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I can tell you that it isn't always being grateful that your birth mother decided to give you life and give you away. I have felt and lived in the pain that can come with being adopted. If I wasn't given the choice to keep my child, if my only options were adoption or an abortion, I would choose an abortion. Personally, I think that once you give the government control of reproductive choices, you cannot take that power back. Some have put restrictions on the number of children women could keep. Some have forced women to become pregnant and bear children. Other governments have put laws in place governing children. I'm pro-choice because, if the government took away my choice, I would choose abortion.Ĭonfused? Don't worry, I'll explain more. But that doesn’t make other stories less valid, especially since untreated and invalidated eating disorders can be so dangerous. It’s easier to talk about your story when it’s obvious and cookie-cutter and elicits validation and money from insurance companies and the general public. However, I feel we need to have the courage to break out of this small mold. People are scared their stories aren’t valid so they don’t tell them, and I totally get why.
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Weight and weight loss have a genetic component that’s not discussed. I believe a major reason why stories like mine and Gay’s aren’t heard is because of the stigma and danger that comes from the single story narrative that leaves out so many demographics, including people of different weight ranges. Those stories are important, but I’ve heard them too many times before.
ROXANE GAY QUOTES THE PAST HOW OVER SOMETHING FULL
I’m entirely too full of stories about emaciated women in hospitals and specific details about how sick someone was. I hunger for stories about weight gain and overeating and trauma. That’s one of the reasons why Gay’s book is so important. Being thin will, supposedly, make us wholly happy. We are told that we cannot be happy until we are thin - no matter how successful we are - and that by being thin, we are instantly happy, despite what else is going on in our lives. That we need to discipline them with rules. She also argues that women, especially, are raised and conditioned to think that our bodies are a problem that need to be solved, something we need to lessen. She has shame about her body and has realized she no longer needs to be fat ( fat is a descriptor, not a bad word) in order to feel safe, but pulling back is harder than she expected. It’s not easy to live in a larger body, especially in a world with thin privilege. However, she struggled with her body’s size. Despite her parents’ attempts to try to help her lose weight, Gay purposely gained it all back. She ate and became bigger in order to feel safer. Gay, a black woman, was gang-raped at the age of 12 and spent many of her years eating and eating in hopes of becoming larger and less conventionally attractive.