Long Ago and Far Away: Memories of Karen Carpenter

Talent, eating disorders, and a disordered society

Some of us have memories we’re fairly certain we will recall as our lives come to a close.

Mine isn’t very glamorous. It’s “the sandwich.”

At some point late in my junior year of college, I was well in the throes of an eating disorder. I had gone without eating for three days and my grandmother came to visit me at college.

She took me to Marie Callendar’s, where I ordered a Frisco burger. This was a hamburger with all the trimmings on grilled sourdough.

It was indescribably delicious, but after so many days of not eating, I could only manage to eat half of one half of the burger. I put the rest in a to-go container.

We left the restaurant, located about five miles from my college dorm and she dropped me off.

Maybe half an hour later I looked for the hamburger, planning to eat the other half of a half and …

no Frisco burger

It was miles away, probably already thrown away.

I will remember that sandwich to my dying day.

The following year, I’d gotten a little bit of modeling work and was busy starving myself during the few hours I wasn’t partying or working at my many other part-time jobs.

My (former) boyfriend often spoke about pinup girls of the day, like Farrah Fawcett and Heather Locklear. Even though I had long blonde hair, I would never look like them. I read in Cosmo that Heather weighed less than 100 pounds. This is what I was going for.

Sometimes when modeling we had to have weigh-ins. I weighed in one day: 111.

This was after another 3–4 day period of only drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, no solid food.

I was so proud of this achievement. I went back to my dorm after the session and my face felt hot and my hands were itchy. I started to wash my hands and face and the skin came off my palms.

Horrified, I called my grandmother.

“You’re fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Keep up the good work.

I was a kid when the Carpenters came out. I had several of their singles and one of their albums.

I thought Karen was pretty and extremely talented. It wasn’t Karen who seemed square. I thought her older brother Richard was the stiff, square, unexciting one.

By the time I was in college with my own eating disorder, the Carpenters’ 70s hits were long over, though their classic songs remained popular, like “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

One of the young women in our dorm was routinely in and out of the hospital for anorexia. Her friendships, and I among them, consisted of us either policing her minimal food intake or encouraging her to eat something other than two tablespoons of blueberry yogurt and a tablespoon of canned tuna.

It would have and should have been obvious to everyone that I too, had a problem.

I look back and realize my classmate’s disease gave her the opportunity to have interactions with other young women, when otherwise, she might not have had much in the way of a social life.

As to me? I had plenty of friends. I went out every night. My fiance was from a rich family and we hung out with the popular kids all over the five campuses.

I looked at other young women, the pinups and stars, who were said to be “perfect” and “beautiful.”

My body didn’t look like theirs, even when I achieved that magic 111 and lost the skin off my palms. Only 12 more pounds to go to weigh what I should at 5'6", just like Heather Locklear! 99 pounds, then I would be …

perfect

I think people don’t remember how cruel things were back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

As a child, I looked up to any performer on television, and if they were younger, like Karen and Richard Carpenter, I could relate a little more to them than older performers who still appeared, like Bing Crosby or Bob Hope.

We were at school and I was nearing the completion of my senior year of college when the world was shocked by the death of Karen Carpenter at age 32.

We knew our friend had anorexia. I knew about my secret, too.

How did Karen die? Why did she die?

Today, it’s known that she damaged her heart by taking ipecac daily for many years. She also overused laxatives and used every anorexic trick known to avoid consuming food.

Pretty Karen who was such a good drummer that Buddy Rich praised her skills. Pretty, nice Karen with a voice like an angel.

Three octaves, well down into contralto range.

I am sitting here with tears streaming down my face.

Karen could have been saved even at the last minute, but her mother ignored her distress, as she seems to have ignored Karen’s life-threatening eating disorder for well over a decade — all in favor of Karen’s much less-talented and interesting older brother.

Keep up the good work.

The things that killed Karen are better now, for many people.

That long ago, far away world, a world in which the majority of people were thin, but also a world in which people like Bette Midler, a Broadway and singing star at the time, would speak horribly about The Carpenters, especially Karen.

“She’s so white she’s invisible!” Midler reportedly said.

Midler has reportedly apologized for the verbal abuse she heaped on gentle, kind Karen as part of her nightclub act in the 70s.

But this was just the type of teasing and bullying which went on in nearly every neighborhood, every school, every church, and around many dinner tables, all the time — back in that day.

If you didn’t fit the current ideal of beauty and were female at that time —

Keep up the good work.

I’m singing some of Karen’s songs now. We are in a show with some people who appear to be very committed local theater or “summer stock” performers.

I’m a lot closer to Karen Carpenter who wanted to hide behind her drumset than I am to Ethel Merman-type stage hogs like these others.

I look back now at the time that I quit music entirely. The college musical groups and education weren’t nearly as strong as the ones I’d come up in while in high school. Maybe we were a little more “hip” than the church and traditional music environments Karen and Richard Carpenter honed their chops in.

I was as good as some of my classmates who went on to be professional studio musicians or to play in big city symphony orchestras.

But the twin pressures of having to maintain my appearance and my fear of being alone, performing in front of others, kept me from pursuing any more music, whether playing an instrument or singing.

Now, Bruce and I are performing again, as older adults.

I have none of the old-lady quaver in my voice. I don’t know when that will happen, and maybe if it does, I won’t let it bother me.

I feel like Karen was murdered. If not literally murdered by her family, she was neglected to the point that the intractable and terrible disease of anorexia took her life.

I don’t know why I have been blessed to make it this far, and to be, now, in good health, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

But I wonder about this world I grew up in, a world so cruel and so — flat-out vile — that it would take the life of someone who sang like a living angel.

[Karen Carpenter March 2, 1950 — February 4, 1983]

another Pisces … let’s swim strong, sisters and brothers …

maybe someday I will see my sandwich again