When I was in first grade—the same age that my daughter is now—it for some reason was a part of our physical education to be weighed publicly. The number of my weight had never mattered to me. It was an item that was written down by doctors, a method to show growth the same as measuring the diameter of our heads. But on that day, as my weight was called out for all to hear, my thoughts on my body and what I put into it were forever changed. I was taller than the majority of my peers, I was lanky and long. I had the body of a girl who grew up chasing chickens and riding horses. Of pretending to be a princess high up in a tree that became a castle conquering all the woes that seemed to only befall the royally born. But princess was I no longer. As our curly-mullet and whistle-bedecked teacher screamed 42 pounds, I became the thing chasing the tiny 36 pound nobles around. I wasn’t twee and tiny. I was ogre.
The very body that had been bucked off horses only to grab a fistful of mane and hop back on, that used to test strength by grabbing electric fences, that had been run over by snowmobiles, chased by feral dogs, and created worlds all inside my mind where women always came out on top, that same body turned into the thing that made me depleted for years to come. I noticed things I never had before. I saw the thickness of thighs, bellies, and arms in various shapes, and knew deep down that anything that protruded, poofed, billowed in any way was to be avoided at all costs. As I reached high school, I ate in all the ways that people said were right or not at all. I exercised excessively, would wake at 5am to run or do my mother’s exercise DVDs. When I found that my fear of barf would keep me from what others swore was the only way, I turned to laxatives and would find myself post crap, blacked out on the bathroom floor. If you told me it would make me thin, I did it, no matter the cost.
As I got older and saw how thoroughly tainted my view of my own body was, I did my best to achieve strength, but the covert reason was always there. The obsession never ceased. Health was at the forefront, but health was perceived only by how I looked naked, how far I could push myself to run, and how many exercise classes I could book in a week. I’ve been obsessed with food since the screeching of my poundage reverberated off the wooden walls of that gym. Now I write about it. Now I taste and try, I bake and cook. I burn my hands and risk diarrhea all for the love of a solid bite. But there are moments still where I’ll feign fullness only because a woman shouldn't eat that much food, should never clean her plate, should always leave the table a little bit hungry.
And frankly, I’m starving. After November 5—my husband too ill to eat—I ate cake from a takeout container not even bothering to cut a slice, I tore tiny wrapper after tiny wrapper of my children’s Halloween candy, I crafted meals wholly meant to make my soul sing a song that I think it forgot the lyrics to so very long ago. But the more I ate the more I found myself humming a familiar tune. Since an age where joy was stolen too soon, I’ve been eating and not eating so that I am desired by men, so that women will deem me worthy of beauty. And all along I was feeding the machine that I hate. I was complicit in my own downfall. The only way to scream that song again, is to fill my body with the joy it has lacked, with the happiness and freedom that is pitifully being threatened by the very people who told me nothing tastes as good as thin feels. America cast their vote that women are other and lesser and unworthy. In the face of it all though, and in spite of the men and women who chose this future, I tip the plate and lick it clean. I am ogre. My skin a chartreuse hue, my body hulking, a roar barely held behind my lips.
I feel helpless and restless. But even protest comes in the form of food. Every restaurant I visit, every ingredient I buy, every meal I cook is a way of pushing back. A tiny fuck you to those poisoning us from the ground up. I’m well aware that the goal is to eventually strip me of everything, but while I can, I will eat solely for joy and for the good of it all. Every meal. Every snack. Every bite I will savor. The world will burn one way or another; while I still have the chance, I will eat. Goddamn it, I will eat.
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