FEED ME (Edited by Harriet Brown)

Subtitled Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image, this book of essays is a must-read for any woman, of any age, who has ever felt inadequate about herself. 

Each of the contributors writes from personal experience on subjects ranging from cultural customs, eating disorders, family pressure, shopping for clothes, feminism, grief, health food, and cooking as an expression of love.  One size 14 author recounts her experience shopping with a thin friend in trendy stores where the "plus sizes" (bigger than 6!) are stored in the back room, presumably to avoid shocking the more desirable thin shoppers.  Another describes her Jordanian family, where eating without utensils is the norm and feeding children huge, choking portions of food by hand is considered an expression of love.

One woman, whose father grew up starving in Eastern Europe during WWII, learned to eat with lightening speed in order to avoid having her father finish off her food after gobbling up his own.   After several choking episodes she finally learns as an adult to slow down  and chew.  Another writes about her arrival at college, where the astounding excesses of food in the dining hall seem like miracle to her after years of living with a mother whose cooking repertoire consisted of 4 inedible meals and who never gave a second thought to keeping enough food in the house to satisfy her hungry children. 

The most memorable essay is the story of a woman overcome by grief after her fiancé dies unexpectedly just 2 weeks before their wedding.  After consulting psychics, therapists, and medical doctors in an effort to assuage her grief, she meets a man and moves in with him after only 3 weeks.  As their relationship develops he begins to undermine her self-esteem by controlling her eating and criticizing her whenever she eats high calorie treats, but she stays with him because she is afraid to be alone.  One day she shares a dessert with a friend, taking a very small sliver of cake under her boyfriend's disapproving gaze, and he responds by asking her how she can do that to herself, be so uncaring about her weight and her looks (despite the fact that everyone else who cares has told her that she is gaunt and too thin).  Eventually she meets a man who loves her normal-sized self as she is and suggest sharing TWO desserts so they can each try both.

Feed Me is more than a book about food.  It is a book about learning to nurture body and soul, to be healthy and happy and fulfilled as a woman and a person, to accept that real beauty comes from within no matter what size you are on the outside.  I've described just a few of these often poignant, always insightful essays. I hated finishing the last one.  These are not "fat" stories or a collection of essays by people who have overcome various eating disorders, although some of them have.  They are thoughtful vignettes from the lives of real women who are not afraid to admit that they are not perfect.