A No to Diet.com Story by Estella Warren
When I was seven years old, I was skating at the ice rink on a school outing. I wasn’t a good skater—far from it—but someone was holding my hand, steadying me as I wobbled along. Out of nowhere, two boys thought it would be funny to shove me down. “Ha ha, fish lips,” they said, before one of them tried to spray snow from his skates, but then he lost control and fell.
His skate blade slashed my face just beneath my left eye.
Blood was everywhere. I couldn’t see!. Everyone thought I had lost my eye. There was enough blood on the ice to embarrass the NHL. Rushed to the hospital, I lay on the cold operating table. Lots of noise and bright lights. I was in shock. Somehow, I could SEE the surgeon sewing the black stitches. The skate had missed my eye by a few millimetres. The nurse blew up a surgical glove like a balloon. I got a purple popsicle (my favourite). AND my beautiful—my strong, unstoppable mom-–who never took a day off work-–stayed home to take care of me!
That scar is still there today, faint now, almost invisible. A reminder.
Three years later, I was back on the ice, skating no better than before. This time, another shove. Another fall, flat on my face. Blood everywhere again, I went to he bathroom, I saw that half my tooth was GONE. Feigning grace, the bully handed me the broken piece. I was too young for a permanent replacement, so the dentist gave me a temporary one, made of resin. For years, I felt ashamed. I stopped smiling.
And yet, that tooth—the one I hated—came with me into some of the most extraordinary moments of my life. I shot a Chanel campaign with that tooth. I stepped in front of Irving Penn’s Hasselblad Camera, Kevin Aucoin’s brushes, and Phyllis Posnick’s incredible eye for American Vogue with that tooth. I lay perfectly still while smoke–drunk bumble bees—yes, bees—were placed across my face. I didn’t know at that time that I was allergic to bees. I found out years later. I couldn’t believe that no one cared about my broken tooth. I wasn’t broken after all.
I could follow direction, because I knew how to stay calm under pressure. The imperfection that I once thought disqualified me ended up being irrelevant—or even the thing that made me real.
That’s what “No to Diet” is about. Saying no to the illusion that you need to shrink, smooth, polish, or erase yourself to be worthy. Saying yes to the scars, the chips, the lines, the quirks, the humanness. Perfection isn’t in achieving flawlessness. Perfection lives in the imperfections that tell the story of who you are and what you’ve lived through.
My scar. My broken tooth. The bees. The photo. The people who saw me, really saw me, flaws and all. Those lessons can’t be bought—and the memory is worth more than gold. I wish they—and all the legends I worked with—could know how deeply I loved and appreciated those moments.
The journey to wholeness takes a village of kindness. And the truth is this: your so-called imperfections are never in the way. They light the way.
Say no to diets. Say yes to being whole.
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