Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

by Roxane Gay

I want to make myself fatter to spite the shamers, even though the only person I would really be spiting is myself.

And still, I am envious because these girls have willpower. They have the commitment to do what it takes to have the bodies they want.

But then I become fixated on a certain food and then I eat it and eat it and eat it for days on end, sometimes weeks, until I am sick of it. It is a compulsion, I suppose. When I am eating a meal, I have no sense of portion control. I am a completist. If the food is on my plate, I must finish it. If there is food left on the stove, I must finish it. Rarely do I have leftovers.

I know what it means to hunger without being hungry.

When you’re fat, no one will pay attention to disordered eating or they will look the other way or they will look right through you. You get to hide in plain sight.

am always uncomfortable or in pain. I don’t remember what it is like to feel good in my body, to feel anything resembling comfort.

It did not occur to me that to cook for myself was to care for myself or that I was allowed to care for myself amidst the ruin I had let myself become.

My body was repulsive and therefore deserved to be treated as such. I did not deserve to be desired. I did not deserve to be loved.

At least they didn’t hit me.

understood that to look or present myself like a woman was to invite trouble and danger and hurt.

I don’t hate myself the way society expects me to until I have a bad day and then I do hate myself. I disgust myself. I cannot stand my weakness, my inertia, my inability to overcome my past, to overcome my body.

I will never know anything but this. I will never know anything better than this.

They illustrate how little people think of fat people, how they assume we are neither smart nor capable if we have such unruly bodies.

Doctors are supposed to first do no harm, but when it comes to fat bodies, most doctors seem fundamentally incapable of heeding their oath.