“I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that when I was raped, I became a victim, and to this day, while I am also many other things, I am still a victim.” “I knew I wouldn’t be able to endure another such violation, and so I ate because I thought that if my body became repulsive, I could keep men away.”īeing raped wasn’t her fault, which is why she finds it helpful to think of herself as a “victim”, rather than a “survivor”, despite surviving what she went through.
ROXANE GAY AMERICAN WRITER PLUS
She wound up as a “woman of size” because she “began eating to change her body” after a boy she loved, plus several of his friends, raped her in a cabin in the woods when she was just 12.īeing raped, she writes, prompted Gay to change her body because she wanted to create a barrier against the rest of the world. Sometimes it’s okay to acknowledge you are a victim She is explicit about the emotional – and physical – pain of living in the world when you are “super morbidly obese”, according to your body mass index. She writes to share the story of her body – specifically, how her body changed from being that of an average 12-year-old girl to one that, at its heaviest, weighed 577 pounds.