Saved By the - Doughnut?

Although doughnuts are shaped like life preservers, I had never considered them to be life-saving in any way. Then I read an article about them in the Portland Press Herald, and saw how heavily they featured in the book Olive Kitteridge, and it made me think about them a little differently.

The article “Mainers Hooked on Hole Food” talks about the popularity of doughnuts in the Northeast. We consume more doughnuts than almost any other area of the country, about 49% more, in fact. I was therefore amused a few days later when I started reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which takes place in Maine and mentions doughnuts in almost every one of the stories. 

Why is this? Even I, something of a doughnut snob (fresh-made only, thank you, or from one of the more gourmet doughnut stores - no Dunkin’ Donuts for me), admit that they’re a very tasty treat, but is that the only reason they’re so popular?

According to Tom Piscopo, owner of The Cookie Jar, doughnuts are “an emotional rescue”. Others interviewed for the Press Herald article indicate that doughnuts are “fun”, “a cheap thrill”, and a “comfort food”. And with the economy still being down, something inexpensive, tasty, and comforting may certainly be a “rescue” for someone. What I don’t know is if people recognize that they’re might be eating the doughnut for emotional reasons, and not because they’re hungry? And if so, do they even care? 

They may not. In an interview with Strout about Olive Kitteridge, when asked about the prevalence of doughnuts in the stories, the author replied, “Doughnuts are a source of comfort to [Olive], as they are to many people. She’s not entirely careless about her physical well-being, but the doughnuts represent a certain heedlessness in her desire to appease her appetites.” (p. 297)

That might ring true for many people, not just Olive. But in one story, “Starving,” doughnuts were more than a comfort. They became a literal attempt to save a life.

The story features a girl who is anorexic and in a pretty bad way. “The girl’s head seemed much too large for her body; veins were visible on the sides of her forehead, and her bare arms as skinny as the slats of the chair back she took hold of.” (p. 92) 

A couple of the townspeople are trying to help her, and one of them happens to have doughnuts. “He picked up [a] doughnut. He said, ‘To my memory, I have never begged for anything.’ Just slightly the girl smiled at him. ‘And I am begging you to eat.’

“The girl sat up slowly. ‘Only because you’ve been nice,’ she said. She ate the doughnut so ravenously Daisy had to tell her to slow down.” (p. 94)

Then Olive stops by and also eats a doughnut. She tells the girl, “‘I’m starving, too. Why do you think I eat every doughnut in sight?’” (p. 95)

This exchange hit me harder than almost anything else in the book, not only because it’s about food, but because it strikes so deeply to the heart of our conflicted relationship with food. On the one hand, a girl who is willing to die rather than eat, and on the other, a woman who is willing to eat in an attempt to save herself from a different type of death. 

Can doughnuts, or any food, save you? I can’t truly say. I think they can help you cope, but my concern is when that becomes the only way to cope, or to get through life. It seems to take the joy out of it.

Happily most of us aren’t in straits quite so dire, and we can enjoy a doughnut now and again simply for the fun of it. And personally, I enjoy it even more knowing that I’m not expecting it to save me - I can simply savor the doughnut for itself, in all its fried, baked, glazed, frosted, filled, and/or sprinkled deliciousness.

Haunted by Past Words

I’ve always been puzzled by the phrase, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Maybe the person who came up with it was in denial or somehow truly managed not to let themselves be hurt by words. All I know is that it wasn’t true of me, nor is it of anyone I know who’s struggled with being very overweight. Because while I’ve somehow managed to avoid ever breaking a bone, I was haunted for many years by some of the things people said.

Some of the words were deliberately meant to be painful. People calling me names - cow, porky, etc. - or making fun of me because of my weight. But in some ways those hurt less than the people who thought they were giving good advice, because at least the mean ones weren’t telling themselves they were helping me in some way.

For instance, I was ten when a chiropractor told me that I was heavy for my age. I’m sure she meant well, wanting to let my mom and I know it was something to keep an eye on out of concern for my health, but it was a shock. I had never thought about my weight before, even though I was pudgy, never worried about what I ate. After that pronouncement, though, that all changed. 

She was only the first of many people who tried to talk to me about my weight in what they thought was a positive, helpful way, except that never seemed to work. It left me feeling even worse about my appearance and size, and wanting to turn all the more to food for comfort. I know that more than once I deliberately overate after someone commented on my weight, in a spirit of rebellion, then hated myself all the more for that. Not very helpful.

The worst, though, was the doctor who insinuated that the reason I got a staph infection was because I was unhygienic, which must be the case for someone as heavy as me. I cannot even begin to describe how horrible and humiliating that was. Nor could I think of anything to prove him wrong. I was too battered by my pain, my self-esteem too low to think I could argue with a doctor, nor did I know that staph infections are fairly common and don’t have anything to do with weight.

I’m sure many people have painful memories of hurtful things that were said to them, but when you’re overweight, I feel like it happens more. Given all the focus on obesity these days, it may almost be expected to try to speak to someone about their weight, if they’re very heavy. I just wish that people realized how those words get carried into the future, and the negative impact they can have, no matter how well-intentioned they might be.

Obese and Eating in Public

At the urging of various friends, I’ve been watching back episodes of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. I’m largely enjoying it, but one scene in a season two episode reminded me how little the writers of sitcoms know or care about the realities of being obese.

The show is set in Manhattan, and the scene was in an architecture firm. The receptionist, a woman who must have weighed around 275 pounds or so, pulled out her lunch, a huge salad topped with an entire roasted chicken. Ted, the main character, said innocently, “Oh, you brought lunch for the whole office?” The receptionist fled in tears, and Ted’s friends later told him that he had destroyed the poor woman by his thoughtless comment.

I wasn’t overly surprised by Ted’s obliviousness; I’ve experienced enough of it myself to know such remarks are quite believable. I do question the likelihood of such a heavy woman working in a public position in New York City, which, as you may remember from a previous post, is the thinnest city in the US. While some New Yorkers may be heavy, they’re few and far between and probably not quite that heavy. 

But what really got me was the lunch itself. It is simply not possible in my experience that a woman that obese and sensitive about her weight would eat so much food in a public setting.

This is what people who have never been fat rarely understand. If you’re heavy, and you’re not happy about it (which is the vast majority), the last thing you want to do is draw attention to that fact. From my own experience, and what I know of most others, when I was around other people, I ate minimally and mostly made healthy choices. If I did eat more than usual, it wouldn’t be all at once. I’d put some on my plate then perhaps going back for seconds, hoping no one else was keeping track.

But the real eating, when I truly indulged, was in secret. I didn’t want anyone else to witness me adding to my condition. Admittedly, it was clearly obviously that I had a weight problem no matter what I ate, but at least sticking to small portions and salads maintained the fiction that I was trying to remedy it. Only if I was very comfortable with someone, certain that they wouldn’t judge me for what went in my mouth, did I relax on this, and even then, it was always less than what I truly wanted.

Then again, I doubt the writers of the show were particularly concerned about accuracy. They were just going for a laugh, and as often happens, the fat woman was the punchline. So much about this saddens me, but somehow especially the lack of understanding of the true impact of someone’s weight on how they interact with the rest of the world. I only hope that as time goes on, people gain a little more insight and sensitivity around those issues, and perhaps portray people who are heavy in a realistic and compassionate way.

Is Obesity a Disease?

The answer to that question depends entirely on who you ask. Personally I never even thought about this when I was overweight and  certainly never considered myself as diseased. Dr. Scott Kahan, on the other hand, absolutely thinks the answer is yes, and according to this article (Is obesity a disease?), the IRS agrees, allowing people to take deductions for expenses related to obesity. Yet the same article points out that it is possible to be obese and healthy, and that (moderate) obesity even has some benefits, particularly in older people.

So perhaps the better question is, should obesity be universally considered a disease? If so, what would that mean?

It might be nice in some sense, to get health insurance coverage for some treatment, but what, precisely, would be covered? Would I get discounts on fresh produce or gym membership, or even get them free? But what if I don’t like going to the gym - could I get mileage reimbursement for driving somewhere to climb a mountain, or to buy good hiking shoes? What would qualify as being treatment? Those questions make me nervous about forcing people into certain avenues that might not be the best fit for them.

But for me the bigger question is the societal implication. People who are overweight are already treated poorly and unfairly, in some ways like lepers. Many go out of their way to avoid looking at or touching those who are overweight. If everyone agreed to call it a disease, would this make those people feel justified in their behavior? Or would it elicit more compassion? Dr. Kahan states: “We should extend to persons with obesity the same respect that we extend to those suffering from other chronic diseases.” I don’t disagree that obese people should be treated with respect, but would that actually happen?

I also worry that qualifying it as a disease would just fuel the national obsession with equating thin and healthy. It might make certain practices common, such as the recent decision by the United States Tennis Association to deny funding to teen tennis rising star Taylor Townsend, saying that she is too fat and must first slim down. Would even more people become anorexic or bulimic in an attempt to avoid the dreaded obesity diagnosis?

Which raises another question - what qualifies as obesity? If someone like Townsend can be considered fat, what does that mean for the rest of us? If almost everyone is overweight, does it even make sense to have it as a condition? 

I am also concerned about the issue of personal responsibility. Some people might very well take it as a good reason not to even try eating better or exercising more. Or contrarily, those who are obese and healthy might be discouraged from maintaining their healthy habits if they’re still treated as if they’re diseased.

I still don’t think obesity should be classified as a disease, but opinions will differ. Regardless of the end result, I hope people take it with a grain of salt and remember that weight and the BMI charts are not the only measurements of health, and to trust their own bodies to find what’s comfortable for them.

Becoming My Own Heroine

I had a topic all picked out for today’s blog post until yesterday when I was reading over some of my memoir, and my plans took a detour.

It astonishes me that I can still be as moved as I am by some of my adolescent journal entries, especially from 1994, when I was a senior in high school. I lived it, wrote the words, read them multiple times, and yet I still found my heart breaking for my younger self. Consider.

Maybe living in [Boston for college] will be good - I'll be anonymous [in a city]. That way when someone goes by me and I hear them laughing, I won't have to think they're laughing at me. And I wish I could think that when guys look at me they're not thinking that I'm an ugly cow, but I can't. My body is ever-present in my mind, a barrier lying between me and everyone else, male and female, young and old. I wish my life could be in a book - people in books never seem to be concerned with such things as body image and weight because they're all athletic and trim. They never seem to have fat genes or slow metabolisms or a craving to eat food in secret so no one will stare at them in disgust, wondering why they're eating. Were I in a book, I could face concrete challenges, and overcome them. 

Or this.

I look back into my past, and I wonder what I have lost. I wonder if I shall ever reclaim it. I remember a time when I was not ashamed of my body because I had never been taught that it was wrong, ugly, stretched-out. I remember clearly when I first learned that it was all these things, the betrayal I felt, the shock and shame. I learned my lesson well – I never forgot that I was those things. I remember a time when I laughed as easily as I breathed, when I was naïve enough to think no one would ever hurt me, when I was surrounded by friends.... I now expect people to hurt me, and if they don’t, I wonder why. But expecting it doesn’t stop the pain. 

Can love be worse than this? My heart, broken, keeps skipping back to the same themes. I wonder why people who don’t even know me are mean to me. Am I that ugly? The Mother goddess would accept my body as it is, so why can’t I? Why did I have to be born in the wrong millennium? Why can’t I relate to my peers? Why do thoughts chase in my head so that I can’t sleep at night? Why must magic live only in books? Can I become a book? With magic, I could be beautiful. But that would be false. I don’t think I could live a lie. Why does [all of this have to] hurt my heart so much...? I have no answers to the questions of pain. All I know is the truth of that pain.

It’s hard to even explain what I feel when I read this now, although the irony doesn’t escape me that in both entries I yearned to be in a book - and here I am, putting myself in one. But it pains me so much to know I thought I needed magic to be beautiful, to have a good life, or to overcome the challenges I faced. I cry as I think about how much I lived in constant anguish, physical and emotional, having learned to hate myself so much because of what I ate and how it reflected in my body. 

What makes it even harder is wondering how many others are out there with these same thoughts spinning in their heads, keeping them up at night or giving them bad dreams, or worse, bad dreams that are a reflection of reality. How many teens are afraid to look in the mirror, or walk into a roomful of strangers? How many are unable to accept themselves? How many feel utterly isolated because of their physical appearance?

The only good thing is that unless I read things like this, I don’t remember that I once learned to feel “wrong, ugly, stretched-out”, and mostly I forget what it was like to feel that way. It’s been years since I’ve been embarrassed to walk into a room, afraid of what people will think of me, that I might drive them away with my hideousness. My days are not filled with constant agony of wondering what’s wrong with me, or what someone said about me, or being afraid to ask a stranger for directions, preferring to be lost rather than risk seeing a look of revulsion. 

I have faced those challenges and overcome them, and painful as it is to remember the times before, I’m glad, too, to have the reminder that I have become my own heroine. And somehow that seems the most magical thing of all, the more so because it is real and I can hope that by sharing it, I can remind others that they, too, can find their own way out of that darkness.