My father, on my left, was ashen, clearly shaken by the brutal display. The insides were steamy red and pink and yellow.
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Later in the day, the doctors showed videos of the surgerycameras and surgical tools in slick inner cavities cutting, pushing, closing, removing essential parts of the human body. There is nothing sadder, I thought, choosing to ignore why I was sitting in that same room, choosing to ignore that there were a great many people in my own life who saw my body before they ever saw or considered me. It was all about him and how he saw her body. As she interrogated the doctors, her husband sat next to her, smirking. I had neither questions nor answers, but the woman to my right, the woman who clearly did not need to be there because she was no more than forty or so pounds overweight, dominated the session, asking intimate, personal questions that broke my heart. That is, of course, if we continued to delude ourselves that our bodies were our biggest problem.Īfter the presentation there was a question-and-answer session. What those doctors offered was so tempting, so seductive: this notion that we could fall asleep for a few hours, and within a year of waking up, most of our problems would be solved, at least according to the medical establishment. We would lose 75 percent of our excess weight within the first year. Bad news: our lives and bodies would never be the same (if we even survived the surgery).
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We could die on the operating table or succumb to infection in the days following the procedure. And of course, there were the surgical risks. Our bodies could be prone to dumping syndrome, a condition whose name doesn't require a great deal of imagination to decipher. We learned how our bodies would be nutrient-deprived for the rest of our lives, how we would never be able to eat or drink within half an hour of doing one or the other.
#THE BOOK HUNGER BY ROXANE GAY HOW TO#
The book is full of snappy soundbites, powerful little nuggets of truthful goodness.A psychiatrist talked to those of us assembled about how to prepare for the surgery, how to deal with food once our stomachs became the size of a thumb, how to accept that the "normal people" (his words, not mine) in our lives might try to sabotage our weight loss because they were invested in the idea of us as fat people.
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This world and its unwillingness to accept and accommodate me are the problem.” Also good: And violence, of course there is violence: violence against the fat, easily relatable by women with disabilities, as most all of us have been sexually abused at some point in our lives.Īnd it covers the piece about realizing that the problem is not her, as she says, “I recognize that I am not the problem. That is precisely what happens with disability.īackhanded “compliments” like, “don’t say that about yourself” (similar to, “but I don’t think of you as disabled!”) are delved into, as is sexuality – denying oneself kindness and gentle touch, by dint of thinking ourselves unworthy. It covers the public record piece: that when you are fat, your body becomes fodder for public concern and conversation, people always having your “best interests” at heart.
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The existence of self-consciousness about space, striving for invisibility in public because of the the presence of so much visibility, so much difference. It covers access: from the helpless feeling of rage for lack of foresight with regard to physical accommodation in chairs, airplane seating, to tables in restaurants (and trying to figure out things ahead of time so that she will know how accessible it is). The book is loaded with pieces that you can directly apply to experiences with disability. It intersects race and culture pretty consistently.