is there too much junk in this trunk?

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If food and I were in a relationship, my Facebook would read: “It’s complicated.” We need each other, yes, we even love each other, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get on each other’s nerves every so often. We just, you know, don’t want to be that close. At least not from my side anyway. I don’t even know what food thinks, he’s always been so closed off, you know? Doesn’t really communicate. But at the same time, he chases me up and down and around and yeah, I mean, talk about temptation—I can never say no. 

The following essay will give a thorough (and imprecise) account of the many experiences that explain why I’ve used food, primarily in excess, to rebel against the world. I’ve used it to rebel against models, magazines, stereotypes, society, and consumerism. Also, to rebel against aesthetic discourse and those who hold beauty as the only measure of value, that prefer form over concept. And, though I’ve never been entirely sure who I’m fighting, food has always felt like a war zone to me. There have been very few times when I’ve actually felt comfortable with my weight and wasn’t drowning in dissatisfaction in front of mirrors and fitting rooms.

I spent so many years of my life thinking: Is there too much junk in this trunk?

The first anecdote is as follows: I was destined to be a fat piece of meat the minute I was pushed out of my mother’s uterus.  My first year on Earth, my mother hired a nanny named Hilda—a name I’ll never forget. I blame her for the series of unfortunate events that have haunted my eating habits ever since. She fed me four bottles of milk every day instead of two, six instead of three, whatever. What matters is that she was giving me double the amount of milk that a baby should receive. That ruined my life forever. I got used to double the amount of food a normal human being needs, and I don’t think I’ve ever been able to break that habit. 

The minute my mom found out about the overfeeding she took me to a special clinic for babies with eating disorders. I forgot to mention, we were in a developing country, and I was the only obese baby in the room. Talk about being a Fruit Loop in a bowl of Cheerios. The doctors put me on a diet. I hadn’t even spent a complete year on this Earth and I was already on a fucking diet. I received less milk than I was used to and my mother tells me that I would cry like a baby. Oh wait. I was a baby! A baby on a diet. Can you imagine anything worse?

The second story happened many years later. When I was around thirteen years old I was completely in love with this guy I liked to call my best friend—we all know how that goes. His name was Ignacio Perez Tello and he wasn’t the slightest bit attractive. We did, however, have incredibly long conversations on the beach at night and he would ride his bike to my door every morning. He was too shy to come in but would stand on the outside patio and ask my mom if I was home—what a cutie. He also called me Michelin, like the tire company. He made fun of my legs, my ass, God knows what else. I didn’t really care, or didn’t think I cared. 

One day, while playing spin the bottle, Ignacio Perez Tello said that he liked me “a good twenty percent.” Twenty percent! Where was the other eighty? I have no idea. I still remember the feeling in my stomach, the piercing, strenuous effect of unrequited love. Or, should I say, of love twenty-percent requited. Fuck you Ignacio Perez Tello, I have never recovered. At the time, I concluded that the reason Ignacio Perez Tello didn’t like me was because of my huge legs, my ass, the extra material on the southern hemisphere of my body. That eighty percent that didn’t want me was an eighty percent that was ruled by aesthetics. What about my brain? What about our conversations? Not long after, that eighty percent was conquered by a girl with a smaller surface area. I think this might have been when the food rebellion started. You want to see a big pair of legs? I’ll show you a big pair of legs, my dear. I decided to eat without giving a fuck. 

Then, when I was about sixteen years old, I started to notice that more than a handful of my classmates at the time, girls I considered smart, disciplined and amazing human beings struggling with anorexia. I saw one of them collapse under the pressure of a strict diet, forced to eat mozzarella and pitas for dinner for an entire year. Another one, missed classes for almost a semester. The last one I can recall, had issues during the school play, a show we had practiced for more than 6 months. It was normal to see girls eating one green apple during the entire school day and fantasize about going to sleep so they could wake up the next day and have breakfast. It was too painful to watch them hurt themselves, and especially, see teachers unable to get them out of the holes they were digging up for themselves.

At the time, I was a teenager and I was stupid. Instead of speaking to my classmates about this directly, I gossiped about it. It was in the locker room after swim class. I still don’t know why I said what I said, but it reached the wrong ears and cost me a year of intense guilt, awkwardness and confusion. It was already tough enough to see girls I admired for their brains and hearts, being tortured by their bodies. Now, I had to deal with having been mean about it also. Fuck society, I kept saying. A part of me wanted them to wake up and realize what was happening, and the other part, I have to admit, admired their commitment. I couldn’t be anorexic even if I wanted to. Then again, I’ve never wanted to. So, for every bite they didn’t take, I took two. It was my way of channeling the anger. Maybe. I don’t know. 

I know what you’re thinking, I do—she’s not that fat, why is she writing this? And that’s exactly why. Being fat would mean I lost the fight completely, but being medium-sized, or “built” as people like to call me in the U.S., means I am, well, still fighting. The gray area is usually much more dangerous than the black or white area, just as cleavage is more interesting than bare boobs, or how watching someone hold back tears is more compelling than seeing them cry. I have always lived in that war zone, between workouts and ice cream, wine and lettuce, love and hatred, invincible summers and dreadful, horrific, sugary winters. I just wish I could wake up one day, eat everything I want to eat, and be skinny forever. Lose the junk in the trunk, lose the hips, lose the legs. But do I really want that? I’m not sure. 

I may not want to admit it, but the parts of my body I have a problem with, and that Ignacio Perez Tello (apparently) had eighty-percent of a problem with, are the exact same parts of my body that make me who I am. A pair of wide hips, huge legs, an ass—JLO and Beyonce wish they had my ass. This ass has been chasing me since I was, I don’t know, eleven years old, and walked the streets of Lima in the summer. Construction workers would yell obscenities at me, things I didn’t understand. I was certainly forced into the anatomy of a woman when I was still a child. Maybe rebelling with food meant I didn’t have to be noticed. After all, an increase in weight makes it more comfortable to walk down the street. Nobody yells at you, nobody notices the chubby girl. I know this sounds a bit fucked up, but please bear with me.  

Being bigger than the people I grew up with, in my own fucked up mind, meant I didn’t have to compete on the same grounds. They were wanted for their looks. I was wanted for my brain. By eating more food, I was telling the world, “I don’t care what you think of me. I have other things going for me. I’m the chubby girl so you better laugh at my jokes and get on with it. Don’t try to flirt with me, I will not reciprocate. I don’t want to be the hot one, I want to be the smart one.” Losing weight would mean giving in. The more my friends would diet, the more I wanted to order burgers, fries, and ice cream. Ordering a salad would mean that I care. And I don’t! But I do, of course I care. Everybody cares because everybody wants to be attractive. 

I discovered this weird coping strategy a few years ago. It came up when my therapist and I were talking about my love interests and how I tended to place them all in the friend-zone. Being the attractive girl in the room would paralyze me. The pressure of that would kill me. I grew up in a society that placed way too much emphasis on the superficial and, though I was always well-liked, I never had the guts to go flirt with a guy out in the open. Mainly, I don’t like flirting because it leads to dating, relationships, having to open up to someone, mentally, physically…I can’t. I can’t! I am petrified of the idea that I’ll have to commit to someone, not because I’m scared of not being able to uphold the commitment, but because I’m scared of the pain I’ll experience if that relationship ceases to exist. 

Note from the author (2023)

Esta es la primera vez que publico esto en público, valga la redundancia. Tiene 8 años calentando banca en mis carpetas de Google Drive.

No existe forma original de hablar sobre nuestra relación con el cuerpo. Me hubiese encantado encontrarla en este ensayo pero fallé. Este personal essay–rótulo que usan los expertos para denominar este tipo de textos–es sin duda un intento valiente pero con huecos, muchos huecos. Tanto es así que cuando lo edité con Will para publicarlo acá, me di cuenta lo poco que había cambiado mi vida y lo mucho que me tocaba tomar cartas en el asunto. Felizmente, lo hice.

La literatura te cambia la vida, sí, o de repente te toca la puerta diez años después a hacerte acordar que todavía te toca hacerte cargo de esa crianza latinoamericana, esa genética tan propensa a la obesidad y esa forma única que tenemos las personas lógicas de querer atar toda causa con una consecuencia y no pedir ayuda sin agotar opciones antes.

Lo escribí en Nueva York como parte del portafolio del BA en Literary Studies, mi segunda carrera. Les advierto una vez más: tiene huecos. No publicarlo, sin embargo, sería negarles a ustedes el placer de experimentar de primera mano, un texto que me pone sumamente incómoda compartir.