New York Magazine, Suck My Dick

I am standing on so much anger that, were I to shout, I’d hear my voice call back a thousand times before it lost volume. Before it fell, shedding bulk. A gigantic ball of yarn, unraveling.

On February 27th, a man named Matthew Schneier published an article in New York Magazine titled, Life After Food. I pause here to take a breath so deep you’d think I’d been drowning. 

Huge content warning: eating disorders discussed in detail.

During the week of February 27th, we observe eating disorder awareness week. During the week of February 27th, I am faced with the 6th anniversary of the first of five admissions to the hospital for anorexia. During the week of February 27th, I remember my friends–friends, plural–who died because they were unable to allow themselves to eat, or keep food inside.

During the week of February 27th, I remember my mother sobbing, telling me how afraid she was that she’d have to bury her 19 year old daughter. I remember how they slid a feeding tube into my nose and down my esophagus. I remember flying across the country as an attempt by my parents and doctors to save my life. I remember the 11 other patients in the eating disorder intensive care unit—how I wanted so badly for them to know something I didn’t. For them to get better, even if I didn’t know how. 

Matthew–can I call you Matthew–we already know what the fuck Life After Food feels like. Why did you decide to tell this story now, while we’re remembering everything we’ve lost? Why did you tell a story that isn’t the one we’re screaming at the top of our goddamn lungs? Why didn’t you let us speak?

Instead, you’ve decided to write about a drug–I will not name it here–that has gained household popularity for inducing rapid weight loss. Previously kept secret by elite members of society’s most desirable groups, this drug suppresses appetite to such an impressive extent that demand has driven the drug to scarcity.

If this drug were intended only for weight loss, this would be fairly standard procedure. Lack would create demand, it would become overwhelmingly expensive and less attainable, and would fall only into the hands of the few would could afford it. But, without being specific enough to discuss this drug directly, it is used by very sick people to help manage illness. A shortage of this drug isn’t trivial–isn’t simply an aesthetic inconvenience. Sick people are without adequate treatment as a result of this scramble for appetite suppression.

This drug–dangerous in possible side effects, by the way, and growing in scarcity–is the focus of the article published by New York Magazine.

Matthew, if you’d wanted to write about what life is like after food, I would have been happy to take an interview. But since you’ve gone a different direction, let me clear some things up for you. It goes like this: you lose everything. Everything, no exceptions. Family, friends, relationships, careers, prospective lives, all possibility of a future, short term memory, then those pesky childhood memories, feeling in your hands, the ability to stand up quickly, then the ability to stand up at all. 

You lose touch with everyone and everything until you sit in a pile of unwashed clothes and gum wrappers–alone and shaking from hypoglycemia and the knowledge that you are so close to death that you might not wake up in the morning. It makes you miserable, lifeless, and–seemingly most importantly to your readers–it changes your body. Your face sags with age you didn’t earn. Your bottom falls flat–a deflated balloon. Your breasts dissolve. Your belly extends from lack of hydration. You’ve lost everything in your life, and because it’s so important to you, you also look 20 years older.  

If you wanted a first-hand account of life after food, New York Magazine, all of the above is available to you. No? Mine not as flashy? Pity. 

The first woman that Matthew interviewed requested her name be omitted from the article. The name he chose to replace that empty space was mine. Allison. He called her Allison.

This woman, who described herself as having, and this is a direct quote, “a size zero personality” was discouraged by her inability to be as thin as she felt. She was thrilled to get her hands on this drug, thrilled by her weight loss–how her clothes hung off of her body. She’s happy. “Everyone’s getting skinnier!” she says in her interview. By this she means, everyone is injecting themselves with a drug meant for very sick people in order to suppress their appetites.

I need you to recognize how hard this is to read as someone who fought for 6 years to allow herself to eat. Who lost everything in her life to the belief that she was only worthy of love and safety if she did not eat. Who had to cry and scream and be intubated and institutionalized for months because she could not overcome this belief. I need you to hear me when I say that these people are intentionally seeking out the thing that took everything away from me. And they are thrilled.

Matthew quotes Anna, a happy user of this drug, “I’m now one of those people who’s just, like, not that hungry.” She goes on, “And I feel better than everyone.”

Better than everyone. Better than the girl sitting here, who, without guilt or remorse, eats whatever she wants? Who nourishes her body? Who is loved and beautiful and successful even though she is fed? Better than that? I’m genuinely curious, because happiness does not seem to me something that waxes and wanes with one’s ability to deprive themselves of food. That idea doesn’t fill me with envy, it makes me profoundly, indescribably sad. Because what I see is the loss that kind of conditional esteem yields. The kind of emptiness that comes with it. 

Laila Gohar, a New York based sculptor, quotes a friend in her interview with Matthew, “Everyone in LA is skinny now.” After asking her friend, “Wasn’t everyone already?” He responded, “Well the last few people who weren’t, now are.” 

I could blame the pharmaceutical industry–could blame the doctors who prescribe this drug against its intended purpose. I could blame hatred of women more broadly–the idea that being soft, having body fat, is synonymous with unlovability and moral corruption. I could blame the rich for selling us body shapes–could blame the poor for idealizing the rich. I could place blame at every single point from fucking cave drawings to use of this drug. But after hours of reading and rereading the article, I feel only sadness. I feel overwhelmingly sad that, for those who ask for this drug, they truly believe that what stands between them and happiness–fulfillment–satisfaction–success–love–is weight loss. 

I will mourn for the meals they’ll skip–the tastes they won’t try. The thoughts they won’t have–the space in their minds taken up by thoughts of how their bodies look. I’ll be sad for the joy they won’t feel while cooking themselves dinner. 

I’ll hope they unwind their worth from their weight. That they find that their lack of hunger does not make them strong–that softness does.

Matthew, life after food is boring.

New York Magazine, publish something worth reading.