Hunger

“Today, I am a fat woman. I don’t think I am ugly. I don’t hate myself in the way that society would have me hate myself, but I do live in the world. I live in this body in this world, and I hate how the world all too often responds to this body.”

Gay confronts negative stigmas about fat bodies that are designed to demean and dehumanize. Across media, we are bombarded with air-brushed images of ideal bodies that tell us (especially women) that we are not “good enough” if we do not match these images. Gay refuses to accept this message.

“In these pictures, I get older. I smile less. I am still pretty. When I am twelve, I stop wearing skirts or most jewelry or doing anything with my hair, instead wearing it back in a tight bun or ponytail. I am still pretty. A few years after that, I will cut most of my hair off and start wearing oversized men’s clothing. I am less pretty. In these pictures I stare at the camera. I look hollow. I am hollow.”

Gay describes her physical transformation after being raped by taking us back in time through the pages of a family photo album. She sees herself as a well-loved infant and young child alongside her two brothers, encouraging her audience to visualize a content, happy family. Gay appears as a dreamy, girly child—but her image changes as the photographs move forward in time. Gone are the feminine clothes she once loved. She looks unhappy, her body having transformed in response to trauma.

“Haitians love the food from our island, but they judge gluttony. I suspect this rises out of the poverty for which Haiti is too often and too narrowly known. When you are overweight in a Haitian family, your body is a family concern.”

Gay addresses the difficulty of being a person of size in a thin family—a family in which culture dictates their response to fatness. Gay’s family sees her eating as a problem. They constantly focus on her weight and are invested in trying to “fix” her. This attitude, however, has only led to her resentment and occasional resistance to their efforts.

“I was a black student from a reasonably well-off family, and I was from Nebraska, of all places, the white students didn’t quite know what to do with me. I was an anomaly, and I didn’t fit their assumed narrative about blackness […] Most of the black students only grudgingly accepted me into their social circles because I didn’t fit their assumed narrative about blackness either. As a Haitian American, I didn’t have the same cultural touchstones.”

Gay sought refuge at her boarding school, Exeter, but found herself isolated and lonelier than before. She did not fit in with the school’s white students, but also did not find community in the other Black students because she was culturally different from them. As the daughter of Haitian immigrants who grew up in the mostly white Midwest, she felt out-of-place. She did not adhere to usual narratives about what it means to be a Black American.

“The first few sessions with my counselor, who was a man, were terrifying. I sat on the edge of my seat, staring at the door, plotting all potential routes of escape. I did not want to be alone with any man, let alone with a stranger, in a room with a closed door.”

Gay acknowledges the difficulty that victims of sexual assault may experience when seeking professional help and recovery. After a teacher at Gay’s high school persuaded her to see a therapist, she was assigned to a male practitioner and experienced anxiety. Being alone in a closed room with an unknown man exacerbated her fear of being hurt—fueled by her trauma.

“That summer when I was nineteen years old marked the beginning of my lost years, and my lost years began with the Internet.”

While attending Yale, Gay continued to suffer from trauma and loneliness—but found online communities where she could freely (and safely) share parts of herself. The emerging technology of the Internet was therapeutic, but it also provided an escape route. Gay eventually left school to meet an internet friend in Arizona, disappearing for a year without telling her family.

“On my first day of teaching, a Monday, I threw up before class because I was terrified, though not of the teaching itself […] What I feared was my appearance and what they would think of me.”

Gay continued to struggle with her self-image in graduate school. Before teaching her first-year composition class as a graduate student, she was overcome with anxiety. It was so severe that she became physically ill. She did not doubt her teaching skills—rather, she feared the fatphobia of her students.

“My friendships, and I use that term loosely, were fleeting and fragile, and often painful, with people who generally wanted something from me and were gone as soon as they got that something. I was so lonely that I was willing to tolerate these relationships.”

Gay hungers for meaningful friendships, reciprocal and reliable. It was difficult for her to forge such relationships because of her self-loathing. As a result of her trauma and shame over her body, she tolerated emotional abuse and manipulation because it was all she believed she deserved.

“When you’re overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects.”

Gay notes that people often feel entitled to makes comments or critique her body almost everywhere she goes. Children leer, patrons at the supermarket remove items from her shopping cart, and people at the gym offer patronizing suggestions, as if she has no place in public spaces. These transgressions do not happen to thin people who are considered “normal.” In other words, those in fat bodies are thought of as needing advice or help from others.

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

Gay addresses American culture’s fixation on women’s bodies and weight loss. She cites Oprah Winfrey, one of the richest women in America whose public struggle with weight has defined her career. To be a woman is to be constantly concerned about one’s weight.

“When a celebrity loses weight she is often billed as ‘flaunting’ her new body.

Which is, in fact, the only body she has ever had, but at a size more acceptable to the tabloids.”

Gay notes the link between thinness and femininity through the lens of celebrity. Women in the public sphere are constantly assessed in popular media. Should a woman gain weight, she is publicly shamed for it. Should she lose weight, entertainment magazines often write about her “flaunting” her body when she is simply living her life.

“Before I got on the plane, my best friend offered me a bag of potato chips to eat on the plane, but I denied myself that. I told her, ‘People like me don’t get to eat food like that in public,’ and it was the truest of things I’ve ever said.” 

Gay knows fat bodies like hers are matters of public concern—so much so that people of size cannot even do basic things, like eat a snack in public, without being judged as gluttonous or unhealthy.

“It is only now, in my forties, that I am able to admit that I like myself, even though I am nagged by this suspicion that I shouldn’t.”

Gay confronts her own shame and society’s insistence that fat people are unworthy. It has taken decades, but she now likes herself as she is. She spent years despising herself, which led to abusive relationships and self-harm. Hunger is an exercise in public vulnerability and truth-telling for Gay.

“On my better days, when I feel up to the fight, I want to change how this world responds to how I look because intellectually I know my body is not the real problem.”

Gay addresses internalized fatphobia and sizeism. Though society sees fat bodies as problematic (i.e., America’s “obesity epidemic”), Gay’s body is not the problem. Rather, the problem lies in the bigoted culture that permeates our lives, constantly sending us messages that thinness is “normal,” ideal even.

“To be clear, the fat acceptance movement is important, affirming, and profoundly necessary, but I also believe that part of fat acceptance is accepting that some of us struggle with body image and haven’t reached a place of peace and unconditional self-acceptance.”

Fat acceptance or fat positive activism is on the rise, and Gay acknowledges the importance of this work. At the same time, many people of size have a difficult time accepting their bodies, and she calls on fat activists to welcome such people and make struggle part of the fat acceptance movement.

“I live in a contradictory space where I should try to take up space but not too much of it, and not in the wrong way, where the wrong way is any way where my body is concerned. When I am near other people, I try to fold into myself so that my body doesn’t disrupt the space of others.”

Contradiction defines Gay’s memoir. She recognizes that she is entitled to space, but is constantly concerned about inconveniencing others rather than expecting them to show concern for her comfort.

“People certainly try to shame me for being fat. When I am walking down the street, men lean out of their car windows and shout vulgar things at me about my body, how it upsets them that I am not catering to their gaze and their preferences and desires.”

Gay deliberately changed her body so she would be less attractive to men and safe from harm—but this is not the case. Rather, Gay’s body has exposed her to other harms, including dehumanizing slurs. Because she does not fit the ideal female body type, men feel entitled to harass her.

“When you’re fat, no one will pay attention to disordered eating or they will look right through you. You get to hide in plain sight. I have hidden in plain sight, in one way or another, for most of my life. Willing myself to not do that anymore, willing myself to be seen, is difficult.”

Gay’s two-year bout of bulimia went unnoticed by those around her because of her size and desire to hide. For most of her life, she tried to take up as little space as possible. For example, as a stagehand, she was able to disappear into the background of the plays she worked on. As a writer, she was able to enjoy anonymity for many years before becoming famous. She transferred these skills to her eating disorder.

“[…] it’s insulting to pretend I am not fat or to deny my body and its reality. It’s insulting to think I am somehow unaware of my physical appearance. And it’s insulting to assume that I am ashamed of myself for being fat, no matter how close to the truth that might be.”

Gay confronts those who try to ignore her fatness out of courtesy. To do so is, in fact, not polite. “Fat” is not a bad word, and condescending politeness that ignores the reality of Gay’s body only serves to insult and demean her.

“I see how physical spaces punish me for my unruly body.”

As a whole, the world fails to accommodate fat bodies. Simply going out to dinner is a trial for Gay because most public spaces are not made for people of size. In fact, these spaces actively harm such customers by forcing them to sit in chairs that cause pain or otherwise restrict their movement.

“The bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.”

Because so many public spaces are inaccessible to fat people, these people are often excluded from activities and services by default. At its heart, this inaccessibility is hostility manifested as physical spaces—a hostility that serves to not only demean but isolate.

“I am so much more than hungry when I am home. I am starving. I am an animal. I am desperate to be fed.”

Gay describes her perpetual hunger upon visiting her parents’ home—which has a distinct lack of snacks. This hunger is more than physical though; it is emotional. Even as an adult, a successful writer, Gay yearns to be cared for, seen, and understood. She wishes to receive all that her younger self should have been given after her assault, when she distanced herself from her family.

“I hate going to the doctor because they seem wholly unwilling to follow the Hippocratic oath when it comes to treating obese patients.”

Gay calls out medical professionals’ discriminatory treatment of fat patients. The Hippocratic oath demands that physicians “do no harm,” but for Gay, visiting the doctor’s office is a harrowing experience. It involves entering a physically unwelcoming space in which workers act hostile or judgmental. Physicians often diagnose ailments as weight-related rather than listen to what patients have to say. Gay rarely seeks medical care because of this sizeism.