She can't sit comfortably in theatres or in restaurants or on airplanes. She can't walk fast or climb many stairs or go hiking with friends. While it is cheering to learn that Gay, a super successful author now in her early 40s, says she doesn't 'hate myself in the way the world would have me hate myself', she says she would like to lose weight simply because being overweight makes life hard in ways that people who aren't overweight might not have considered. For Gay, food served the dual roles of 'immediate satisfaction' and making her bigger and therefore safer from further trauma: 'I wanted to be fat, to be big, to be ignored by men,' she says. In Hunger: A Memoir of (my) Body, Gay links a craving to make her body bigger directly to a terrible incident that happened when she was 12 years old, gang raped by a boy she'd once adored and his friends.Īlthough she realises now that she could have told her parents at the time, for many years Gay internalised the guilt and shame that should have sat squarely with those boys, and set herself on a path of overeating that has continued most of her adult life. * Book review: Marlborough Man by Alan Carter Cruel jibes and disdain are directed toward any woman who is overweight, but would surely be felt more acutely by someone who is, say, 6'3 and weighs 577 pounds, as Gay has said she did at her heaviest.
