2023 was for Girl Dinner. I, you, we as girls ate Girl Dinner most nights of the week, if “dinner” can be at midnight hovering over your desk, debating whether to: read that book, doomscroll IG, watch that half-hour comfort show, or watch that one-hour show you’ve been meaning to start for ages but honestly it’s the riskiest of all your options because it means going to bed late late, like 3-a.m.-not-2-a.m.-garbage-crew late, which is when you’ll know you’ve really messed up. Of course, by the time you decide, you’ve already finished your Girl Dinner.

Men think Girl Dinner is a diet, an attempt by women to eat less. While food always involves a deeper discussion about a patriarchal system dependent on valuing small women, Girl Dinner is no diet. Girl Dinner is resistance, rebellion, and rejection all in one. It is a manifesto, screaming I choose me. Girl, not matriarch or provider or gatherer or cook or girlfriend or wife or partner or second or third or fourth. Girl, only. Only girl.

But 2024 is for the original Girl Dinner, the beast finally awakened from its slumber to rear its hungry head and collect its due: Only Daughter Dinner. Interchangeable with Oldest Daughter Dinner. Firstborn. Don’t let it trick you, ODD is both nuanced extension of and ancient precursor to 2023’s Girl Dinner. And like all great cuisine and flavor landscapes women were mapping before men were tasting, for ODD, the same pillars exist: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Thank you, Samin Nosrat. 

Salt is your best friend. Your blood pressure is too high at all times, according to the doc who will take your insurance today but not next week. Your blood pumps like mad at all hours, from your commute to work to the gym to your sixth-floor walk-up where there is no space for more than a square foot of countertop, so there is no space for rest. But that’s okay. You’re out and about anyway. Those Go Getter genes are strong, probably inherited like the blood pressure. But you’re a Do the Most Barbie who gives 100 percent because anything less is failure. Your heart pumps to the beat of best when busy. But diamonds form under pressure, so pump pump, girl. Like the creepy guys at the bodega, the demons won’t catch up if you walk faster. High blood pressure must offset that terrible circulation, right? The kind that leaves your fingers numb because your nervous system, the little shit, started asking for help as soon as you began staying up late to maintain that high school GPA. Pump pump. It’s okay, though, because the best flavors in life start with salt, right? Salt that meat. Hammer it into the uncooked flesh so what’s tender soon wears an armor of crusty salt. Any piece of meat can be saved with some good salt. Besides, it’s the only flavor you’ll allow yourself anyway. No calories, all natural. Give it a fancy name like Maldon that sounds French (but isn’t) and it becomes a cool girl, so she’s hip. Who needs butter or olive oil or cheese? Who needs honey when the blood is flowing? Pumping. Only child or firstborn daughter, you don’t grow up with weak blood. Your veins are tight and full of the emotions you keep pressed down, preserved under your briny skin, but what’s a little compartmentalization when you don’t want to intrude on anyone else’s flavor? Low pressure equals low effort, but it’s okay. Salt to taste and do it again, just to be sure. After all, it takes a salty bitch to survive this long, to be the first to leave it all behind.

Fat is your worst enemy. Loving or toxic parents, doesn’t matter, only child means only empty plates. Growing up, you’re a good daughter who finishes her plate at home but faces the consequences in the dressing room. There is no pushing around food to disguise how little you’ve eaten, no hiding your odd mealtime peculiarities and eccentricities, but lord, don’t call it an ED or OCD or ADHD. Not at the table, please. She’s a big girl, a growing girl, she needs a little fat otherwise she’s skin and bones. Boys don’t like skin and bones, at least not until it’s too late, the damage is seared in. So fat becomes your worst enemy because it means getting bigger, being seen, taking up space and for the love of god, can’t a girl just go unseen for a little while? Unexamined and out from underneath a microscope slide the exact size of a dinner plate? For once, not the pride-and-joy only daughter (and don’t you forget it). But like fat, genetics are your worst enemy. There are no sisters, only mother. There is no fighting your inheritance, so you inherit it all from the only other woman in the house. You inherit her restriction. The day is too busy to eat, after all. A girl boss girl-fasts. So the nighttime is for food, for comfort. Only when the day is over can you feed. Only when the tasks have been accomplished. Food is a reward for good behavior. Woof woof. You inherit the way your mother prods herself in the mirror, wears clothes to hide herself even though she tells you to speak up, don’t be shy, lean in, be assertive to be heard over the boys. You inherit her decades-long rivalry with fat—a war you didn’t start and most certainly one you won’t finish—before you even know the meaning of a calorie. You grow up wanting to be small until, surprise, you’re closing in on thirty and skinny isn’t cool anymore. Micro? Nah, macros are in. You try to keep up with the changing times (look ladies, we’re free!) and begin scrutinizing your body in a new way. Food is as abundant as self-hatred. You try to shed your learned bad habits, but like fat, it’s hard to starve what’s on the inside. So still, you settle for taking your butter in the form of Chardonnay. Wine doesn’t count. How much fat is enough? How much cushion, how many curves before men can’t read the map and refuse to ask for directions? Simple, they tell you. Fatten up until you get your period back. Healthy women are child bearers, and you’re the last in your line, Only Daughter. After all, no one trusts a skinny chef.

Acid is your favorite food group. When the voices inside your head that scream not good enough or do better and if you can’t do better at least Do More—when those voices aren’t nourished enough to put the hustle in your step on the uneven, rat-ridden pavement of the hectic city you traded home for, your favorite acidic friend Caffeine is there to help finish the job. You move to the Big Pond right after college, and after a few years, which turn too quickly into seven, and then a decade, you begin to understand just how hard it is to function in a city that prioritizes and celebrates thinness. One of the biggest reasons being that there is simply no space for people who take up space (oh, the irony). Strollers, wheels, crowded brains that need to breathe, you name it. So you chug your caffeine to keep going, but realize too late there are no more highs, only returns to a baseline, which goes against everything type-A firstborn daughters and only daughters and only children are taught to fear: the average. Coffee reins (rei(g)ns?) your diet because it’s too late to stop, so you think, well at least the caffeine will keep my appetite small. But your body is the only thing that will go through your whole life with you, and like you, it loves its habits. It learns to crave that other acid, the acid swirling in an empty stomach that screams I’m hungry. That acid wakes up with you after you went to bed on nothing but a bowl of cereal, for the nostalgia you say, but really it’s just because you know it’s what small girls like to eat. Flakes and pebbles for these gals, we eat to be Polly-sized so we can fit in the pockets of menswear since there are none to be found on our own clothes. That acid grows ravenous when you compare yourself to the other women on the street, on the line and online, satiated only when your brain feeds it thoughts like, Restriction just demonstrates control and I can be better if I just try harder. Eating disorder? No, she’s just fit. Health conscious. Organized. All oldest, only daughters are. It’s so easy to disappear in discipline. The acid just means the body is working, churning, burning. The hunger keeps you sharp. After all, who wants to grow all fat and happy.

Heat is the first flavor to disappear with you. You daughters, you firstborns, somehow always last to the firepit, the last to warm your hands and feast on the flame because there is always someone who needs your attention more than you do. The men cry frigid! And stiff! but you don’t care because at first, it’s an honor and armor, knowing you’re as cold on the inside as you are on the outside. Blue toes, white fingers. Everybody Loves Raynaud’s. Hair grows where it shouldn’t, little bastards you pluck on your chin from the PCOS (bless her heart, having children will be hard) and then the sheen of soft fur, i.e. your body’s attempt to keep you warm as you shrink yourself unnoticeable and out of the way, like the world’s worst winter coat for the world’s most self-destructive mammal. Not gonna lie—it feels good, for a while. A cold body is a simple body, an easily managed body. Freeze those eggs, right? Nothing tastes as good as dormant feels. Try warm foods, the doctors say. The oven is your friend. But by now, daughters know it’s a trap. Mothers and wives survived in the heat, which is why sons demand three hot meals a day. (Try some cereal, for chrissakes.) Daughters know warmth just means labor, and after all these generations, you’re exhausted with the baking and the cooking and the heating. We’re Tired Of It™. But don’t fret, soon your body begins to collect warmth in all the wrong ways because you never let yourself Get Heated on the outside. Fire has to burn somewhere and if the heat can’t breathe, it’ll settle for accumulating. The radiator in your shitty apartment certainly isn’t hot, so the only heat you’re getting is inflammation from stress, or so your acupuncturist warns you. Try to relax, be more Type B+. So as your gut bloats with heat, and hormones shift and clothes don’t fit right, and your worst fear of taking up space begins to grow right alongside your swelling, fluid-logged body—that’s when you turn to the crutches, the patterns that promise control. The OCD becomes Only Daughter Dinner and back round again because it’s easy to take control of your body when you can see your edges. There is no tracking calories in a healthy way. Say it louder for those in the back. The OCD to ED pipeline is a canon event and the ODD is always the final ingredient. The inflammation in your frantic, overworked people-pleasing brain sucks the heat from the rest of your life. No boyfriends, but that’s okay because you’re too busy to make hot meals that will nevertheless be cold by the time you eat them. Less food, more alone time, but that’s okay because your bandwidth can only handle Only Daughter Dinner, anyway. You’re too busy for sex, but that’s okay. After all, your only love language is labor. 

Ellen Pauley Goff (she/her) was born and raised in the wilds of Kentucky but now lives in the wilds of New York City. Her short fiction has appeared in the Indiana Review, Hunger Mountain, F(r)iction, Tulip Tree Review, and New Millennium Writings. Her short story “S.P.A.M.” was F(r)iction’s Grand Prize Winner for short stories, selected by Madeline Miller (Circe). Her short story “Baptism” was the Grand Prize Winner of the New Millennium Writings Award for Fiction. Her poem “Southland Eulogy” was an honorable mention in the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize contest. She is also the recipient of VCFA’s Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing, as well as the inaugural recipient of SCBWI’s A. Orr Fantasy Grant for speculative fiction. By day, Ellen works in the book world of New York City, where she also founded and leads a writing workshop and critique group for emerging writers. 

When Jon proposed in a bookstore last summer, I slid my hand into his and said “yes” as readily as I would any question posed by a beloved friend. 

We already knew we’d be in one another’s futures, but not necessarily through marriage; we had shared our reservations in the past about ceremonial traditions and the value the marriage institution holds. Still, I’m British and he’s American, so our hands were tied in many ways. Being wed would enable us to continue building the life we wanted together. As we emerged into the bright afternoon from that aisle of novels stacked floor to ceiling, contentment settled over us. 

Yet that peace was soon shaken when the chatter and expectations quickly followed. Our friends’ opinions had been steadily rising for the course of our relationship, and like the onrush of water above the brim of an overfilled bath, the time had come for their views to be shared with gusto. 

“What’s your plan?” someone asked me two days after getting engaged. “Have you set a date yet?” It took me aback; how could I explain that in the past 48 hours, I hadn’t begun project-managing a wedding? 

“Were you surprised?” almost everyone asked. I’d always reply, “Completely.” I felt compelled to offer people this narrative, abstruse as it was, when actually, I wanted to say, “Not really. We’ve been together for almost five years and discussed marriage at length.” I was leaning into a stereotype that’s typified proposal stories for decades. It’s what those around me expected, maybe even wanted. 

Though many of these remarks were also addressed to Jon, most were directed at me, especially the ones regarding appearance. “You will look gorgeous,” several people said to me, in a tone that hovered between a question, observation, and demand. 

Yes, I was getting married, but I told myself appearing gorgeous while doing so was irrelevant. Initially, I was able to brush off people’s comments. But before long, my thoughts started clinging to them: How will I look on the day?

It wasn’t the first time I’d begun viewing myself like a science experiment. In high school and during my undergrad years, I’d dabbled with various fad diets. I had restricted my food intake, counted calories, and felt a pang of satisfaction when my hip bone brushed against a forearm. Once, during a game of charades at a friend’s house (millennials know how to party), I attempted to act the movie Castaway to a group holding cups of liquor by lifting my tee shirt, sucking in my stomach, and popping out my ribs; in response, someone yelled, “Sexy!” I watched in the mirror as my body grew smaller during those years, along with the bodies of many women I knew, and I felt at ease knowing I was slotting into a popular idea of beauty. I can appreciate now how dangerous a path this can be.

Now, in my early thirties, new insecurities have emerged. I have a heightened awareness of beauty products that promise to “reverse the signs of aging,” and of friends who have frozen their foreheads with Botox. 

The demands of society regarding how a woman should look on her wedding day can stir up likewise alarming behavior. My friend, who married a few years ago, was out for drinks a month before her wedding, with four of us sitting on high leather stalls in a bar playing low music. She gleefully shared details about her upcoming nuptials and explained how the dress she’d ordered was too small, but she was working hard to lose weight to fit into it. 

A silence fell over the table, and perhaps to keep things light with a bit of dark humor, she stirred the red straw in her drink and added in a deadpan voice that her dream, more than anything, was for someone to take one look at her on the day and think, “Oh, someone just give her a sandwich!” as she floated around waif-like in a fabulous dress, pretending only to see admiration in their eyes. 

I’d never waste my time on that when I got married, I told myself.

Therefore, I was more surprised than anyone when I, too, started to scrutinize everything about my own wedding. Jon and I settled on having a courthouse ceremony in Los Angeles, informal and intimate, with only our close family in attendance. We stumbled across photos of a courthouse in Beverly Hills that looked spectacular, and my imagination whirred to life: Us having our picture taken on the impressive steps, me before a magnificent mid-century building at golden hour. It looked perfect. I began researching dresses, sending images to my mother for her opinion; I went to the gym more regularly so the chosen dress would slide on, no problem; I took myself to Sephora and gazed at a saleswoman as she explained how lip liner would make my top lip seem fuller; I watched a YouTube tutorial about eyebrow laminating and seriously considered doing it.

I got into the swing of fashioning a wedding that would look stunning in the way I had seen done many times before. I cared. I did want to look a certain way. 

However, when Jon and I drove to view our stunning chosen courthouse, a security guard told us we had the wrong building. The man cheerfully gave directions to the correct one around the corner, and soon, we arrived at a drab structure. What? I fumed inwardly as we entered the revolving doors to be met by a grumpier personnel. Jon noticed my downcast expression, reached for my hand, and said, “I’m excited to get married to you here. Wherever you want.”

All I could think, though, was that he must be having trouble with his eyes. I was fixated on our dingy backdrop — the gray brickwork, cracked floor tiles, and stale smell that would be our big day. The regret that might linger if we didn’t tick things off in the way we were supposed to. 

I’d lost the point of why we were getting married, as I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. 

The fault didn’t lie with the individuals around me for their uninvited comments, or with me, for reacting negatively and sharing my opinions right back. Rather, I determined it was the wedding industry creating my angst, a capitalist model worth $70.5 billion that, on average, extracts around $30,000 from betrotheds and produces the same emissions in a single day as four people churn out in an entire year. Wedding days as we know them today have been popular since the late 1920s, and I’d been exposed to the business model my entire life in various forms. My insecurity was a product of a well-worn societal system that pressures women to take part, look a certain way, and — heaven forbid — never complain if any of it feels inconvenient. I’d repeatedly seen others contend with these challenges, and I was falling into the same harmful trap.

Hadn’t I, too, upped my exercise routine in readiness to have some photos taken in a figure-hugging dress? It was all very well, me damning the circus of traditional weddings, but as much as I wanted to be above it, I was also giving myself over to the expectation to appear a certain way. And it’s hard to resist when everywhere you look, the industry is imposing prerequisites: #weddingdiet has 21.7m views on TikTok, personal trainers aplenty promote “bridal fitness packages,” and terms such as “shred for the wed” dominate popular media. In 2023, a poll of over 1,000 users of the wedding planning app Hitched revealed 84% felt pressure to lose weight before a wedding day, 85% compared themselves to others online, and 51% think their body image isn’t represented enough in wedding content. In the lead-up to my marriage, I realized I’d fallen prey to a bride’s murky pressures, slotting neatly into that 85%. 

Plus, I’d become critical of others, primarily women, rather than admitting my insecurities. I finally recognized a plain old hunger to compete, to appear a certain way based purely on the slippery, subjective concept of beauty — just like when I’d pushed myself to lose weight to fit in with a crowd during my early twenties. 

It’s helped, since acknowledging this impulse to look a certain way based on the expectations of a pervasive industry, to remind myself who is making money off my life, relationship, and body — because someone is profiting from all the fuss, and it’s not me. If I avoided my inner compass on my own marriage, I was anxious about the decisions I could fall into in the coming years — the ones that also didn’t sit quite right, even if I couldn’t immediately articulate why. Where would that leave me, floating somewhere I don’t recognize, my beliefs scattered like damp confetti? The thought alone made me queasy. 

I made a choice. My wedding diet would involve a strict practice of trimming away the fat — all the expectations, uninvited comments, and supposed ideals, pound by pound — to see more clearly what I truly felt, in all my churning complexity. 

Jon and I went ahead and booked the courthouse that we viewed, and I now can’t imagine getting married anywhere else. I’m embracing the route we have chosen and ignoring the expectations for how a wedding should look. I’m sure there’ll be times when I fall off the wagon and give in to old thought patterns — get up, do better — as with any diet, but if that happens, I will refocus, shut out the noise, and remember exactly what this experience means to me. Most of all, I’ll remember where to direct my frustration and that taking aim at others is the wrong target — because here I am writing about it, after all, my new lip liner stowed safely in sight, no better than the rest.

Emma Minor is a British writer based between Los Angeles and New York City. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School and working on her first novel. Emma has written for the Fair Observer and Main Line Today and previously lived in Sierra Leone, running communications for the healthcare organization, Partners In Health.

I grew up in a farmhouse in Ireland where my mother baked every day. Tarts and crumbles and homemade bread, using apples from the orchard, rhubarb from the garden, and gooseberries from the enormous bush on the front lawn. I’m a healthy weight and I don’t do diets; I was raised to think of food as a gift. 

And then I moved to Millburn, a posh New Jersey town, where food is the enemy. At the schoolyard gates, I was surrounded by skinny moms in high-end athleisure wear. In Ireland we call them yummy mummies; in America, they’re identified by a four-letter acronym that’s not PG-friendly. I found myself listening to baffling conversations about keto and paleo and gluten-free options. It’s not so bad, they said. You can barely taste the protein powder. And they’d move on to discussing Bonnie’s 5 a.m. spin class and how much it hurts. If it doesn’t punish my body, it’s not worth it, they said. 

I was gobsmacked. I couldn’t understand the concept of punishing my body. I love my body.  It’s a little squishy, but boy does it have fun. 

Soon I was roped into the Parent Teacher’s Organization at the local elementary school. I’m a mother of three; it was inevitable. In my first year I spent an entire morning baking for a fundraiser. Little did I know that parents don’t necessarily bake for bake sales. Some of the yummy mummies bought $2 cookies at the local bakery and sold them for $1 at the fundraiser, because nobody wants to be overcharged at a school event. It would make more sense to forgo the trip to the bakery and just deposit the cash in the PTO coffers, but I’m guessing that nobody on the PTO majored in Math.  

So I strapped on my apron and got to work. Strawberry almond bars, blondies, brownies, and my personal favorite, Nanaimo bars — a Canadian concoction with layers of chocolate coconut crumb, custard cream, and chocolate ganache. The trick is to keep them at room temperature, so that the chocolate and creamy custard melt on your tongue. I was already anticipating the delicious layer of crunch.  

I’m a fabulous baker. I’ve won prizes. But here’s the thing: nobody ate my cookies. Nobody even bought them. 

The yummy mummies hovered, swatting their kids’ hands away with a ‘don’t you dare touch that’ glare. Let’s pick something healthier, they said. Good luck with that, I thought. It’s a freaking bake sale. And they reached for the pre-packaged-chemical-laden protein bars. 

Why organize a bake sale if you don’t enjoy food? I can’t even imagine what a mindmelt it must be — charitable donation versus calorie intake. But these clever women had it all figured out. Just drop a twenty dollar bill and don’t take any food. The kids get zero treats. At the bake sale counter, I was taking in hundreds of dollars and handing over only an occasional sugar cookie. Oh, the meltdowns I could describe, the little ones’ eyes wide as saucers when they realized they were getting nothing. The local fire department was the lucky recipient of the unsold baked goods. 

And the privation extends beyond the kids. It’s extraordinary how the yummy mummies control their husbands on the kids’ birthday party circuit. Swiping plates of cake from their hands, lasering them with death stares. Honey, really? We talked about this…

Meanwhile, I’ve always encouraged my three daughters to eat what their body craves. In my family, we follow the 80/20 rule. It’s how I was raised. Eighty percent of the time we eat healthily and we indulge twenty percent of the time. Yes, we sometimes glance at packaging for calories and ingredients, but we’re not obsessed. If you want a square of chocolate, eat a square of chocolate. You can’t fool yourself by substituting a rice cake. You’ll end up eating the rice cake and a whole chocolate bar later. Depriving yourself, punishing yourself, it’s not healthy. 

I set my kitchen up for success. My pantry is full of real food (fruits, veggies, whole grains) and there’s always something healthy bubbling on the stove. But we have treats too, lots of them. High-quality chocolate bars, Nutella, and popcorn of every variety. We eat whole milk yogurts because the low-fat ones are full of stabilizers and sugar. And I taught my kids to cook. Homemade soups using Trader Joe’s mirepoix, salads topped with avocado and heirloom tomatoes, and pasta dishes they find on TikTok. My youngest could make croquembouche when she was eight years old — a tower of profiteroles, stuffed with chantilly and drizzled with caramel. 

And yes, teaching kids to bake and cook was torturous. My kitchen was in shambles for years. The cabinets and countertops were caked with flour and dough and misshapen vegetables, and every evening I had to scrub the sticky surfaces. But it was worth it. My three daughters know the joy of preparing and eating food.  

I’m glad of it, because now that they’ve reached their teenage years, the food issues among their peers have gotten worse. Last year we were in a volleyball carpool, so I had a posse of Millburn teens in my car three times a week. I was basically an Uber driver, so they forgot I was there. My youngest was appalled at their snack choices. “Why do you eat this tasteless muck?” she asked. 

“My mom won’t allow me to eat anything else,” said one of the girls. “My brother gets to eat junk food and whatever he wants. Not me.”

“At least you’re allowed to eat snacks,” said another girl. “I’m not.”  

From then on, I left a basket of goodies in the back seat.    

I’m not sure how many Millburn high schoolers have food disorders, but it’s common. And it’s not always the kids you’d expect. It’s a high-achieving town. Our neighbors are surgeons and lawyers and Wall Street moguls, and it’s a top New Jersey school district, so there’s always pressure on the kids. Naturally, when the stress becomes too much, they look to what they can control, and for girls, it’s often food, particularly if they’ve inherited their parents’ hang-ups. 

In the early days of Millburn life, I found the yummy mummy bake sale story hilarious, but I’m not laughing now. I have three teenage daughters and if any of them develop a food disorder it could be fatal. A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5–10% of people with anorexia die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18–20% of them will be dead after 20 years, and only 30–40% ever fully recover. That’s sobering news. And it’s very close to home.  

Luckily, I’ve had the good fortune of finding a true friend in Millburn — someone who shares my values, both in food and in life. Our daughters are not close now, but they were best friends when they were three years old. She’s my pickleball partner, my book club buddy, and my dog-walking companion. And though she’s the fittest person I know, she’s also a foodie, and a wonderful cook. We bond over recipes — roasted vegetable tray bakes, hearty meatball subs, and salads topped with rotisserie chicken. 

Her daughter, a senior at Millburn High School, has an eating disorder. A very serious one. Treatment involves forced feedings, weigh-ins, and teams of nutritionists and therapists. Sometimes it’s so grueling that my friend can barely string a sentence together on our walks, and when she’s sobbing in my arms I think of the yummy mummies.  

I shouldn’t blame them, but I do. I despise them for poisoning their daughters’ heads with nonsense, only for that poison to seep into the lunchroom. Skinny girls proudly announcing that they don’t do carbs and trading tips on intermittent dieting and fitting into that prom dress. 

And I know that eating disorders are complicated and stem from many different causes. But these women have normalized controlling food, turning it into something that’s rationed and measured, rather than enjoyed.   

My friend is hopeful that her daughter can go to college this fall, but it’s not a guarantee. Sending her away, knowing that she could suddenly start starving herself again, is terrifying. 

I’m hopeful that my three teenage daughters won’t go down the same path. I hope they grow up savoring textures and flavors and the joy of breaking bread together. But as a parent, there’s only so much I can do. 

Marlene May is an Irish writer from Co. Galway. She is an MFA student at The New School (fiction concentration 2025). Her short story “PTO Dad” was long-listed for the Aurora Prize in 2023. She has also been published on www.irishcentral.com and in the Connaught Tribune.

I’ve always been an early riser. When I was a kid, I would wake up before everyone else, blinking into the dark, and creep out of pitch-black rooms to my back porch, where I could read my book until everyone else woke up. That doesn’t help me now, however, when I wake up at 8 a.m. and have to figure out what I’m going to do with myself for a couple more hours, before I can actually get out of bed. Because if I get out of bed now, my mom will want me to eat breakfast, and when I say I’m not hungry, she’ll get suspicious, and I just don’t want to deal with that right now. So I lay there, and I scroll through Instagram, and I read fan fiction, and eventually an hour and a half has passed and I decide if I get out of bed at 9:30 a.m. I can probably take enough time in the shower and doing my hair to get to lunch. When I go to the bathroom to start to get ready, the first thing I do is step on the scale and ingrain the number at the top into my brain. It will never be small enough.

Calories: 0

Once I finish getting ready for the day, it’s around 11 a.m., the sweet spot to start making lunch. I’ve made sure my parents and brother aren’t going to be anywhere near the kitchen for the next hour, having already grabbed lunch for later, or scared aware by my claim over the space. Maybe I’ll turn something on to entertain me as I cook. That doesn’t matter.

What does matter is what vegetables I want in my ramen today. It tends to be a pretty standard bunch that my mom consistently has stocked, so I’m not expecting much change. Baby carrots are a staple, as is celery. I’m starting to come around on onion, especially if I add it to the broth before the rest of the vegetables. It adds a flavor that can’t quite be replicated by anything else, serving as a strong base to the tap water I always fill the pot with. (Only about a quarter of the way full, though. Any more and there would be an excess of broth in the final product, and my focus is on the noodles and vegetables. I don’t want soup.) We also have olives right now, thank god, one of my favorite additions whenever she remembers to buy them.

First, I add all the appropriate spices and sauces to the water, letting them marinate for a while. I chop up the parsley and basil from my dad’s plants, then go crazy with the curry powder and hot sauce. The soy sauce I’m more exact with, eyeing the eight calories in each tablespoon. Those can add up! I set the burner on low and let it simmer while I begin to dice up the vegetables. The onion is first, because I want to give them the longest time to sit, but the carrots have to be next, since they need the most time to cook. If while I’m cutting up the celery and olives the water boils off enough, I may even get a nice char on the carrots, which always adds such great flavor. Once I’m done cutting the celery, I put in the ramen noodles. I want the noodles to start cooking, but I also want to give the carrots and onions enough time on their own, before adding the other vegetables. Maybe I have to add more water at this point, but that’s not too bad, because I’ll want to add more spice and hot sauce anyway, to seep into the noodles. I throw away the packaging, empty except for the spices that came along with the ramen. If you don’t include that packet and just add your own spices, it cuts the calorie count of a single ramen packet almost in half!

Once all the vegetables have been added in, I get out a wooden spoon to start stirring it, breaking up the noodles. I mostly just let it sit, though, using this time to put the rest of the ingredients away, wash any dirty dishes I may have created, and open Samsung Health. When tracking my homemade ramen in the app, I have to split it up by individual foods to make it as exact as possible. I wouldn’t want to underestimate it, after all, and believe I had eaten better than I actually had.

Once everything looks ready, I turn the burner off and pour my noodles into a bowl. I set it out on the table to cool, then wash out the pot methodically, making sure to clean out every little bit until it’s cleaner than it was before I got it out of the cupboard. Afterward, I allow myself to sit down and face my creation. It tastes good, but being able to resist the banana bread staring at me on the counter makes it taste even better.

Calories: 450

The next two or three hours go by, my head cloudy. I don’t have much to do anyway. Who knows when we’ll go back to school at this point, the initial closing of only two weeks extending further and further. Corona virus seems to be a much bigger deal than anyone is letting on. With no type of structure, my mind wanders through each and every ingredient again and again. Should I have added less soy sauce? Maybe I should’ve just had a vegetable stir-fry, not even adding the noodles. My flesh feels bloated around me, and I can’t help but glance in my mirror every two seconds, sizing up if my double chin is showing, or how big my thighs look in these jeans. I remember the stories my mom told me from when she was my age, how she felt awkward and chubby too, but when she hit 20, she blossomed, all her fat melting away to reveal a beautiful swan. I long to be that, and I hate myself for not being able to force it along.

When it finally hits 4 p.m. I jump out of bed eagerly, letting all my fretting disappear for just a moment to focus on the matter at hand. It’s time for The Walk.

The Walk has become a staple in my life, a minimum hour-long walk I take around the whole of my neighborhood. Mount Joy extends further than I would be able to cover comfortably, but I’ve figured out a route that works. First, I walk along Park Street. I live on the corner of Park and Barbara, so I can leave through the front door and still have enough time on my property to get everything situated, mainly just making sure my earbuds are connected to my phone. I walk through the rest of the neighborhood, appreciating and resenting what Lancaster County has to offer. Once I turn onto Main Street, the walk becomes more of a performance. At 4 p.m. Mount Joy is as alive as you’ll ever see it, and I have to make it clear that I’m out exercising to excuse my messy appearance. God forbid I exit the house in sweatpants any other time or my mother would never let me hear the end of it; she’d go on a rant about our reputation. But for The Walk we can make an exception.

I walk with more of a purpose now, pumping my arms like the little old ladies in their matching velour sweatsuits. I try to ignore the restaurants I pass, Tres Hermanos’ smell enticing me. Simmering rice and beans and fried tortillas haunt the rest of The Walk. I try to ignore the rumbles of my stomach as I turn off of Main Street. I’ve reached the end of the general section of town. If I walk straight any further, I’ll go past the diner and reach Lil’ Dippers, my favorite ice cream place, and I can’t handle that kind of temptation right now. I’m focused and on a mission.

Once I turn, I reach one of Mount Joy’s five parks, the second one I’ve passed so far. This one I go through, however, following the winding trail past the baseball fields. This little stretch is always the hardest, because its seclusion and clear path always makes me think about running. So I try, like I always do, the meager plastic play structure beyond the second field serving as my finish line. I turn my music all the way up and attempt to forget the way my body looks and feels whenever I do this, focusing on my breathing and the suddenly incredibly real feeling of the blood pumping through my veins. I make it to the end but have to collapse onto a bench, head between my knees, despising my lungs and wishing I had brought water or my inhaler or anything that wouldn’t make this so hellish. And then I remember the slice of cake I had the other day, or the bag of popcorn I split during that one movie, and I pick myself up, reminding myself I wouldn’t have to go so hard if I was able to have more self-control.

When I make it back home, maybe in another fifteen minutes or so, it’s around 5 p.m., meaning my mom has finished making dinner, or at least is about to. I know it isn’t a fast food night, but the options of what she could have made race through my head, and I fear the dreaded high-calorie casserole. The smell of marinara sauce greets me in the doorway, making my stomach audibly growl. My mom turns to greet me and I clock her grimace at the state I’m in. I imagine how she sees me— this frumpy outfit, hair all frizzed out, panting and sweaty. She immediately rushes to my side.

“Do you want some water? Oh, Bella, you look terrible!” I grumpily push her off, needing to go wash up first. I run up the stairs, getting some type of sick pleasure from how floaty my head feels as I ascend the steps, tripping over my feet enough to be noticeable to my brother as I pass his room. I hear him yell some insult about my height before thundering his way downstairs.

The bathroom is nice and cool, and the sink water feels so good when I splash it across my warm cheeks. My face is bright red staring back at me in the mirror, flushed from the hard work. I allow myself to be proud for a single second before my eyes flick down to the scale. I know logically I won’t weigh any less than I did this morning, but that doesn’t stop disappointment from churning in my stomach as I step on the scale and the number hasn’t changed.

My mom’s yelling from downstairs snaps me out of my pity party, and I rush down, falling into my seat. I sit across from my dad and next to my brother and mom. We hold hands and say grace, and I relish in the few moments no one is looking at me. But as soon as we finish my mom begins peppering me with questions about my day. I mumble responses between bites of food, aware of the way my dad and brother watch like it’s some type of tennis match. I try to just focus on the food.

She always makes good spaghetti, but The Walk and how little other food I’ve consumed today makes it taste so much better. I finish my serving in no more than five minutes and grab a slice of bread without even thinking about it. It’s halfway in my mouth before I realize I can’t have another serving of pasta now. I eat my last few bites much slower now, savoring the bread with this knowledge. After, I carefully put my dishes into the dishwasher, about to head back up to my room. My mom stops me.

“What have you eaten today?”

“I had ramen for lunch, and you saw what I ate for dinner.”

“How many calories have you had?”

I had already been calculating that in my head. I had probably eaten about a cup of spaghetti, along with a little less than a cup of the green beans on the side.

“I don’t know,” I mumble. “Enough, probably.”

She sighs. “Are you planning to have any type of dessert or snack tonight?”

I glance longingly over at the goldfish crackers on the counter and remember the Klondike bars in the freezer, but I quickly shake my head. “No, I can’t.”

“I just don’t think you’re going about this the right way, Bella. You know, it’s perfectly reasonable to be insecure at this age, but will these eating habits continue when you’re back in school? What will your teachers think? You really haven’t eaten all that much, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to–”

“Mom, can you just not worry about it?” I respond, a bit too loudly, and before she can get mad, I run up to my room, not wanting to have to deal with any more confrontation.

Calories: 904

After about an hour, I can hear that everyone has moved upstairs. I scurry down the steps before my mom can try to talk to me, then close the doors to the living room. They don’t latch properly and have floor-to-ceiling windows, but at least it gives me a sense of privacy. I pull up YouTube on the TV and go to my workout playlist. I click on one of the thirty-minute cardio ones, relatively happy with how I did today. I could stand to not do a full hour. I go through the motions, contorting my body this way and that, enjoying the stretch of my muscles I’ve accomplished something. After not eating for too long, or exercising a bit too hard, my stomach always twists up in the same way. It’s sharp and almost sweet in the back of my throat, and I want to double over from the throb of it.

But instead, I trudge up the stairs and flop down into my bed. I’m sweaty and gross and I can’t fathom having ever felt more hungry. I struggle to be truly happy with myself, even after a day of such successful self-restraint, thinking about the slice of bread and the olives’ fat content. But I do feel proud of the pain, knowing that I deserve it, and that sends me into a deep, dreamless, miserable sleep.

Izzy Astuto (he/they) is a writer currently majoring in Creative Writing at Emerson College, with a specific interest in screenwriting. His work has previously been published by Hearth and Coffin, Sage Cigarettes, and The Gorko Gazette, amongst others. He currently works as an intern for Sundress Publications, and a reader for journals such as hand picked poetry, PRISM international, and Alien Magazine. You can find more of their work on their website, at https://izzyastuto.weebly.com/. Their Instagram is izzyastuto2.0 and Twitter is adivine_tragedy. 

I’ve never officially been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I am a human American woman with immigrant parents and, when I was growing up, I obtained most of my information about my body from women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Seventeen, so chances are pretty good. For years, I have detailed my eating habits like a scientist attempting to discover the secret to achieving my version of the physical ideal.

My weight is something that occupies so much of my mental space every day that I can’t help but additionally wonder how much of my life has been wasted in my pursuit of some unattainable body. Writers do not need to be thin. So, why do I spend so much of my time worrying about a digital number on a scale? Why do I think I will be more successful if I can get rid of that small pouch of belly fat that makes it difficult to button certain pants? How have I convinced myself that the day I can get back into my size zero jeans is the day someone will finally choose me to love? Why is size zero even a thing? Wouldn’t being a zero mean you are antimatter? That you don’t even exist?

When faced with the raw data available to me about what I eat and why, it becomes clear that there is really no other way to describe my relationship with food and my body other than disordered. Irrational. Unsound. Woeful.

Journal Entry, Age 22, New York. Starting weight (pre-diet): 145, Ending weight (post-diet): 120.

Since puberty, I have gained and lost enough weight to make two clones of myself. At my thinnest, I lost almost over sixty pounds through an excessively restrictive diet and a punishing exercise regimen (with a little help from cocaine). Since then, I have gained and lost the same twenty pounds every 3-5 years through a slightly healthier combination of altering my eating habits (ranging from mostly vegan to pescatarian with gluten-free tendencies) and various “of-the-moment” exercise programs including weightlifting, boxing, Pilates, and spin classes. Show me an overpriced gym in Manhattan and I will list off a schedule of workouts I’ve tried there and my favorite instructors in alphabetical order.

It seems so natural. Tallying how many calories I burn every day with not one but two different wearable movement trackers. Measuring macros, counting portions, accumulating steps. Reducing myself by quantifiable amounts. To a non-dieter it may seem like work, but it’s something so many of us do now. It’s like how you don’t have to remind yourself to exhale every time you inhale. You just do.

Losing weight is the one thing that glaringly stands out as an unfortunate fiber of connective tissue throughout my life. I am obsessed with whether or not I think I am thin. The answer is almost always no. I am never thin enough. What strikes me is the lengths I have gone to in trying to attain some ideal body shape and how much I choose to tie my self-worth to what I think I look like.

There is a game I play when I walk through the world. I will look at every woman I encounter and decide if I am fatter or thinner than her. I taunt myself with the comparisons. She’s thinner. She’s thinner. She is much thinner. It’s a particularly harrowing experience in the gym locker room when bodies are unmasked by clothing. I cannot delude myself with wishful thinking that I may be smaller than I am when the evidence is incontestable. They are all thinner.

The first time I ever felt thin (briefly), I had spent three months in the Philippines where I involuntarily existed off of a diet of mangoes, rice, and cucumber salad because no one in my family understood vegetarianism and I was too afraid to ask for anything else.

Journal Entry, Age 19, Philippines. Starting weight: 130, Ending weight: 101.

I really enjoy hearing my stomach growl. I like to feel empty. I like the churning in my stomach as my body searches for nutrients, nourishment, and knowing that I willfully deny it any sort of comfort. It’s one of those really good kinds of pain. I fantasize about starvation. I long to look at my body and see my skeleton. I wish I could be anorexic, but I don’t have that kind of discipline. Isn’t that terrible? There are people in the world for whom starvation isn’t a novelty. It’s all they know. And I deny myself food for vanity.

I have spent most of my life trying to be less than I am. Substantially less of a person. What is it I am trying to achieve? Wishing to be so small. Am I hoping someone might choose me? Put me in their pocket. Keep me for their own. Maybe even love me. Thinness is something I have desired for so long that I cannot fathom how unhealthy it is to want. How debilitating it is to equate being thin with being loved. If you are smaller, you will be prettier. If you are prettier, people will listen to you. You will be richer and stronger and more valuable in every way.

What surprises me is that I am not unaware of my distorted reasoning. I am fully cognizant that my habits and ways of thinking are unhealthy, but I continue to live this way. Changing would seem like a failure. Like I have lost the competition between who I am and who I could be if I could finally rid myself of superfluous swathes of my physical self.

Journal Entry, Age 30, New York. Starting Weight: 168, Ending Weight: 102.

Last night was a pleasantly quiet evening and I got a chance to chat with some of the clientele at the bar. One particularly irritating man with virtually no concept of conversational protocol consumed the last couple of hours before closing. He also thought it was perfectly normal to show us that he was wearing colorful flannel pajama bottoms underneath his pants.

Yesterday, as a punishment for an unplanned night of debauchery, I forced myself in my hungover stupor to endure a brutal 7 a.m. spin class. By midnight that day, my leg muscles were weary, so I paced behind the bar counter doing quad stretches while conversing with Mr. Pajamas.

“Why are you doing that?”

“My legs hurt from spinning class today.”

“Why do you work out?”

“Uh. You know. To stay in shape. Stay healthy. Whatever.”

There weren’t enough other customers at the bar for me to end the conversation there and talk to other people, so I indulged Mr. Pajamas and explained that I recently lost about 40 pounds. It’s not something I am wont to discuss unless I feel some sort of connection to a person. But I was bored. So, why not?

I never explain to people the real motivation for losing so much weight. I don’t explain that my brother got sick and went into the hospital and that I promised him I would get in shape again and that I would help him stay healthy when he got out of the hospital. I certainly don’t explain that my brother never got better. That he died. And that I plan to keep this weight off and work out and stay in shape for the rest of my life because it was the last promise I made to my brother whom I will never see again.

No. My explanation now is that I recently ended a seven-year relationship and realized I am going to be naked in front of strange men again, so I might as well try to look my best. It is a line that always gets a laugh from people. Mr. Pajamas inappropriately asked me why I put on so much weight to begin with. I deflected his question and walked away but he persisted.

“Isn’t it great?” He gushed. “Isn’t it great to be skinny? I’m so glad to be skinny.” As though we were both members of some exclusive club for people with the correct Body Mass Index.

I gave him a look that I hope he interpreted as, “You are a moron.”

I have never been thin. I have never been a waif. This is the first time I might be mistaken for something other than slightly overweight. My closest friends have been wonderfully supportive and encouraging during this time of weight loss. I am happy that they are so happy for me. And it really doesn’t bother me that some people are so shocked when they see me now.

However, the comments I get from people that I have only known peripherally give me certain pause. Things like, “Holy shit! How much weight have you lost?” And “You look fantastic! I mean you were always beautiful but now. . .” Or “Wow! I didn’t even recognize you!” While these statements are certainly thrilling to hear, I can’t help but feel a bit troubled. Not because I am offended but because I am now acutely more aware than ever how much we all really do focus on body image and weight.

I am definitely grateful to have my membership to The Skinny Club reconsidered, but I am quite sure the dues to be paid for admittance are probably not worth the price. Especially if the benefits of inclusion are mere delusions of self-worth.

Note to Self Today, Weight unknown, Too Scared to Look.

If I can just reduce myself down again, I say to the me I see in the mirror who is at the top of the crest of another yo-yo swing, this will be the time that we will finally stop.

If I can just be thin again, I’ll never gain it back. All of these questions will resolve, and I’ll finally just be. Please just do it this time. Eat like a normal person. Burn more calories than you consume. Reduce yourself again and I promise to be happy, no matter what. Lessened by half with only the good parts left.

Marisol Aveline Delarosa writes nonfiction and fiction, and she is a first-year student in the Creative Writing MFA program at The New School. She is a New Yorker but hopes to also have a home in Barcelona someday. Marisol has been selling alcohol for over two decades and currently runs the only real bar left in the Meatpacking District. You can find more of her work at www.thisisnotcake.com.