Dietland

by Sarai Walker

In my real life I would have more friends, and dinner parties and overnight guests, but my life wasn’t real yet.

In nine months, you’ll be looking foxy! That’s what Gladys had said at my first Baptist Weight Loss meeting. Foxy, hot, fuckable. Whatever it was called, that’s what I’d wanted—to be hot, to elicit desire in men and envy in women. But I realized I didn’t want that anymore. That required living in Dietland, which meant control, constriction—paralysis, even—but above all it meant obedience. I was tired of being obedient.

“This is a different war, not an official one, but who decides which wars are legitimate?”