Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

by Roxane Gay

I’ve been forced to look at my guiltiest secrets. I’ve cut myself wide open. I am exposed. That is not comfortable. That is not easy.

this is a book about disappearing and being lost and wanting so very much, wanting to be seen and understood. This is a book about learning, however slowly, to allow myself to be seen and understood.

The cultural measure for obesity often seems to be anyone who appears to be larger than a size 6, or anyone whose body doesn’t naturally cater to the male gaze, or anyone with cellulite on her thighs.

I do not want to take up space. I want to go unnoticed. I want to hide. I want to disappear until I gain control of my body.

I was a daydreamer and I resented being pulled out of my daydreams to deal with the business of living.

I don’t want my lover seeing only a moment from my assault when they look at me. I don’t want them to think me more fragile than I am. I am stronger than I am broken. I don’t want them, or anyone, to think I am nothing more than the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

I couldn’t share the shame and humiliation of it. I was disgusting because I had allowed disgusting things to be done to me. I was not a girl. I was less than human. I was no longer a good girl and I was going to hell.

My family has been inordinately preoccupied with my body since I was thirteen years old.

I was swallowing my secrets and making my body expand and explode.

That was the first time I realized that weight loss, thinness really, was social currency.

I was so far from being an adult. I was twenty years old and I felt like I was twelve years old and I felt like I was twenty years old and I felt like I was a hundred years old.

What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?

Instead, she is telling us that our ultimate goal is this better (th)inner woman we’re supposed to diet toward. We will have our better body, and her empire will continue to grow.

We’re supposed to restrict our eating while indulging in the fantasy that we can, indeed, indulge. It’s infuriating. When you’re trying to lose weight, you cannot have anything you want. That is, in fact, the whole point.

I am hyperconscious of how I take up space and I resent having to be this way, so when people around me aren’t mindful of how they take up space, I feel pure rage. I am seething with jealousy.

“I am not attracted to you. I do not want to fuck you, and this confuses my understanding of my masculinity, entitlement, and place in this world.”

I do my best to pretend I am not in pain, that my back doesn’t ache, that I’m not whatever it is I am feeling, because I am not allowed to have a human body. If I am fat, I must also have the body of someone who is not fat. I must defy space and time and gravity.

This is what comes from years of being the fat one in the beautiful family. 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.