Hunger

Hunger

Adult nonfiction
"This book, Hunger, is a book about living in the world when you
are not a few or even forty pounds overweight. This is a book about
living in the world when you are three or four hundred pounds
overweight, when you are not obese or morbidly obese but super
morbidly obese according to your body mass index, or BMI."
Roxanne Gay knows what it's like to inhabit that world. At one
point she weighed 577 pounds and was considered a perfect candidate
for $25,000 gastric bypass surgery.
"What those doctors offered was so tempting, so seductive: this
notion that we could fall asleep for a few hours, and within a year of
waking up, most of our problems would be solved, at least according to
the medical establishment. That is, of course, if we continued to
delude ourselves that our bodies were our biggest problem."
Gay did not give in to the seductive temptation. She continued
to struggle with her "wildly undisciplined" body, vaccilating between
diet and exercise regimens and the lack thereof, at one point becoming
bulemic. In her poignant and thought provoking memoir, Hunger, she
introduces readers to a world in which one is simultaneously subject
to public scrutiny and invisible.
The scrutiny (and accompanying judgment) came in many forms.
Fat shaming is one of the last sociably acceptable prejudices.
(Having a sibling about my height and twice my weight I've heard some
very cruel remarks.) There are also the very eloquent facial
expressions such as the "You're going to eat that?" look directed at
overweight people about to consume foods like ice cream. Even loved
ones, out of concern, can push diets and exercise, making a fat person
feel never really accepted. Gay felt that her family saw her as an
unfinished project, rather than a sentient human being.
Despite this scrutiny, fat women are invisible in the sense of
not being listened to, affirmed, or valued. According to Gay, this is
because their size violates the patriarchal image girls and women are
supposed to conform to.
"This is what most girls are taught--that we should be slender
and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not
heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to
society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear,
but it's something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again,
so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us."
When Gay was only twelve she was gang raped by a boy she liked
and his friends. This traumatic event made her equate desirability to
men with vulnerability to violation. The only way she saw to protect
herself from boys and men was to gain pounds that would render her
unattractive to them.
Hunger is a must read for feminists and allies.
On a personal note, I wish you, my readers, a meaningful Memorial
Day. Enjoy time off work with family and friends. Just don't forget
the reason for the holiday: the men and women who died because nations
haven't evolved a better way to solve differences than war. We really
need to. The more potent our weapons are, the more urgent peace
becomes.
A great big shout out goes out to you with wishes for a lovely summer
that includes awesome book discoveries.
jules hathaway


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