This week a couple of projects came to a close and my body took one look at a potential day off and came down with a stinking cold, so I snuggled down with
Hunger by Roxane Gay.
I first read Gay’s work back in 2010, in litzines and at Fictionaut. Much of it included beautiful women having sex — in empowered (His Name Is), overwhelmed (Problems Pretty Girls With Pretty Faces Face), mystical (The Weight of Water) or painful (Requiem for a Glass Heart) ways. Female ‘beauty’ in fiction is usually described as tall, petite, golden, brown, black-haired, blonde, slender, rangy or a whole list of other things I am not. Sexy MCs aren’t short, mousy, freckled women, so I read as an outsider, enjoying the torn complexity of Men Don’t Leave Me, or Ever. Happily. After‘s contrariness and humour. As a body of work, her writing struck me as angry.
Then I picked up Hunger.
The story goes: Gay was attacked as a young girl, ate a lot, and didn’t starve it all off. The book charts her reaction to childhood trauma with restraint; this is not a misery memoir, and we’re not given gratuitous details. We’re told that she had a tough time, ate, topped 500 lbs, and doesn’t like flimsy chairs with arms. Then we’re invited to consider the society we live in, including attitudes to body size, and to understand the effect we have on people when we assume that those in our life will all exist within our personal ‘normal’ size range, or that those who overeat do so for fun.
Many of the issues in the book could apply equally to anyone with a need for control, the need for safety, a hunger for self-acceptance, fear and tiredness of being judged, and running from pain. Still, although it warns otherwise, this feels like a relative success story: a woman who is overcoming trauma, who carved out a life and career and held onto her family. Although the pain, restraint and discomfort come through, it’s a warm narrative which invites us to consider what’s been left unsaid.
It also made me think about fat.
Fat.
Fat’s an enormous issue, and one of my soapboxes. We have an obesity epidemic. We also have a marketing epidemic: the ‘diet’ industry is a parasitic machine that ultimately does not want us to reach peak health and happiness, because if we all did, the industry would die.
What is fat?
I’m a scientist. Fat is an energy reserve. It’s fuel and protection: warmth, energy, and bilipid membranes. Fat is food. In days gone by, fat was survival.
Is fat ugly?
Why is ‘ugly’ even a word? It’s entirely subjective and almost never does any good.
I’m not overweight but I’ve been called fat and ugly many times. (I’ve had that relationship.) I’ve spent a long time pondering the relevance of ‘ugly’.
Why is there not a word (*is there?) for that gorgeous, tingling, freeing feeling when you take off your shoes and socks at the end of a hard day? And yet instead we created “ugly”. That’s a fail.
(* Was half-expecting some sort of German kenning for ‘happy feet’. Fußglück, vielleicht? Is that a word already? Can we get to the end of a long day on our feet, prise off our shoes and socks, flex our feet and sigh, “Aaaah, Fußglück!”)
Is fat a healthcare issue?
Yes. Maintaining one’s weight at some sort of median mid-range level means you are statistically (population stats) less likely to suffer from various conditions, e.g. Type II diabetes, various heart disorders, joint disorders etc. As a population, being very overweight carries health risks, which in the UK means a burden on the NHS. Not all fat people are unhealthy, but excessive fat will cause issues in many people.
The same can be said of not getting enough sleep, dangerous hobbies, having children in your late forties, blah, blah, blah. You’re with me. And you know the person who never drinks, never stays up late, never strokes strange dogs, never… yeah, them.
I went to A&E the other day and saw a grown man in there with a mouse bite on his toe. “It was a wild mouse, a WILD mouse,” he said, looking at my face. “Wild…”
Societal panic
“Fat!”
“I am not!”
We don’t want to be fat. We’d rather be thin, even though starvation can kill you faster than overeating. This is marketing from an industry whose success would kill off its client base.
—
Gay’s book made me consider how I view my own body and others’. It made me wonder whether I cater for large or small people in my home. (My chairs wobble.) It made me wonder, what would it be like to weigh 500 lbs? Given how I reacted (with brevity) when strangers opined all over my pregnancies, how would I welcome their opinions on my weight? Yeah, right.
It brings me back to a moment when I was twelve – the same age as Gay when she was attacked. I sat in a class and the teacher, Mr B, asked, “What right do you have to be here?” – and none of us could answer. (I have blogged separately about the full story of Mr B because it underpins a lot of what I write.)
We have every right to be here. To live, breathe, and be safe. We do not owe anyone an explanation, or justification, for the space we use.
I hope Gay wanted to write that book. Because now she has.
Thought provoking post, thanks. Last night I discovered both my girls know how many calories they ‘should’ be eating. This has not come from our house, where we focus on hungry or not, and balanced diet. I’m angry with whoever put that in their heads to mess with their natural ability to satisfy themselves with a variety of enjoyable foods. Separately, your comment made me look up the etymology of ugly, which it turns out comes from old Norse for something inspiring fear or dread. Pretty apposite, actually. What are people afraid of?
Yes, I find talk of calories annoying too. We fend off comments about “diets” and “fat” (the boys hear it too) and mine have already asked if they are the right weight. I ask how they feel. I’ve spent my life hooked up to weights and calories, it’s a hard habit to break. With the children I have faith that we can manage it without weighing them. Myself? Still hooked, for now.
A serious and well-thought-out post full of strong points. The obsession people have with appearance drives me nuts. No matter what you look like, someone will find something to deride. Why can’t we just rejoice in all the differences. It bothers me too that once in a while, I catch myself thinking “that person is_____.” Fill in the blank with whatever…the adjective doesn’t matter; what does matter is that I don’t want to think these things, but oh, how hard it is to break habits that are shaped from an early age. Just like the habits of checking calories, weighing ourselves and so on.
I’m just going to wiggle my toes now and pronounce “Aaaah, Fußglück!” That’s the kind of thinking I need to do more of.
Yes to this. I even find myself getting annoyed at a friend who always describes people as ‘lovely’ – I mean, almost always when she mentions someone, she’ll say ‘they’re lovely’ – because I’m sick of people being described. ‘Lovely’ buys into that. It seeks approval. I don’t want to seek approval, don’t want to assess people for approval.
Thanks for this. I will pick up the book. I am incensed by not only the diet industry, but by companies by Monsanto which, by their very existence turns every nutritious piece of food into a chemical-laden health hazard, and Kelloggs who not only adds terrible preservatives to their cereals (TBHQ, for e.g.), but use up all our natural resources (like Nestle and water). The system is rigged against health and mainly for profit and until everyone starts opting out and voting with their wallets in the checkout line at he grocery, nothing will change. Even the opioid epidemic in the U.S. Can be traced back to corporate greed and asvertising.
Sad that our mentality has to be check and double check everything because it could be detrimental to our health and wellbeing.?
It would be eye-opening if the food shops were all filled only with unprocessed foods. Fruit, veg, chunks of meat, and grains or maybe we could go for flours etc. Checking the ingredients of e.g. manufactured breads, cakes and yoghurts etc is no mean feat because all ingredients could be detrimental at a certain dose, so fitting a perspective to some of the more obscure chemicals without details of quantity is impossible.
I know, it’s impossible.