Food and love by Holly Lown
Food has always been an expression of love for me. Buy me a pizza and I’m yours. Food is deeply entwined with feelings of warmth, comfort and safety. Unfortunately, the way food is policed in our society has created difficult, challenging and hellish relationships between what we feed ourselves and how we feel about our bodies. I felt this deeply in my teenage years and only as an adult have I learnt to see food as a source of joy.
There have been many moments in my life where food has filled more than just my belly. A sleepover at a friends house where I was invited to the family dinner table to have soup and fresh bread, having expected the usual takeaway pizza in the living room. Coming home for the first time after leaving for University and being served steaming jacket potatoes which marked the first time since September I hadn’t had to cook for myself. On my third date with my boyfriend, he cooked me mushroom risotto because at the time I was a strict vegetarian. All small events which made me feel loved.
As a fat person loving food can be challenging and difficult because of the stigma that surrounds food. When a thin person loves food and openly eats junk food, they might be praised for openly rejecting diet culture, or just seen neutrally as a person ingesting food. If a fat person does the same, they are seen as disgusting, a burden on the NHS and responsible for their own early death. Food is often used as a weapon against fat people. We often feel judged for the food choices we do or don’t make. Doctors berate fat people for eating high quantities of carbohydrates, fat and sugar as if that is the ultimate sin a person could commit. People will look at our plates at family gatherings and ask us if we are really going to eat all of that. Foods fall in and out of ‘healthy eating’ fashion and we are never sure what food will be next in the firing line. Diet culture makes us double-check everything we put into our bodies. All of this contributes to food no longer feeling like it could be an act of love to enjoy.
Fear and shame have crept into our appetites and we have become ruled by the idea that our value is based on what we choose to eat. I am a pig for choosing extra cheese on my pizza. I am a failure for eating ice cream at 11 pm. I need to work on my willpower when I take a second helping at dinner. Food is never free of moral judgement. It breaks my heart when I listen to people talk about their negative relationship with food. It hurts, even more, when they see this fractured relationship as a positive thing and celebrate how much they restrict themselves around food. When they celebrate joining WeightWatchers and being the ‘biggest loser’ that week. When they grimace through their half of a grapefruit for breakfast each morning because they are ‘watching their weight’. We have demonised food and created a deep shame attached to loving food.
I can’t imagine falling back into the clammy grasp of diet culture because I see the pleasure that food brings to my life. The freedom to eat what I want has been so healing for my relationship with my body, I don’t care what people see me as when I tell them I love food. Because food can be so many things. Feeding people is an act of community. We feed people in need and we share our meals with people we love in order to strengthen our connections. Feeding yourself is an act of self-care and an expression of the love you have for your body.
Food is love.
Words and photography: Holly Lown
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