On having other people comment on your body: I do, however, live in a world where the open hatred of fat people is vigorously tolerated and encouraged. There is truth to the former accusation and I reject the latter.
I have been accused of being full of self-loathing and of being fat-phobic. I know that to be frank about my body makes some people uncomfortable. “I hesitate to write about fat bodies and my fat body especially. Here are a few of the powerful insights she shares in Hunger. Gay masterfully shines light on the struggle to love yourself in a world that leads many to believe they’re not enough. More important, I am not happy at this size, though I am not suffering from the illusion that were I to wake up thin tomorrow, I would be happy and all my problems would be solved.” I know I am not healthy at this size (not because I am fat but because I have, for example, high blood pressure). “I have tried to make peace with this body,” she writes.
The memoir is deeply personal but highlights a universal paradox - how to accept who we are now while also embracing a desire to change. Yet her method of survival also filled her life with myriad challenges: keeping up with friends, finding clothing options, and dealing with anxiety about airplane and restaurant seating. She used food to find “ways to hide in plain sight, to keep feeding a hunger that could never be satisfied - the hunger to stop hurting.” Over the years, Gay lost and gained weight. I could become more solid, stronger, safer.” “I ate because I understood that I could take up more space. No longer feeling safe and not knowing how to talk to her family about what happened, she turned to food. The story of Gay’s hunger and unruly body begins when she was 12 years old and raped by a group of boys. “Women continue to try to bend themselves to societal will,” she notes. In this brave confessional, she offers a searing critique of the media and the weight-loss industry, both of which are programmed to convince women to shape themselves into an idealized image. Gay is renowned for exploring the intersections between race, gender, and popular culture in her writing. It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth,” writes best-selling author Roxane Gay in her latest book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.