As someone who developed an unhealthy relationship with food at a young age, used to be obese, and still regularly struggles with body image, I knew before sitting down to read Roxane Gay’s newest book Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body that I was going to relate to it. But Hunger isn’t a telling of what it’s like to live in a body that’s merely overweight, obese, or even morbidly obese. Gay’s specific story is of how she came to be super morbidly obese, and all the ways it’s colored her present-day psyche, identity, and feminism, as well as her personal and professional life.
After surviving a horrific act of sexual violence at age 12, Gay turned to food for comfort, building layers of fat and turning her body into a massive “fortress” that would protect her and keep men away. In some of the most heartbreaking (and relatable) parts of the book, Gay discusses her relationship with her loving—if not helicopter-parenting—Haitian parents, both constantly concerned about her increasing weight problem and oblivious to the event that started it.
Gay illustrates the way society treats fat bodies as “before” bodies—a weight problem to be handled by any means necessary, and a burden on society. She describes the way large-bodied people are punished for their size, and how she has punished herself throughout her life, feeling worthless and repulsive for struggling to get her unruly, undisciplined body under control. She shines a light on the shame, humiliation, and ridicule that fat people endure in public spaces, emphasizing feelings of being both highly visible and invisible. Gay reports being stepped on, shoved, and targeted with a barrage of insults from men in cars who are displeased with Gay’s refusal to cater her body to the male gaze.
