A Book Post

Last week I talked about reading a book that had brought up some unsettled thoughts and unsettling questions in my mind and I thought it deserved a post of its own. That book is Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry. 

When I stumbled upon this book on the library shelves, I didn't recognize the author's name from the Serial podcast, but just by the title, I knew this was a book for me. I was a chubby kid, and when I was about eight or so my father started calling me "Crisco Kid". When I asked him why he told me it was "Fat in the can just like I was" and laughed uproariously. It didn't help that I grew up near five male cousins who quickly latched onto the nickname and tortured me with it daily. I'm not sure this bothered me too much as a kid, but when I think about it six decades later, it strikes me as inordinately cruel.

As a chubby kid who grew up to be an overweight adult, I get almost everything that Rabia Chaudry talks about in this book. No, my mother didn't bottle feed me with half and half nor give me frozen sticks of butter to teethe on, but I can understand Chaudry's associations of food with family and love. The descriptions of her childhood Pakistani food are mouth-watering, and even though she does tend to go on a bit, I also recognized her endless cycles of eating, dieting, weigh-ins, exercise, deprivation, and seesawing weight. I think when you are overweight, that often becomes one of the primary things you constantly associate with yourself, even though you may have lots of other accomplishments.

Plenty of other reviewers have accused the author of fat-shaming and being fat-phobic. I didn't see those things. I read a book written by someone who has always been concerned with her weight and all the things she had to try over many years to "fix" the situation. She says,

"I still don't love my body, I'm not happy with it, just as most people aren't perfectly happy with their bodies. So, yes, it's normal not to love your body."

I feel pretty much the same way, but I don't care much whether this feeling is normal or not. I don't hate my body, I admire all it can do, but I can't say I love my body. Sometimes it's just uncomfortable to live in it, but that doesn't mean I've given up or am ready to stop trying to eat healthily and keep moving. In her memoir, Chaudry doesn’t try to wipe the words “healthy” or “unhealthy” from our vocabulary but pushes us to question where our behaviors and relationships to food fall on that spectrum. “I deserve the joy of food,” Chaudry writes. But she adds: “I also deserve not to harm myself with it". The author concludes with:

“Don't make me feel terrible now, yet another failure, for not being able to feel great no matter what. Every person, I'd argue, has the right to pursue what feeling good means to them.”

I heartily agree. And part of that is no longer thinking of myself as the Crisco Kid. 

I loved the author's audiobook narration, along with the Pakistani recipes she included. "Because everyone has to eat, yes, even fat people...and so many of the best memories of my family revolve around food."

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In case you missed the release of Obama's Summer Reading List (like I did), here it is. I've read two of the books (Hello, Beautiful and Birnam Wood), have tried to read The Wager, and have Small Mercies on hold. Now I'm wondering if you have any recommendations from your Summer Reading List?