Karen seemed to always put on a happy and brave face despite the obvious sadness she felt in her life. Dionne Warwick and others seem to imply in comments that everything was back on track for Karen. But I think she must have been very scared about what was ahead of her.
First off, despite the weight gain in the hospital, she must have been terrified of the prospect of gaining any more. Richard has commented that she still picked at her food. There is also the evidence that she was abusing ipecac. So weight gain must have been on her mind. She had the pressure to convey that she was cured but was desperately afraid of gaining weight. If she was eating normally, using ipecac, and still maintaining her 108 weight, I wonder if her metabolism had slowed down requiring the ipecac to stay steady.
She also desperately wanted children. But she was still married (almost divorced) and would have to start the whole process over again of finding a partner. All of her friends were married or in relationships and having children, she must felt anxiety to move forward as well. Today being 32 and unmarried is so common. But back in 1983, there was still a stigma around it. I recall the Mary Tyler Moore show, a #1 hit of the 1970's, was based on the storyline of a women being 30 and god forbid, unmarried. It wasn't that common back then. She had felt that pressure before to get married and have kids and made the unfortunate choice of Tom Burris. So I can't imagine 2 years after her first marriage, for the pressure to have lessened. It must have been on her mind.
Finally, there were career pressures. The Carpenters were not able to score a top 10 hit for 8 years. Nothing seemed to be sticking. This also must have been on her mind. She was ambitious and not the type to sit back and relish past successes.
In retrospect, none of the above was all that serious of a problem in the grand scheme of things. Karen could have take the route of healthy living, focusing more on eating well and exercising. Today, there is the trend of leading women following that strategy. They have amazing bodies but are healthy. Karen was also relatively still young. She had at least another 10 years to have kids. She could have also adopted and been a wonderful mom. Finally, she had already achieved amazing success, enough to sit on her laurels and not worry about it anymore. Money would never be a problem and chart success was already achieved. She could have focsued on charitable work and performing for the fun of it. But unfortunately, she didn't have enough time to see the forest from the trees.
You are insightful. When I had my second child at age 33 back in the '80s, I was considered over the hill as a mother-to-be. To have been unmarried at that time, and even to have been divorced, would have been viewed as uncommon. Women's roles had not evolved to the point that a successful career woman was equated with a stay-at-home married mom. So Karen would've felt societal pressures even if they were unexpressed.
ReplyDeleteFurther, parental opinions were still held in high esteem at that time. So even an independent, take-control person would have bowed to parental pressure...especially if that independent person was a woman who was viewed as a failure at marriage, producing children, etc.
And that one ultimately must learn to take responsibility for her own happiness was a concept that seemed still foreign to Karen. No doubt the fact that she got locked into a career at a young age and was thrown into a world of older, quite controlling people kept Karen trapped into the obedient young child role long past the normal age of attaining true independence!
I believe placing blame at this point is pretty irrelevant. As you have proven, Karen was affected, in a way many young women might not be in today's world, by a combination of societal, familial, and internal pressures. Combine those with overwhelming, half-a-duo career pressures, and we begin to see how Karen turned to anorexia at a time when identification and treatment of the disease was still in its infancy.
How sad that her unique voice and emerging self were silenced before she ever blossomed into her adult entity! Each premature loss of life leaves us with lessons to learn, and Karen's silence now still speaks volumes to those who will listen.