Welcome to the Bi Book Club. Sometimes I'll be reading a book when I suddenly realize, “Wow. This is so bi.” Then I’ll ask myself, “who can I share this with and how?” Bi Book Club is the answer. We'll be talking about books that offer nuanced bi characters, conversations about bisexuality, and awesome bi role models. Here's how it's going to work. First, there will be a brief, largely spoiler-free description of the work and why you should read it. Then, there will be a GIANT SPOILER ALERT, followed by a more in-depth discussion of the book.
Roxane Gay's (#Bi2) 2017 memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, inspired me to start this column. I started reading it yesterday simply because I spotted it at the library and it seemed like a book I should read. I like Roxane Gay's writing; I know that she's bi; I vaguely remember reading reviews of the book when it came out — so why not? When I finished it this morning, I was blown away. I firmly believe that this book should be required reading for every woman and for anyone who ever interacts with women.
In the book, Roxane Gay tracks her relationship with her body through her childhood and into adulthood. She describes the traumatic experience of being raped when she was only 12 years old. She explores what it means to be fat, to be a woman, to be black, to be kinky, and to be bi in the U.S. today. She is painfully honest about her doubts and insecurities but, ultimately, that honesty is liberating, both for herself and for the reader. Hearing a successful, intelligent woman echo so many things I have thought but never dared to say out loud forced me to contextualize and reconsider my own insecurities. Basically, you should read it; it's really good.
GIANT SPOILER ALERT:
I will be talking about the contents of the book in detail in what follows, though I think the book will still be very enjoyable even if you read this before reading Hunger.
Roxane Gay is fat and so am I. I'm not as fat as her. I'm not even what she calls “Lane Bryant fat” — but every time I go to the doctor I am handed the printout explaining how I should exercise more, eat more wholefoods, and try to lower my weight.
One would think that the differences in our fatness would change our internal monologues, that our insecurities would be different, but they are not. There are things that I don't have to worry about because I am smaller than her: I can climb stairs, fit in chairs, walk quickly. But the deeper desire to make myself small, to avoid invading other people’s space, to be invisible and acceptable, was achingly familiar.
Other than being fat, I am healthy. I am active. I eat lots of veggies and not many sweets. I have lost weight in the past, only to find that it didn't make me any happier. One of my most vivid memories of what I think of as the bad times involves getting to the gym for my evening run (I had already done my morning resistance training) only to find that I had forgotten to throw my sports bra into my gym bag. I was 20 or 21 at the time, sitting in my car in a parking lot in Pennsylvania, on the phone with my mom in Oregon, sobbing hysterically because I was going to miss a workout. At that point, I was doing resistance training 5 mornings a week and long runs 3 evenings a week. I was eating 800 calories a day. I was avoiding social situations because I wouldn't be able to meticulously measure and log everything I ate. I wasn't skinny, but I was thinner. I made it down to a “healthy weight" by doing this. The doctor congratulated me; my family and friends complimented me; people were kinder to me. I was still a size 8, a healthy size, not a size at which people start to worry about disordered eating.
Right now, as I sit here, I’m overweight, a size 12/14, but I would never want to be a size 8 or at a "healthy weight" again, especially if it meant that I would have to be that 21-year-old woman sobbing in the car once more.
My story is completely different and yet exactly the same as Roxane Gay's. I worked hard to discipline my unruly body. I did it in the most unhealthy and unproductive way, but that didn't matter — I was still congratulated for disciplining my body.
That's what Hunger came down to for me. Society tells us to discipline our unruly bodies. Body positive folks, feminists, and well-intentioned bystanders tell us to celebrate our unruly bodies, but very few people tell us how to live with our unruly bodies. Loving yourself is wonderful, but how does that help you when you literally don't fit into a chair, or when people assume that you are less worthy than others because of your color, shape, or gender? How are we supposed to navigate a world that is so inherently inhospitable to us?
Although Hunger continually returns to the subjects of fatness and trauma, it isn't really about either those things. It's about creating a life: relationships, romance, happiness. When she talked about her bisexuality, I was thrilled. She first came out (to her family) as gay — for a multitude of reasons. She believed she was gay. She knew she was attracted to women, ergo she must be gay. Her feelings were complicated by the fact that she was still afraid of having relationships with men, but fundamentally she had internalized the message so many of us have received: if you’re attracted to the opposite sex, you’re straight; if you're attracted to the same sex, you’re gay. Like many before her, she believed that she was a "bad" lesbian because she was still attracted to and fantasized about men. Like her body, her sexuality is unruly. As is mine.
In the book, Roxane Gay explores all the ways in which that body is unruly — her tattoos, her height, her sexuality, her size, her race, her gender — and the obstacles that these create. She doesn't ask for our sympathy: in fact, she uses these experiences to empathize with the owners of other unruly bodies, and to gain a deeper appreciation for the obstacles they face. The book offers no simple solutions; there is no easy way to navigate a society that is hostile to your body — that wants your body to be disciplined, to disappear, to be something other than itself. But Gay’s words reassured me that I am not alone; that my own conflicted relationship with my body is far from unique, and that I'm allowed to acknowledge and explore the advantages and disadvantages of my unruly body without shame or guilt.