When I was in high school — when my dad was still driving me to school, so age 14 or 15 — my mom found diet pills in one of my dresser drawers.
“Are you using these to stay awake?”
I flushed and nodded, going along with the answer she provided.
She bought me some No Doz, telling me that the straight caffeine was safer.
I kept the No Doz and bought more of the first pills.
Because what she could not — or would not — fathom was that I was using these diet pills to diet.
This post will contain discussion of disordered eating, including binge eating and dieting, as well as body policing.
Additionally, it will contain discussion of rape.
Finally, there will also be spoilers about the book’s plot and ending.
The author is Carolyn Mackler. And yes, that is a Printz Honor Book seal on the front.
Whenever I read a book where a fat character is portrayed as having disordered eating patterns, I get leery. This is the stock way to make a fat character sympathetic. “Well, yes, she’s fat because she eats too much. But she can’t help it, the poor dear!” Because it’s done fairly often (at least, in the context of books that feature fat characters, which I’ll admit is not a large one), some authors assume it can function as shorthand, that it’s not necessary to give the character the nuanced and complex circumstances and emotions that would make this realistic. “But she chipped a nail, and now she won’t look her best for the Justin Bieber concert this weekend!”
So I was gratified to discover than when it comes to The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Virginia Shreves’s issues with food and her body do stem from a whole heap of intertwined issues that she can’t fully process — at least at the beginning of the novel — let alone control.
The simpler stuff first:
There is a boy, yes. There is a boy with whom Virginia is having a “make out, don’t talk, don’t acknowledge one another in public” sort of relationship. Not because that’s a careful, mutual decision on each of their parts but because Virginia assumes — because she is fat — that this boy will not have it any other way.
There is a best friend, yes, a best friend who moves away for a year. Cue Virginia worrying that she has no other friends — because, well, she has no other friends — and growing yet more insecure because geographically removed best friend is making new friends in her new place.
There are designated Popular Girls. You will know them because they are pretty, thin, and rich (though everyone seems to be financially well off in this novel). They are the favorite students of the Mean French Teacher, and they break school rules while being considered model students. So when one of them says, of Virginia and in her hearing, “[I]f I were that fat, I’d kill myself,” there is some social weight behind it.
Then, we get into the family:
Virginia’s mom used to be fat. She is now thin, by virtue of dieting, exercising constantly, and projecting her body image issues onto her younger daughter. Not only does she take Virginia to a doctor to discuss her weight (not her habits, not her health), but she reacts with disappointment when the doctor steers the discussion back to health. She smiles approvingly while, at a restaurant, Ginny eats salsa with a spoon instead of a tortilla chip (because chips are bad for fatties, of course). There is a Public Scene when Virginia wants to try on more revealing clothes from the juniors section of a store rather than the layered, “hide me” clothes in that store’s plus-size section.
And dad, who offers to take her clothes shopping only when he learns that Virginia is dieting. Who checks out her bedroom and decides, on his own, that she needs a full-length mirror to look at herself. Who says to his daughter, “Think how much prettier you could be if you lost twenty or thirty pounds.”
When Ginny goes on a diet, neither parent acknowledges how truly restrictive it is. Both express approval when she attaches thinspiration messages to the frame of her mirror and thinspiration images to the front of the fridge. It really is like trying to lose weight is the one thing she can do that gets her parents to pay positive attention to her.
Until her older brother Byron gets sent home — suspended — from university after being found guilty of rape by the university’s Office of Sexual Misconduct. Virginia’s gut reaction is to believe the victim, even though it means believing that her brother raped another student. Virginia’s parents, on the other hand, lend their primary support and allegiance to Byron — leaving Ginny on her own to cope with this, which involves her reevaluating her entire relationship with Byron, on top of everything else.
At the beginning of the novel, I was prepared for some too simple, “fatties just gotta put down the Twinkies and pick up self-confidence” non-spiration. I was ready for the magical weight loss recovery story to fall flat. It did not, because it’s not a magical weight loss story. There are habit changes — but they’re about Virginia recognizing why she sometimes binge eats and addressing that at its cause. They’re about her finding exercise that she likes that’s also in a supportive environment. More importantly, they’re about her learning what she likes and values in herself and taking steps to make that happen out in the world.
There is some weight loss in there, enough so that her father comments on it. But more telling, I think, is Virgina’s response. “I’d rather you don’t talk about my body. It’s just not yours to discuss.” That kind of ownership is nothing but awesome.
From this New York Times article on changing the rules for school lunches.
With respect to the article as a whole, I am very much for adding green veggies to school lunches in order to provide more balanced nutritional content. I am not, for reasons I hope are obvious by now, a fan of the whole “combat obesity” thing.
But my favorite quote from this article is with respect to potatoes.
“Despite the fact that congress said the U.S.D.A. could not limit potatoes in school lunches or breakfast, we still feel like the potato is being downplayed in favor of other vegetables in the new guidelines,” said Mark Szymanski, a spokesman for the council. “It seems the department still consider the potato a second-class vegetable.”
Really?
Second-class vegetable?
Way to misappropriate.
An amalgam, only slightly exaggerated for humor, of most of the diet advice I’ve received (solicited or un):
Them: You don’t need to restrict calories to diet. Just eat sensibly, avoid processed foods, and cook whole foods at home.
Me: I eat sensibly, eat processed foods infrequently, and do most of my cooking at home with whole foods.
Them: Hrm. Maybe you just need to avoid [carbs/fat/meat/sugar/dairy/etc.].
Me: I eat foods that help me get the nutrients I need to feel healthy. Besides, I thought you said it wasn’t about restricting foods?
Them: Oh, you don’t! But you can use [bar/shake/frozen meal product] and it’s so easy and convenient!
Me: So it is about processed foods?
Them …
…
…
Them: Have you tried exercising more?
Not because she went from a double-digit size to a single-digit size. She is the boss of her body.
Not because she’s prouder of her weight loss than she is of her Oscar. Again, it’s her life, and she’s free to value her accomplishments as she sees fit.
But because this:
I don’t think there’s an inherent disconnect between loving one’s body at any size and making an individual choice to lose weight. I do think there’s an inherent disconnect between I love my body at any size and I recommend you purchase this diet plan.
In advertising with “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do Weight Watchers” and “Join Me,” Jennifer Hudson’s weight loss is no longer only about Jennifer Hudson. It’s become a product that Weight Watchers and their spokespeople are trying to sell to me, which tries to make someone else’s weight loss a value judgment about me — and that’s not okay.
At work right now, we’re having a wellness challenge, where the overall challenge is made up of several dietary and exercise challenges. (It seems this wellness challenge lives almost entirely in the realm of physical wellness.) A lot of the mini-challenges — like an exercise log and recipe invention — fit very well with my likes and needs. A few of them — like a food journal — make me a wary. And the overarching challenge for the series of events is a weight loss challenge.
I shouldn’t have been surprised since the weight loss challenge has been an annual event since I’ve been here. And the supposition has always been that one participates in the other events as part of the weight loss challenge. But this year, I was taken aback at the strength and surety of my own reaction. “Why did they have to go and fuck that up?”
Certainly, I can see the appeal that weight loss holds for a lot of people. However, setting it as the lynchpin in a wellness challenge is a flawed strategy for wellness.
And it’s not cool to exclude some of us from conversations and activities about wellness because we don’t want to lose weight.
I asked about this last year, tentatively and without revealing any personal stake, to receive a tepid response. The organizers were perfectly polite but apparently operated on the assumption that the other challenges existed to make the weight loss “more enjoyable and engaging” — to support the weight loss because who wouldn’t want to lose weight? — rather than as legitimately “enjoyable and engaging” activities on their own, independent of any weight loss goals.
Last year, I ended up not participating in most of the activities and feeling pretty bummed out because of that. Whatever larger problems exist in the world, or even in my workplace, it’s ostracizing to feel like something fun is happening but that I’m not welcome to participate in it because I don’t want to lose weight.
This year, I was more direct and personal in voicing my concerns. “I’d love to participate in some of these challenges, but participating in the weight loss challenge would not be healthy for me. Is there a way to participate in some activities but not others?” I did not get a direct response. However, later that day, the organizers sent out another email explicitly clarifying that employees could participate or not participate in individual activities as they chose.
This is a step in the right direction, though I’m sure I’m still setting myself up for some coworkers asking me:
At the moment, however, being part of a group where I can talk about it trumps feeling excluded from the group so that I can’t.
This post discusses fat shaming, dieting, and disordered eating patterns.
Recently at The Curvy Nerd, Alexa expressed her frustration with other Internet commenters who evangelize (and cast judgment) via the “sheer willpower” diet:
And, for the record, the SHEER WILLPOWER diet of which I speak is the imaginary one that Not Fat People tell us about: “Oh, don’t you know that all you have to do is eat less and exercise more? Put down the Big Mac!” Oh, jeeze, I didn’t know it was that simple!
And certainly, it did take a lot of willpower to restrict my caloric intake to an amount that was — while not low enough to constitute a starvation diet — was significantly lower than what my body needed to maintain reserves of physical stamina, mental concentration, and emotional stability. It took willpower to shun, in any amount, the foods I perceived as unhealthy. It took willpower to select exercise activities with the sole goal of calorie-burning efficiency rather than discovering and respecting my body’s needs and mind’s desires.
It took even more willpower to reorder my thinking to believe this was healthy. And it required a metric fuckton of the stuff to silence my doubts that I was happy in this life where I pinned my hopes on the slimness of my body.
But as Curvy Nerd commenter Robin pointed out:
One thing I think a lot of people don’t understand is that no matter what size you are, it takes a lot more willpower to accept yourself than it does to starve yourself. Denying onself food is easy, learning to have a healthy relationship with it is much, much harder.
It’s taken more willpower to experiment with exercise until I’ve found types I enjoy and negotiated ways to fit them into my daily or weekly routine. Yes, really — because it’s meant trying a variety of exercises that I don’t enjoy and giving myself enough time at each one to determine whether the culprit is the exercise or the unfamiliarity. It’s meant setting goals for myself that go beyond body measurements.
It’s taken more willpower to give myself permission to eat or not eat a food as I want — to refuse to guilt myself for it afterward, to untangle myself from assigning morality to foods.
It’s taken more willpower to deconstruct the bodies I see represented as normal and good television, movies, and advertisements. To realize that when a very narrow range of body sizes is presented as all of the bodies that we’re going to label “good” — it’s an artificial standard that a lot of people have a stake in perpetuating. To try to remove myself as a stakeholder on a daily or hourly basis — that takes even more willpower.
Even with that revelation, it’s taken two metric fucktons of willpower to stop judging other people’s bodies — to check myself and try again whenever I fuck up and body-shame. It takes three metric fucktons when that body is my own.
On my computer right now this instant, there are seven different articles and ads reminding me of all the ways society and consumerism wants to tell me that my body is not good enough. It takes SHEER WILLPOWER to tell them to fuck off.
“I blame my parents.”
I’ve been talking with a few people in real life about body image and struggles with weight. The above sentiment seems to be a common thread. While the specific connection varies, at least a few people I know link their current body size to their parents.
In some cases, this link involves genetic disposition, which I think makes sense. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see:
(I grew up being told that I didn’t look like anyone in the family — at least compared to my brother and sister, who more clearly take after my dad’s appearance — so these recognitions are important to me.) It makes sense that some of the traits I inherited — like bone structure — might correlate to a higher body mass for my height. Similarly, I can see where other traits — like full cheeks and a strong jawline — might lead to a fatter appearance, regardless of their negligible affect on my weight.
And if that’s true for me, it’s likely true for at least some others. Some of the blueprints in our genetic codes influence the body shape we present to ourselves and the world. At this point in life — when we don’t get to choose our parents and as we already exist in the world — it might be a matter of playing the hand we’re dealt.
In other situations, folks I talked to spoke of blaming their parents for childhood eating habits. In the interests of full disclosure, these are people who — as adults — have settled on a basically whole foods diet (not restricting or counting calories or other nutrients but basically trying to avoid processed foods as much as possible) and basically have the access (money, time, and proximity to quality grocery stores) to sustain it. So — particularly assuming that they grew up with a socioeconomic status equal to what they have now, which I don’t know to be true — it’s maybe more understandable that they’re critical of parental choices to prepare, pack, and serve more processed foods.
I will say this: For a number of years, I was functionally the oldest child living in the house. I learned to cook pretty early on, and a good number of the meals I was expected to prepare included macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, Spaghettios (with franks!), and — if I was imbued with an extraordinary amount of trust on any given day — canned tomato soup and grilled cheese. In the whole foods scheme of things, none of these meals was particularly nutritious, but all of them shared two redeeming qualities: 1) they were simple to prepare, mostly only requiring the ability to warm ingredients; 2) each had a shelf life of approximately forever, meaning that my parents could purchase them in quantity each payday without fear of them turning rancid before we ate them.
But mostly, in terms of parents and body size, what I remember is my mother. Not that I remember her as a fat woman or a thin woman because over the years, she’s been pretty much all the sizes. The vast majority of who she is — her friendliness, her enthusiasm, her intelligence, her compassion, her sociability, and most importantly her worth as a person — hasn’t changed the whole time. Just the color of her hair and the shapes of her body.
However, when I think of my mom and her attitudes about bodies — specifically her body, my body, and my sister’s body — I don’t remember what she looked like at any given point in time. I just remember the actions and reactions. The months, perhaps post-New Year’s resolution, when all artificial sugar was banned from our diets. The mixed messages of being told to “go out and play;” told that we should exercise because it was good for us, where “good for us” implied achieving or maintaining a “skinny” weight but never being joined in activity for the fun of it; the inability of my body to meet her approval.
I remember one time, I was in middle school, and my mom was helping me find a themed outfit for some type of school spirit day. She dug through her closet and trunks and found some kind of maroon jumpsuit. (I don’t remember what the spirit day was, so I have no idea if it was at all appropriate for that.) I tried it on; it didn’t fit, too snug in the shoulders, ribcage, and butt.
Mom frowned. “I don’t know why you can’t wear that. It fit me in college; I can’t believe it doesn’t fit you now.”
I’m not sure if she intended it maliciously. Probably not. But the message that statement sent was that my body was fatter than it should be.
I want to be clear here. While I do think that my mother’s attitude was likely a causative factor in my own developing relationships with food and my body, I don’t think either of my parents are to blame for my current size. Because, quite simply, I don’t see my weight as anything deserving of blame.
I recently found The Curvy Nerd and on it, a post titled Is dieting anti-feminist?. I suspect that my current incarnation with dieting is not what the author means when they talk about the term. Also, I think I will ramble and reveal massive insecurities — hence posting here rather than as a comment over there.
About a month ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and endometriosis in my rectum and sigmoid colon. (The endo diagnosis itself isn’t new, but the additional location is like a bonus feature of the most unwelcome variety). Via doctor-recommended elimination diet, I’ve discovered that my body is much happier when I remove dairy from my diet. Well, this is true at least for my gastrointestinal system and the portions of my reproductive system that have taken up residence within my guts. For the rest of my reproductive tissues scattered throughout my pelvic region — who knows what they want anymore? But my poops are manageable again, so that’s something.
On a very carnal level, giving up dairy has been tough and frustrating. Whether I’d ever consumed excessive quantities of dairy before, I can’t deny that my emotional attachment to some very specific food items:
Going deeper, I can’t help but think this is linked to how my mom regarded food while I was growing up — and, if I’m being honest with myself, even now. She tended to restrict herself and us (my sister and me) from certain “bad” foods (the exact foods could vary depending on her target diet at the time) for weeks or months, then purchasing them and eating multiple portions of them at a time, then feeling guilty and so restricting them again. When we were younger, my sister and I weren’t privy to this periodic eating of the “bad” food in quantity, so mostly what I remember is the restriction. And I remember very vehemently that I did not like the restriction. It felt…
It felt, not like saying, “This food is bad for your body,” but rather, “This food will make your body bad.”
I won’t say I’ve never restricted foods or calories of my own volition, but I have never done so in a healthy way or at a time when I was physically and mentally healthy otherwise.
I did it in high school, eating “cool” foods — in our lunchroom, that was candy bars, Mountain Dew, and tater tots — while the people who mattered to me were looking but restricting to “make up for” my “junk food habit” when they weren’t.
I did it in college, after I was assaulted. I knew I couldn’t keep food down normally most of the time. Instead of trying to get at the heart of that — which, in fairness, I was maybe not ready for just yet — I skipped meals, stretching out my portions (e.g., holding over a cookie from brunch to get me through dinner) and limiting myself, when I could, to bland foods (toast, bananas, etc.).
I did it after my last relationship went (visibly) bad, and my ex started making passive-aggressive comments about how he hoped I wouldn’t gain any more weight. “Because rule number one is no fat chicks.” I’d skip breakfast and eat salad without dressing for every lunch just so I could come home and eat whatever (I cooked) for dinner to prove that his bullshit commentary wasn’t getting to me.
Except, of course, it was. They all were.
I have a long history with the idea that commentary about my dietary choices is a commentary about my body, about me.
There was a moment I recognized that and a process of growing to live with it. I did a lot of experimenting, determining which foods I actually felt good eating (black bean salsa, ahi tuna, the first perfect cup of coffee in the morning) and which I ate out of boredom or ubiquitous availability (potato chips, iceberg lettuce, ranch or Italian dressings). I experimented with eating for nutrition versus eating for physical satisfaction versus eating for emotional satisfaction — and decided that for me, healthy eating involves a balance of all three.
Now, as that balance shifts, I’m observing and adjusting. Certainly, eliminating dairy is aiding my nutrition (as it’s reducing the amount of GI inflammation). And to a certain extent, it’s helping my physical satisfaction: It’s harder for me to feel satiated by eating the same dish sans dairy (which makes sense, since it removes some calories from the meal), but at the same time, not having jet-propelled feces is a plus. In terms of emotional satisfaction, though, that’s where I’ve had the most difficulty.
I bristle at the idea that I need to eliminate a category of food entirely; that brings to mind the “your body is bad” ideas I internalized over two decades ago. Even if it’s a food I ate only in small amounts or only infrequently, it still feels stifling to decide I’m not going to eat it at all. Even if I’m the one making that decision.
Moreover, it occurs to me that each of my lamented dairy examples is part of a food ritual for me.
My morning coffee is about more than the caffeine: It’s about the aroma that wafts through a Midwestern winter house, coaxing me to be up before the sun. It’s about coming in out of the cold — shoveling snow or shoveling stalls — and finding warmth to refuel. It’s about an excuse to meet up with friends and family — “Hey, want to get a cup of coffee?” With that same line, it’s a reason to extend a fantastic first date.
Milk chocolate is pretty much my school’s go-to comfort food. I’m notorious for keeping some in my drawer, available for first year teachers and anyone who’s had an exhausting day. It’s smooth and sweet and a shared experience: When I bite into a Hershey’s mini on a PMS day, I’m getting the same physical comfort from someone who does so a week earlier or later on account of non-hormonal stress. I can still keep the chocolate on hand for others, of course, but on some level, opting out of the food opts me out of that shared food experience.
And pizza. For me, it has always been a celebration food, whether it’s a birthday or promotion or making it through the entirety of a school semester without once cussing in public. And yes, for that celebration food to have the same emotional impact, the cheese has to be on the pizza, just starting to crisp golden brown and to dribble down the pie, all melty-like.
That food ritual is important, and it hurts to let go, but giving it up is my choice. Still, I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s not at all related to my appearance. My primary reason for restricting dairy is the hope of eliminating projectile poo, yes. But I’d be lying if I said I’d be sad if eliminating my GI inflammation didn’t reduce me a waist size or so. Because a small body size was conflated with a “good” body when I was young, because that’s the image mirrored back to me in so many advertisements and movies now, because talk of weight loss is so prevalent in current societal discourse, it’s hard not to want that.
And I think, if I can’t escape that want via a doctor-prescribed diet for a non-weight-related issue, then I think it’s not fair to ask for more from others.
Whether others can diet while feminist? That’s their call, not mine. Whether I can diet while feminist? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that my diet always falls in line with my feminism. Because some part of me conflates “food restriction” with “not good enough,” and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get away from that.
