Hi! This is the author of the story. I'm really enjoying seeing the different reactions to it, even from those who didn't find it to their tastes.
Believe it or not, it wasn't until I was hearing the story read out loud (Eve did an amazing reading, didn't she? I was overjoyed to hear it) that I found myself thinking "I might have written a pretty gross story here." I'd thought of it as very harsh and abject in it's depiction of the body and its functions. But somehow it didn't occur to me how many people would react with pure nausea to it. Given the story's origins, I'm a little disturbed that I've made so many people skip meals.
I'm a little hesitant to reply/address comments on the story just because I fear that once I've said "this is what I, the author intended here" I've killed the discussion a little by setting what the "right" interpretation of the story is...particularly on the postpartum depression ideas...that said, there is one comment I really wanted to reply to. Well, two actually. First this:
Wow. This was about as close as I've ever come to not being able to finish an episode. Since becoming a parent, the baby stuff hits me a lot harder than it used to.
Sometimes I wish I had a dash camera pointed at my face as I listen to podcasts. I think on this one I was squinting the whole time, like I was driving into a harsh wind. I felt like I needed to flinch away from the words.
I just wanted to say, though this may sound a little sadistic, reading this touched me quite a lot.
Really enjoyed this story. I was ready to get all pissy about this woman's narcissism and fat fascism, but then listened on. This is what *all* of those obsessive dieters and so-called nutrition experts sound like to me. I'm a fat girl, I'll never be "beautiful" but I'm never going to be so vain as to go this far.
It may not come as a surprise to people who've heard this story that there was a brief time in my life when I struggled with an eating disorder. The period of time when I was actually engaged in clear ED behavior fortunately did not last long, less than a year. But for a very, very long time after that I still had a highly unhealthy relationship with food and with my body. The difference was, I expressed it in behavior that I and others around me were able to see as normal. Bingeing and fasting is a clear sign of an eating disorder, but going on a series of different diets and frequently saying negative, disgusted things about your appearance is acceptable, even expected behavior for a woman.
It's taken me a very long time to get where I am now. It isn't that I've stopped being insecure. I've just learned to recognize how destructive the thinking patterns I used to have were. I've also come to notice how prevalent a lot of ED language and behavior can be found in "normal" diets and weight loss advice. "Cleansing" diets and the ethos of eating "clean" in particular have a great deal to do with the mindset of someone with an eating disorder, and nothing to do with health in any factual medical sense. Juice-based diets that promise to "flush out your system" while helping you lose weight by filling you with enough fiber, sugar and liquid to send you constantly to the bathroom are indistinguishable from laxative abuse in my eyes.
I'm not saying all diets are bad. There's nothing wrong with altering your diet to be healthier, to lower your blood pressure or to lose weight if that's what you want. It's the attitude of self-loathing, mortification of the body, of dieting as penance for being undesirable or as an attempt to reach an ideal of purity that disturbs me. Having been there, I know how much it hurts. It's a level of stress and strain that can break a person.
I hope that when you put quotes around "beautiful," it's because you meant it facetiously. Being fat doesn't stop you from being beautiful, desirable or lovable. <3
