Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [129]
Is our darling Oprah Winfrey becoming “The Phantom of the Oprah” we used to know—that is, just a shell of her former self? … Well, not to worry … Last Saturday she dined at Le Cirque in New York, consuming not only fettuccini with wild mushrooms, but a braised snapper. Then, on Sunday, she was with a party of six at New York’s Sign of the Dove and ordered poached eggs on a brioche with Hollandaise sauce. After that, Oprah decided the lunches of her companions were inadequate and ordered a chicken for the table, consuming almost half of it herself. Then Oprah moved on to Serendipity for a 20-ounce frozen hot chocolate with whipped cream.
The next week, People reported Oprah was eating goat-cheese pizza at Spago in Hollywood. Then Vanity Fair weighed in: “Oprah Winfrey seems to be fleshing out a pair of larger than size 8 jeans,” adding, “Forget the Optifast—we prefer the grand old Oprah.” In its “Conventional Wisdom Watch” column, Newsweek said, “Oprah Winfrey—built terrific studio but working overtime at the dinner table again.” The unkindest cut came in August 1989, when TV Guide decided that Oprah’s body was not good enough to illustrate its cover story on her: “Oprah! The Richest Woman on TV? How She Amassed Her $250 Million Fortune.” So the magazine put her face on Ann-Margret’s dazzling figure, sitting atop a pile of money. The editor said it was not TV Guide’s policy to misrepresent, but he couldn’t see why anyone should complain. “After all, Oprah looks great, Bob Mackie got his gown on the front of the nation’s largest-circulation magazine, and Ann-Margret made the cover—most of her, anyway.”
Oprah did not need the media to keep a death watch on her diet. She knew she was in trouble just days after she dragged her little red wagon across the stage. In her journal she wrote:
November 29, 1988: I’ve been eating out of control. I’ve got to bring it to an end. I can’t get used to being thin.
December 13, 1988: I came home and ate as much cereal as I could hold. I eat junk all day.
December 26, 1988: There’s a party in Aspen, I don’t want to go. I’ve gained five more pounds.
January 7, 1989: I’m out of control. Start out my day trying to fast. By noon I was frustrated and hungry just thinking about the agony of it all. I ate three bowls of raisin bran. Left the house and bought some caramel and cheese corn, came back at 3:00 staring at food in the cabinets. And now I want some fries with lots of salt. I’m out of control.
For a few weeks after her “Diet Dreams” show, she savored the delicious sensation of buying beautiful clothes in designer boutiques, no longer having to shop at The Forgotten Woman or buy the two largest sizes of a dress at Marshall Field and have them sewn together to fit her. She indulged in shopping from the couture collections of Christian Dior, Chanel, and Yves Saint Laurent. She posed for Richard Avedon in a black silk bodysuit for a national ad as one of Revlon’s most unforgettable women. “I loved doing the Revlon shoot,” she said. “It changed the way I felt about me. I never imagined myself as beautiful. But that ad made me feel beautiful. So for that reason alone it was worth shooting just to feel that.” She felt so good about her new thin self that she gave away all her fat clothes, donating them to the homeless. “It didn’t solve their problem,” she said, “but they’re sure lookin’ good.” She felt that after four months of starvation she had finally conquered her weight problem. So she stopped the Optifast group counseling and discontinued the supervised maintenance program.
Within a year she gained back seventeen of the sixty-seven pounds she had lost. “It’s a battle I’m still fighting every waking minute of my life,” she told her audience, most of whom nodded in sympathetic agreement. At that point, according