Many of the aspects of her daily experiences should (and do) provoke empathy, not pity. Unlike most personal stories about weight, this is not a ‘triumph’ narrative about her losing weight or conquering her ‘unruly’ body.Īs a super obese woman (someone with a BMI of 50 or more), Gay details the daily intrusions and humiliating ordeals that she endures from shopping for food (strangers being so brazen as to remove items from her shopping cart), clothes (where options are incredibly limited), boarding a plane (and dealing with non-compatible belt extenders and casual cruelty from other passengers or attendants), going to a restaurant (where careful investigations need to happen in advance to determine whether chairs have fixed armrests), walking down the street (where her body is treated like a public space itself – highly visible but invisible – bumped into, stepped on, shoved aside), even going to the doctor’s office (where she deals with condescension and dehumanization). Hunger is partly what it’s like to be overweight in a fat-phobic world, but more than that, it’s a memoir of Roxane Gay’s specific experience, what her body has gone through, and she’s not speaking for anyone but herself.
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