12Adrienne Agrest had always tried to make her father proud. In the foggy recess of her oldest memories she could recall the times that she had succeeded, back when she had been a small child. Before her mother had disapeared and her father had become a distant authority figure, devoid of any recognizable human emotion.
She'd been seven when her mother had vanished from her life, and her father had drawn away bit by bit, every instince of approval and expression of love becoming further and further apart. At first his lack of approvel had served to drive Adrienne hard to succeed, a warm and beautiful feeling of pride filling her on the rare occasions she managed to garner an approving comment, or even an inclination of his head in her general direction in the moments he could spare from his burgening business. By the time she had reached adolecence, she was multi-lingual, above her grade level in academics, proficient in martial arts, and had even begun ballet lessons after overhearing her father remark to his assistant about her lack of femine pursuits.
At the age of thirteen, she had graced the cover of France's most popular teen fashion magazine, the crowning accomplishment of her modeling career to date. Over worked, isolated, and beginning to feel the resentment of her situation, it had still been a proud moment for her. Finally away from the kids brand! An inside spread showed her with male teen models, all older than her, all wearing swim wear. Her father had hired a man to coach her on her walk, and she had recently gone through a growth spurt; soon she would be walking in actual shows. That evening her father had joined her for dinner, the formal dinning room tense and silent as they ate. Adrienne had waited in vain for any mention of the magazine, eyes darting across the table every thirty seconds as she picked at her food. The approval had never come.
Adrienne had jumped when his voice had finally broken the opressive quiet in the room.
"I'll have to instruct the kitchen to lesson your portion size for meals, now that you're modeling for an older demografic" his eyes raked over her figure pointedly, "being chubby isn't tolerated in this industry past a certain age." He pushed his seat back as he stood, leaving the room without another word.
Adrienne's breath had caught in her throat at his words, and she felt herself gasp through her constricting throat as the door swung closed behind him. The precarious balance of striving for approval and rising bitterness tipped inside of her, decidedly in favor of the latter. She stared down at her half-eaten plate of food, and then tilted her head down further, examining her shapely arms toned from martial arts and dance, at her flat stomach and barely developed chest.
How... How dare he? She felt sick. Suddenly she couldn't stomach the thought of another bite of food.
Her last scheduled activity for the day was her martial arts class, where she landed her hits harder than she should have, nocking her sparing parter down repeatedly and earning a reprimand from her instructer. She ducked her head in shame and apologized to the other student, guilt joining simmering anger and resentment in the pit of her stomach, which was growling at her loudly on the ride back to the mansion. Apparently a barage of negetivity didn't count as a filling meal.
If Nathalie noticed Adrienne's dour mood she made no mention of it, and Adrienne retired to her large empty room, sweaty, tired, and hungry. She shucked off her dirty clothes, but instead of hopping straight into the shower as she normally did, she paused in front of the bathroom mirror. She had gained weight in the last year. She'd also gained several inches in height. Every book about puberty that Nathalie had awkwardly handed to her the week she'd first gotten her period had stressed that these changes to her body were normal.
Adrienne hadn't been bothered by them before tonight. Now she twisted in front of the mirror, examining her angles with an unhappy crease between her eyes. She had light stretch marks on the sides of her breasts and along her hips, hardly noticible but suddenly seeming to scream out at her to be seen. She'd always been proud of her hard earned muscles, but now they seemed harsh and un-femminen.
When she finally stepped into the shower she turned the water as hot as she could stand it, tiping her head of golden blond tresses back into the stream and squeezing her green eyes tightly closed.
Before she climbed into bed that night, she tore every page of the magazine that had her face on it out, and tossed the crumpled pages into the trash. The mangled rest of the magazine following shortly after.
Adrienne barely touched her breakfast the next day, pushing the eggs around her plate as Nathalie dictated her schedule for the day to her from beside her chair. By lunch time her stomach was cramping from hunger pains, and she felt more exhausted than she could ever remember being. She ate three bites of lunch and felt like choking; Nathalie asked her if she was unwell, but Adrienne insisted that she was fine.
The week passed in much the same way, and each night she fell into bed more tired than the night before. She quickly found that she had to eat more before her physical activities if she didn't want her performance to drop dramatically, and began to save her self-alloted amount of food for before ballet and martial arts classes.
On the eigth such day, her father joined her for dinner again. Adrienne didn't break the silence or look up at her father for the entire meal, devoting most of her energy to pushing potatoes and peices of chicken around her plate. She forced down a few bites before standing and asking if she could be excused for the evening.
Her father looked up and met her eyes for a moment, face calm and impassive as was usual. He studied her plate for a few seconds, and Adrienne felt her heart constrict painfully; Had Nathalie informed him that she hadn't been eating enough, and he was about to tell her to sit back down an finish?
Instead he looked up from her almost full plate, and gave her an approving nod. Adrienne despised the way her heart swelled with pride.