Another Way to Starve
By Kimberly Dark
When you’re a fat kid, sometimes you go hungry.
Here’s something weird.
It’s when your family has enough money to buy plenty of food, even fancy food sometimes, like a steak dinner. They stop whenever they want and pick up a little something because who has time for cooking all three meals every day? But somehow, you’re the person in your family who shouldn’t eat.
It’s not like they withhold food, but they make you feel bad for eating it. They want you to say no to food. They want you to want to deprive yourself and why would they want that, if you were actually just as good as everyone else? I mean, why would they? You wonder this because you’re a kid. And you don’t have any answers.
“When you’re a fat kid, sometimes you go hungry.” — Tweet this.
But hang on. Sometimes they don’t feed you because you’re being virtuous and they’re being supportive. You’re on a diet. They don’t feed you even though you’re hungry. They tell you this is your choice and they’re proud of you for it.
They know you’re hungry and that you feel left out when others are eating because how could you not feel left out from the deliciousness and kindness and collaboration and community and belonging and satisfaction involved in eating? And they look at you with pity and tell you how good you are when you’re starving. They tell you how great you’re going to look because clearly there’s something wrong with the way you look now. They know it. You know it. Everyone who has ever seen you knows it. It goes without saying. And yet, they say it often enough anyway, just to remind you. The only way to not be insulted for looking how you look is to actively, and in full view, be starving.
“The only way to not be insulted for looking how you look is to actively, and in full view, be starving.” — Tweet this.
Everyone you know says you’ll look great if you only eat very little and they encourage you to say it too. It’ll make you feel better about starving. It’ll make them feel better about encouraging you not to eat when they know you must be hungry or hurt or left out of loving interactions that happen around food. You’re not just reminded once in a while either. People eat three times a day. Well, that’s officially how often they eat, but lots of people eat more often than that. Not you. That’s snacking and snacking is bad. You’re bad. Your body is bad. That’s what you learn. People who want to live have to eat. But eating is the one thing that seems to prove that you shouldn’t exist at all.
“Snacking is bad. You’re bad. Your body is bad. That’s what children learn.” — Tweet this.
Everyone tells you how gluttonous you are, how overstuffed-privileged-lazy you are. They may not say it directly to you (or they may). They say it about you and about people who look like you. They say awful things as though you aren’t standing right there, or you don’t matter and really are awful.
You are not allowed to eat in a relaxed way. Sometimes you’re not allowed to eat at all. What does that mean? You’re a kid, so you’re still working out all of the strange things adults do, and learning who you are in the process. You hear about people starving for lack of food but you have food — loads of it — in the house where you live, in the stores where you shop, yet you too experience hunger. (And sometimes you over-stuff yourself, like on a holiday, when those around give you permission to eat. Or like when you get angry and can’t stand all that being precious around food, so you eat. And then, you figure out what to do with the shame of having eaten so much.) You know you don’t deserve to claim hardship and yet you live being hungry or rebelling against hunger. What does this mean? You wonder because you’re a child and no one can make sense of it for you even though they’re adults and they seem so sure about the rules. They seem so sure about who you are. It seems like they would understand what all this means but they won’t tell you.
“What do you say to yourself and the children in your life?” — Tweet this.
That’s weird, right? To grow up totally middle class and able to eat, only not able to eat and be love-worthy at the same time. And the shame. Oh, the shame of being wrong, all the time wrong, impossible to erase the wrong-bodied-ness that you express everywhere you go. Hide yourself. Don’t move. Don’t dress flashy. Don’t be loud. No one wants to hear you. No one respects you. No one will ever respect you. Do something about yourself for godsakegoddamnit.
As a kid, how would you even talk about something like that? As an adult, how do you make sense of it?
And now that you know how diet culture works on children and against children, on adults and against adults making it seem like it’s fine for a person’s life purpose to be diminishing one’s body, what do you say? What do you say to yourself and the children in your life? How will you fix this?
Kimberly Dark is a writer, sociologist and raconteur working to reveal the hidden architecture of everyday life, one clever story, poem and essay at a time. Learn more at www.kimberlydark.com.
Kimberly offers two wellness retreats per year in Hawaii. Yoga is for Every Body. Join her; love your body and transform your life.
