Food and Loathing and Cookies from the Hamper
Everyone hates a fat woman. Or is it that a fat woman thinks everyone hates her? Or does a fat woman simply hate herself?
As someone who’s measured her worth in dress sizes, waistbands, and, when in the midst of bravery, the hard-core truth of pounds, I’ve felt all of the above. We are a harsh country, filled with both self-loathing and a Calvinist push towards walking off, dieting away, running away from, and when all else fails, surgically sucking out unwanted fat.
Do men suffer as women do? I’m not sure. I don’t think so, not as much—not when fat men on screen are allowed to bed and wed women as lovely as Katherine Heigl. I think being fat is painful for men. I simply don’t think they’re as reviled; they need to climb far higher up the scale to merit as much hate as heavy women.
I recently re-read (even re-bought, when I couldn’t find my copy) Food and Loathing by Betsy Lerner. From far too young, Lerner’s existence rested on her body size—real and perceived. The book begins thusly:
“It is 1972. I am twelve years old. It is the first day of sixth grade, and I am standing in the girls’ gymnasium waiting to be weighed.”
If your flesh doesn’t crawl with those words, if you don’t want to either go running for a cream cheese smothered bagel, or conversely, vow to stop eating as of tomorrow, this book will still interest you, but you may not swallow it whole.
The hatred of our flesh often has no bearing in reality. One of my best friends in the world begins each day pinching her flesh with callipered fingers and living for her daily-rationed cookie. She is tight and muscled and yet lives each day as though a sorcerer might drop fifty pounds on her at any moment.
Do I understand this?
I do.
I grew up with a thin mother who lived for leanness and beauty. My sister’s body mirrored hers. To the day she died at eighty, my mother would ask, “how’s your weight” each time we spoke, as though my ‘weight’ was a living-breathing entity separate from that which she liked about me.
I sloughed her words off with sarcasm and sighs, still my life was frozen in moments: My mother hiding cookies in a pot on the top of the cabinets. (I got exercise climbing up.) Swiping the icing from the middle of the Entenmanns, until the cake became thinner and thinner (but not me.)
I remember the horror of looking for a dress for my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah as my mother rolled her eyes and complained to the sales women about her disgust at the lack of gowns into which I could zip. Last week I had to search for old family photos for an article. While doing so, I came across a picture of me at the Bar Mitzvah, wearing the gown.
The me that wanted to die from being so fat looked good. I can’t believe I suffered as I did. Of course, I also found pictures where I really was plump. But deserving of loathing?
We’re hated, we hate ourselves, and we learn to sneak our food. I devoured cookies that I hid in the bathroom hamper.
Betsy Lerner joined Overeaters Anonymous in junior high, where she learned to divide food into forbidden and good. She became a compulsive eater or a compulsive dieter, depending on the day, the month, and the moment. When binging, real life was always a day away. When dieting, she considered herself abstinent—except that sex became her comfort.
Mixed in for Lerner, was her struggle with depression and anxiety, finally ending up in a New York mental hospital after a suicide attempt, where, after years of being ill-treated by shrinks, she is diagnosed as bi-polar. This is presented neither as an answer to her relationship with food, nor as separate. It is part of her ongoing puzzle.
Food and Loathing is not a self-help book; it’s no guide for losing weight. Nor is it a companionable hug for staying heavy. It’s a mirror. It’s looking back, looking forward, or looking at who you are right this moment.
After finishing it, I thought (not for the first time, not for the last) about how much space I want to rent in my head to the mirror and to the scale. Right now, at this moment, month, minute, I am sorta-okay, and that’s probably okay. I think that perhaps, sorta-okay is as good as it gets with acceptance for some of us.
Yeah, when you grow up with hamper cookies and sighs, getting to sorta-okay when you look in the mirror can be a damned miracle.
That’s what I loved about Food and Loathing. Betsy Lerner tells that particular story very well.
As someone who’s measured her worth in dress sizes, waistbands, and, when in the midst of bravery, the hard-core truth of pounds, I’ve felt all of the above. We are a harsh country, filled with both self-loathing and a Calvinist push towards walking off, dieting away, running away from, and when all else fails, surgically sucking out unwanted fat.
Do men suffer as women do? I’m not sure. I don’t think so, not as much—not when fat men on screen are allowed to bed and wed women as lovely as Katherine Heigl. I think being fat is painful for men. I simply don’t think they’re as reviled; they need to climb far higher up the scale to merit as much hate as heavy women.
I recently re-read (even re-bought, when I couldn’t find my copy) Food and Loathing by Betsy Lerner. From far too young, Lerner’s existence rested on her body size—real and perceived. The book begins thusly:
“It is 1972. I am twelve years old. It is the first day of sixth grade, and I am standing in the girls’ gymnasium waiting to be weighed.”
If your flesh doesn’t crawl with those words, if you don’t want to either go running for a cream cheese smothered bagel, or conversely, vow to stop eating as of tomorrow, this book will still interest you, but you may not swallow it whole.
The hatred of our flesh often has no bearing in reality. One of my best friends in the world begins each day pinching her flesh with callipered fingers and living for her daily-rationed cookie. She is tight and muscled and yet lives each day as though a sorcerer might drop fifty pounds on her at any moment.
Do I understand this?
I do.
I grew up with a thin mother who lived for leanness and beauty. My sister’s body mirrored hers. To the day she died at eighty, my mother would ask, “how’s your weight” each time we spoke, as though my ‘weight’ was a living-breathing entity separate from that which she liked about me.
I sloughed her words off with sarcasm and sighs, still my life was frozen in moments: My mother hiding cookies in a pot on the top of the cabinets. (I got exercise climbing up.) Swiping the icing from the middle of the Entenmanns, until the cake became thinner and thinner (but not me.)
I remember the horror of looking for a dress for my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah as my mother rolled her eyes and complained to the sales women about her disgust at the lack of gowns into which I could zip. Last week I had to search for old family photos for an article. While doing so, I came across a picture of me at the Bar Mitzvah, wearing the gown.
The me that wanted to die from being so fat looked good. I can’t believe I suffered as I did. Of course, I also found pictures where I really was plump. But deserving of loathing?
We’re hated, we hate ourselves, and we learn to sneak our food. I devoured cookies that I hid in the bathroom hamper.
Betsy Lerner joined Overeaters Anonymous in junior high, where she learned to divide food into forbidden and good. She became a compulsive eater or a compulsive dieter, depending on the day, the month, and the moment. When binging, real life was always a day away. When dieting, she considered herself abstinent—except that sex became her comfort.
Mixed in for Lerner, was her struggle with depression and anxiety, finally ending up in a New York mental hospital after a suicide attempt, where, after years of being ill-treated by shrinks, she is diagnosed as bi-polar. This is presented neither as an answer to her relationship with food, nor as separate. It is part of her ongoing puzzle.
Food and Loathing is not a self-help book; it’s no guide for losing weight. Nor is it a companionable hug for staying heavy. It’s a mirror. It’s looking back, looking forward, or looking at who you are right this moment.
After finishing it, I thought (not for the first time, not for the last) about how much space I want to rent in my head to the mirror and to the scale. Right now, at this moment, month, minute, I am sorta-okay, and that’s probably okay. I think that perhaps, sorta-okay is as good as it gets with acceptance for some of us.
Yeah, when you grow up with hamper cookies and sighs, getting to sorta-okay when you look in the mirror can be a damned miracle.
That’s what I loved about Food and Loathing. Betsy Lerner tells that particular story very well.
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