The overarching theme of the book is Roxane Gay's struggle with her body during her late twenties. The memoir is, she announces early in the book, a story of her body, which, at its heaviest, weighed 577 pounds when she was six feet three inches tall.
Her struggle with her body was rooted in a psychological trauma from childhood. Her eating habits were a reflection of that internal struggle, "about disappearing and being lost and...
The overarching theme of the book is Roxane Gay's struggle with her body during her late twenties. The memoir is, she announces early in the book, a story of her body, which, at its heaviest, weighed 577 pounds when she was six feet three inches tall.
Her struggle with her body was rooted in a psychological trauma from childhood. Her eating habits were a reflection of that internal struggle, "about disappearing and being lost and wanting so very much, wanting to be seen and understood."
She discusses the language that is used to talk about weight and obesity. She argues that the designation for a normal BMI (body mass index), for example, is arbitrary and that twenty-five was selected as "normal" because it was "easy for people to remember." The word "obesity" has a Latin origin that literally describes the source of one's condition: to eat until one becomes fat. However, because the adjective "obese" is directed at people as more of an "accusation" than a descriptor, it does more harm than good.
Gay began to eat in an effort to change her body. She was gang-raped by a group of boys and believed that if she made her body repulsive, she would never be violated again. Thus, in addition to being a book about a young woman's struggle with body image, as well as a book about the ineptitude of our institutions to address the problem, it is also a book about sexual assault and its long-term impacts.
Additionally, the book addresses the way in which sexism informs girls' and women's ideas about how they should look. Gay assumed that being fat would make her undesirable to men because society tells us that women should be small and slender, that "we should be seen and not heard." To be fat would be to invite the contempt of men—"to be beneath their contempt." However, Gay writes, the experience of her rape had already taught her so much about their contempt.
Gay asserts that she became fat not only to avoid men, but to make herself formidable and intimidating so that she would be safe in the future. Her creation of her larger body stemmed from feelings of inadequacy and the false belief that her rape was somehow her fault. However, being fat only invited more feelings of inadequacy and more blame from a society that she believed never sympathized with her pain in the first place.
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