My Thoughts Exactly

by Lily Allen

Sometimes, I binged on drugs or drink or food to get a feeling of blindness between myself and the world I was now inhabiting, and sometimes I whittled myself away, because being thin and streamlined made me less: less messy and less of a grotesque cartoon character.

What a waste of headspace. What a waste of consciousness. What an insult to every person struggling with illness or poverty or homelessness; what a diss to the sunshine and the sky and the birdsong and to any number of small pleasures or preoccupations that could have more joyfully and usefully occupied space taken up with worry about body weight.