Roxane Gay’s ‘Hunger’ Changed The Way I Viewed Plus-Sized People And I Love It
Should plus-sized people be judged and made to feel like they’re less because they experience the world differently?”
This was the question I faced while reading Roxane Gay’s memoir — Hunger.
Hunger is not a happy book
“The story of my body is not a story of triumph. This is not a weight-loss memoir.”
Roxane Gay’s writing is so confessional and personal that you feel like you’re looking over her shoulder as she writes into her diary, watching her spill her deepest, darkest thoughts onto the pages.
In Hunger, Roxane talks about how she found solace in food after she was raped, her continuous struggle with food, eating disorders and her up-and-down battle feeling desirable and comfortable in her body.
This book helped me understand how my girlfriend, who is plus-sized, thinks and feels about her own body. It has forced me to confront my own perception and unconscious biases about plus-sized people.
Before this book, part of me wondered she didn’t like to sweat (we live in Singapore — sweating in our hot and humid weather is a norm.)
Her distaste for sweating made sense to me logically, (who likes to be hot and sticky anyway?) but to have them so visceral and having an understanding of where these emotions stem from and laid plain before your eyes is a otherworldly experience.
I learned interacting with the world is different as an obese person.
As an average sized person, I found this difficult to understand as challenges like these never crossed my mind.
You have the sheer physical challenges of being big. Everyday activities like walking, standing, dealing with profuse sweating, finding suitable, yet flattering clothes to wear become events people usually enjoy to activities you downright dread.
And so, you avoid doing them. And this becomes a vicious cycle of avoidance and self-loathing, brewing a copious toxic cocktail of disgust, shame, fear and anger which bubbles within you.
It hurt to read her accounts of self-disgust. And it opened my eyes to their experience of reality.
Yet, these everyday challenges go beyond practical, physical difficulties.
”Being fat also changes how people look at you. And often, these changes are not … flattering or kind.”
We often jump to conclusions that if a person is fat, it is somehow his or her fault and they can be ‘cured’. I too, am guilty of thinking this way sometimes.
We hear these comments from well-meaning parents, relatives or siblings.
“Why don’t you exercise more?”
“You need to watch what you’re eating.”
“Aren’t you just lazy?
I think this hits home especially harder for women, who are judged more on their appearance compared to men.
“I understood that to be fat was to be undesirable to men. 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 been pleasing to men, acceptable to society”
Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t
Here is one of those contradictions we may entertain.
We judge people for being fat, yet judge them again when they’re doing something for their health.
When plus-sized people go to the gym to be healthy, do we see them as “good fat people” trying to lose weight, or simply looking to engage in healthy behaviour?
Do we see ‘fat’ as a disease to be cured and thinness as the healthy norm?
Roxane felt the judgement bearing down on her from other people; whether verbally spoken or non-verbally communicated when she moves around in a public space.
“When you are fat and traveling, the staring starts from the moment you enter the airport. At the gate, there are so many uncomfortable looks as people make it plain that they do not want to be sitting next to you, having any part of your obese body touching theirs.”
Hunger exposed my biases and forced me to confront my views.
You know that moment where someone shines a searchlight onto the inner workings of your brain, exposing all the deep and dark thoughts within?
Yeah, it was an uncomfortable read, as I have entertained such thoughts before. Almost immediately, the pangs of guilt hit.
Suddenly, I understood why my girlfriend struggles with self-consciousness or self-doubt with her own appearance. This book is helping me turn a searchlight to my inner perceptions of plus-sized people
I learned what it means to live as a plus-sized person in today’s world designed for otherwise.
This is one of those books that will unravel unconscious biases within you. Its brutal honesty will make you guilty at having them. But, it has also helped me look at my girlfriend with renewed love, compassion and understanding.
Thank you Roxane Gay for being so brutally honest with your memoir.
