the biggest problem with teenagers is that they have no outlet to discuss how they feel. At the same time, Weiner is alarmed at what she calls the “vacant wantonness” among young people, who wear Porn Star T-shirts and Sweet Cherry shorts (Weiner is working on her own line of clothing to be called Curvy Girl.)
“We’re still so afraid to take about sex that we leave the educating up to people who are not within our family walls,” she says.
Meanwhile, she says, children are becoming commodities for school that are eager to see them pass standardized tests, measuring their worth by achievement rather than their creativity.
In a culture of quick fixes, Weiner says parents don’t know how to talk to their kids. “When we do talk, we’re not talking about the real issues. It can get messy. It can get emotional. It means we can’t fix our kids in one therapy session or one guidance counselor appointment.”
Weiner’s mother, Jane, says she and husband Michael bad no idea their daughter had an eating disorder. But like the message her daughter brings to her audiences, Jane Weiner says she cane to know about bulimia by talking about it, not by blaming herself.
“The biggest key to Jessica is she never gives you the solution. She helps you find the questions within yourself so that you can find your own solutions. One the dam is open, the words pour out and then people can seek the help they need… to make themselves happier.”
And showing others the way – she calls it “performance” – is a big part of Weiner’s own, ever-evolving recovery.
“I feel like it is always performance because I’m out there giving messages in a creative way. I don’t have a podium and I don’t write anything down. It’s an interactive dance with the audience.”
No wonder one writer has already dubbed her the next Oprah Winfrey. |
