Someone on my floor has been throwing up her meals. I don’t know who, but the frequency with which it happens rules out any possibility of stomach flu or morning sickness. I have not a sliver of doubt that the woman is both an attorney and an experienced purger - she hides it well, normally I can spot symptoms but I honestly have no clue as to her identity. I wish I could say that I was horrified or surprised to discover the evidence she leaves behind. I wish I could say that in the path from prep school to the Ivy Leagues to law school to New York practice I haven’t witnessed scores of women ravage their bodies with years of denial and self-abuse. What I can say is that I have watched more classmates, friends and coworkers than I can remember gradually waste away from deprivation, morphing into shrunken husks of their former health and vibrance. So many of my female peers have succumbed to the relentless assault on their mental and physical worth that this woman’s behavior seems almost normal.

A few months ago I was at lunch with several associates and the conversation turned to a woman in our class who had permanently abandoned our small lunch group and was dropping pounds at a dangerous rate. In a display of prototypical male/lawyer sensitivity, one associate remarked, “I don’t know why all these girls feel like they have to be so skinny. They’re lawyers, not models.” But the fact is, this profession, among others, spawns acute pressure to be perfect in every aspect, free of the infinite glitches and shortcomings that plague “regular” humanity. The culture of large law firms is one of absolute perfectionism. Typos, tardiness, missed deadlines and stray blunders are simply not options in this environment overflowing with human achievement-machines billing 15 hours every day on some of the most lucrative and important cases or deals in the country. In order to thrive in such an atmosphere, many female associates become card-carrying members of the cult of modern perfection, whose creed clearly dictates that mediocrity is worse than failure, failure is not acceptable, and cellulite is insupportable. Scores of women in my peer group spent their entire childhoods and academic careers writhing and straining to reach the proverbial carrot at the end of the stick - straight As, varsity sports, National Merit Scholarships, Ivy League acceptance letters, double majors, Phi Beta Kappa inductions, sky-high LSAT scores, law reviews and journals, bar exams, all culminating in that final golden key offer to join a prestigious firm. Once safely entrenched in firm life, they know nothing but performance and achievement at the highest level, and so the cycle continues. The result is a generation of brilliant overachieving women judging their self worth on midyear performance reviews and dress sizes. A size 6 is often simply unaccceptable to someone who was valedictorian in high school, Summa Cum Laude in college, Managing Editor of Law Review and now works for a top 5 firm.

Some lawyers are horrifically blase about the prevalence of eating disorders among female attorneys. As a summer associate, I made a point of attending every possible free meal and ordering as many courses as possible without horrifying those around me. During one particular expensed lunch extravaganza, which I had been looking forward to for weeks due to its location at my favorite BBQ joint, a senior associate turned to me, stared pointedly at my heaping plate dripping butter, Tobasco and barbeque sauce, and remarked, “Looks like you’re going to have to head straight to the bathroom and purge after all that.” His counterparts laughed at my appalled expression, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s a joke in our department, some of the guys like to kid about how they binge and purge all the time.” I was too revolted by their callous myopic humor to finish my hush puppies, ribs and pulled pork - a minor personal tragedy since the three foods together form my own version of orgasm on a plate.

I wish I didn’t know so many women that have tortured their bodies and mangled their lives over the years as punishment for lack of perfection, and I wish I wasn’t once one of them. I want to gather all the brilliant, driven, powerhouse women I know and sequester them in the desert for a three-day festival celebrating our boundless failures, imperfections and inadequacies. But most of all I want to tell the malnourished woman on my floor that there are other ways to purge the deadweight of imperfection - writing, painting, kickboxing, shrieking from a highrise apartment window - and that she is worth so much more than simply a law firm ranking or a finger jammed down her throat. I want to convince her, and all the frail skeletal remains of powerful women around me, that no matter how much we monitor, control, obsess and sacrifice, all to condense our physical presence and diminish ourselves to fit an impossible mold of supposed perfection, we will still be hopelessly, hideously, beautifully flawed.