Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

by Roxane Gay

When you are fat and traveling, the staring starts from the moment you enter the airport.

I am very lucky that I have finally gotten to a place in my career where it is part of my contract with an organization flying me to speak that they have to buy me a first-class ticket. This is my body and they know it, and if they want me to travel to them, they need to ensure at least some of my dignity.

She gives me permission to embrace my ambition and believe in myself. In the case of Barefoot Contessa, a cooking show is far more than just a cooking show.

assiduously

For so long I’ve never talked about this. I suppose we should keep our shames to ourselves, but I’m sick of this shame. Silence hasn’t worked out that well. Or maybe this is someone else’s shame and I’m just being forced to carry it.

Saying I was gay wasn’t true, but it wasn’t a lie. I was and am attracted to women. I find them rather intriguing. At the time, I didn’t know I could be attracted to both women and men and be part of this world.

tryst.

My body was nothing, so I let anything happen to my body. I had no idea what I enjoyed sexually because I was never asked and I knew my wants did not matter. I was supposed to be grateful; I had no right to seek satisfaction.

abject,

furtive

Even when I am in a good relationship it is hard to stand up for myself. It is hard to express dissatisfaction or have the arguments I want to have because I feel like I’m already on thin ice by virtue of being fat.

I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.

He was a good boy from a good family living in a good neighborhood, but he hurt me in the worst ways. People are rarely what they seem.

I have had good relationships, but it’s hard to trust that because what I consider good doesn’t always feel very good at all.

cavalierly.

spill water on the floor and I smile because these are my fucking floors and these are my dishes and no one cares if there is water on the floor.

And I remember how I felt the one time I tried to look pretty for someone, how it wasn’t enough. The first chance I get, I scrub the makeup off. I choose to live in my own skin.

I am going to keep telling them even though I hate having the stories to tell. These sad stories will always weigh on me, though that burden lessens the more I realize who I am and what I am worth.

accretion.

It’s scary, though, trying to be yourself and hoping yourself is enough. It’s scary believing that you, as you are, could ever be enough.

There is an anxiety in being yourself, though. There is the haunting question of “What if?” always lingering. What if who I am will never be enough? What if I will never be right enough for someone?

It bothers me to have my gender erased, to be unseen in plain sight. I am a woman. I am large, but I am a woman. I deserve to be seen as such.

Race plays a part in this too. Black women are rarely allowed their femininity.

Today, the people who misgender me aren’t doing so because they perceive a queer aesthetic. They’re doing so because they don’t see me, my body, as something that should be treated or considered with care.

A hug means something to me; it is an act of profound intimacy, so I try not to get too promiscuous with it.

Why do we view the boundaries people create for themselves as challenges? Why do we see someone setting a limit and then try to push?

Do my boundaries exist if I don’t voice them? Can people not see my body, the mass of it, as one very big boundary? Do they not know how much effort went into this?

don’t hate myself the way society expects me to until I have a bad day and then I do hate myself.

inertia,

One of the many things I have always loved about writing (not to be confused with publishing) is that all you need is your imagination.

People don’t expect the writer who will be speaking at their event to look like me. They don’t know how to hide their shock when they realize that a reasonably successful writer is this overweight. These reactions hurt, for so many reasons.

I am never allowed to forget the realities of my body, how my body offends the sensibilities of others, how my body dares to take up too much space, and how I dare to be confident, how I dare to use my voice, how I dare to believe in the value of my voice both in spite of and because of my body.

The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people I will never be anything more than my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.

I know, now, that I was putting in the work. I still am, of course, but back then I was just beginning to figure out how to use my voice in both fiction and nonfiction. I had a lot to learn and so I wrote and wrote and wrote and read and read and read and I hoped. I was going to school and then working and getting better and better jobs and then more school, and I was becoming a better writer and, very slowly, a better person.

When a nurse asks me to step on the scale, I often decline, tell her that I know how much I weigh. I tell her I am happy to share that number with her. Because when I do get on the scale, few nurses can hide their disdain or their disgust as my weight appears on the digital readout.

Or they look at me with pity, which is almost worse because my body is simply my body, not something that demands pity.

When you’re fat, one of your biggest fears is falling while you’re alone and needing to call EMTs. It’s a fear I have nurtured over the years, and when I broke my ankle that fear finally came true.

If I died, I would leave people behind who would struggle with my loss. I finally recognized that I matter to the people in my life and that I have a responsibility to matter to myself and take care of myself so they don’t have to lose me before my time, so I can have more time.

I was broken, and then I broke my ankle and was forced to face a lot of things I had long ignored. I was forced to face my body and its frailty. I was forced to stop and take a breath and give a damn about myself.

The most profound of those realizations was that part of healing is taking care of your body and learning how to have a humane relationship with your body.

What happened is not something I discussed with my family. I couldn’t talk about it with them—it was too much. The memories are too fresh even now. The consequences are still with me. Or it was a secret.

My family knows my secret. I am freed, or part of me is freed and part of me is still the girl in the woods. I may always be that girl. My dad and brothers want names. I will not speak his name.

found him. He is neither a politician nor a lawyer, but I wasn’t far off. People don’t change.

know where he works and his e-mail address and his phone number and fax number. I don’t have these things written down, but I know. I have them bookmarked and maybe committed to memory.

My younger brother also told me, then, that he didn’t like this guy and I should stay away. I told him he was being silly, immature.

I should have listened to my brother. I was a kid too.

I wonder if he would care, if it would matter.

I’ve decided that I will not allow my body to dictate my existence, at least, not entirely. I will not hide from the world.

Living in my body has expanded my empathy for other people and the truths of their bodies. Certainly, it has shown me the importance of inclusivity and acceptance (not merely tolerance) for diverse body types.

I don’t know if fat is a disability, but my size certainly compromises my ability to be in certain spaces. I cannot climb too many stairs, so I am always thinking about access to space. Is there an elevator? Are there stairs to the stage? How many? Is there a handrail? That I have to ask myself these questions shows me a fraction of the questions people with disabilities must ask to be out in the world. It shows me just how much I take for granted, how much we all take for granted when we are able-bodied.