Starving People Can't Fuck
On Hunger and Lust
I once heard someone say that your relationship to sex, money, and food are all one in the same. Something to do with a scarcity mindset. Something else about indulgence. What I know for sure is that sex, money, and food are all currently in a bizarre state. None of which is a matter of actual scarcity, just distribution. people are horny but lonely. people are poor and the 1% have more than they can spend. we throw away thousands of pounds of food, but people are starving-or forcing themselves into starvation.
Hunger is expensive, and starving people can’t fuck. No really. Starving People Cannot Fuck. What happens during the quest to become and stay thin goes past the effects malnutrition has on your libido. Withholding from food has a long history of maintaining sexual purity.
Talk to any anorexic and they’ll tell you about the high they get from hunger. Scientists say that the primitive adrenaline begins to kick in after enough deprivation, a woozy decline in blood sugar lulling you into insanity the same way a diabetic may feel slipping into hypoglycemia. All the biological urges of reproduction and mating slow to a cool stale halt. For women, a retroactive puberty stops your bleeds.
Christianity and Catholicism has a long history of The Holy Anorexic and The Sinful Glutton. It was Eve who bit the forbidden fruit, resulted in The Fall of Man. Her and Adam realized their nakedness and became separate from their direct communion with God. Anorexia mirabilis (Latin for miraculously inspired loss of appetite) were the most dedicated of Nuns during the Middle Ages and refused food in pursuit of chastity. Self-control conjures the Holy Spirt and wards away temptations of lust.
God-like hierarchy of the mentally ill is nothing new. The new age messiah ran Pro Ana Tumblr pages and held Sunday service in chatrooms, reciting high fiber smoothie recipes and cardio intense workouts like scripture. Most people still confuse it with tit implants or a nose job. Something to make you softer, prettier, lovable. Thinness has never and will never be anything of the sort.
Maybe at first, it’s to feel more fuckable. An unrealistic beauty standard, a distraction. I feel it has very little to do with a man at all. It is something masturbatory. A kind of martyr. You can suck it out, purge it, shit it out, or pay for it. There are injectables and powdered drinks or amphetamines. It doesn’t matter. No one really gives a shit anymore. Never mind the optics, pay attention to the simulacra. I have been starved and restuffed. I have the power to close my mouth. I can endure. Be without. Can you?
A mere five senses we are given and we have ripped out one with such haste. On purpose. Food is community. Communion. Food is fucking. It’s bite and taste and spit. Federico Fellini said to never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat, she’s probably lousy in bed. Food is foreplay. I may offer you a sip of my wine, spoon feed a bite off my plate, to let you know I don’t mind that we share saliva. That I want to kiss you. Cows and horses never graze the pasture all at once because they understand how vulnerable eating is. How there is required intimacy and trust in sharing a meal.
I remember watching Blue is the Warmest Color for the first time at age 14, via Tumblr Putter Locker link. Watching Adele eat spaghetti was unironically the most erotic scene in the whole film to me. Her unrefined sensuality, inhibition towards indulgence was mesmerizing. Later that summer, I would take the chewed gum of a boy into my own mouth on a dare. This would be the first time I can recall feeling a sense of sexual euphoria without much physicality.
But nothing could taste as good as skinny feels, in the same way that doing heroine under a bridge is far more fun than having dinner with your family. The polarizing statement, the Fuck You that is your budding skeleton, gets your rocks off harder than any orgasm. In pursuit of purity, you have somehow found anarchy.
The fourth wave of feminism has proved the most convenient to the cause of starvation with the wet blanket wall of Body Positivity. You don’t know my body. My healthy. My happiness. Any accusation of malevolence is simply women shaming women. Sorority Canva Infographic Feminism. The rest of us bite our tongues while a brave few call the bullshit stinking up the air.
All of what is left unsaid today will be replaced with apologies tomorrow. Sorry for the kidney and heart failure. Sorry for the babies born with birth defects caused by GLP-1’s. Sorry like we are so sorry for Karen Carpenter, Nikki Grahame, Isabelle Caro. Sorry to the girls who left the clinics just to find that the world had become an act of asceticism. Tasteless and decaying.
In the meantime, I’ll do my best to exist within my body. Rejecting all forms of deprivation, as if the world does not try and deprive us enough.
"But nothing could taste as good as skinny feels, in the same way that doing heroine under a bridge is far more fun than having dinner with your family."
What an absolutely amazing line (from someone who was told 'it's so much better to look good than feel good' as a teenager) 🫶
Great piece! True! Also, please, compassion for all who suffer! <3 Love Adèle and Addison and that scene, more soon