Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

by Lindy West

The Queen of Hearts I do not even know this bitch’s deal. In Alice in Wonderland, her only personality trait is “likes the color red,” she doesn’t seem to do any governing aside from executing minors for losing at croquet, and she is married to a one-foot-tall baby with a mustache. She is, now that I think about it, the perfect feminazi caricature: fat, loud, irrational, violent, overbearing, constantly hitting a hedgehog with a flamingo. Oh, shit. She taught me everything I know.

So, what do you do when you’re too big, in a world where bigness is cast not only as aesthetically objectionable, but also as a moral failing? You fold yourself up like origami, you make yourself smaller in other ways, you take up less space with your personality, since you can’t with your body.

Can relate to this entirely.

(In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.)

“Puberty” was a fancy word for your genitals stabbing you in the back.

No one had ever picked me. Literally no one. The cumulative result was worse than loneliness: I felt unnatural. Broken. It wasn’t fair.

Like most fat people who’ve been lectured about diet and exercise since childhood, I actually know an inordinate amount about nutrition and fitness.

Same… ugh

health is not a moral imperative.

Fat people are not having fun on planes. There is no need to make it worse.

This is the subtext of my life: “You’re bigger than I’d like you to be.” “I dread being near you.” “Your body itself is a breach of etiquette.” “You are clearly a fucking fool who thinks that cheesecake is a vegetable.” “I know that you will fart on me.”