A Critical Response
The theme of the essay by Roxane Gay: ‘My body is a cage of my own making’ is how the people who are fat in the society are discriminated against. The essay shows how fat people are made to feel like they are lesser human beings and do not deserve the best at anything. The article also explains how society views fat people and causes fat people to have low self-esteem and even hate themselves. Fat people face discrimination, are poorly treated and not understood by anyone no matter where they go, from schools to their workplace, to airports, to railway stations (Wesch). The looks the fat people receive make them feel uncomfortable and unloved. Seeing as thin and muscular bodies are considered the “perfect” bodies, huge people are often under too much pressure.
The author Roxane feels as though she is being suffocated and has no safe space. She gets irritated when people treat her as though she is a broken person who has no chance in society. She hated it when people treated her like she did not belong in that place. She hated when people were oblivious to the fact that she might be struggling to keep up every time her friends suggested they take a walk. Roxane hated when people did not like their skin to touch hers as though she was some infectious disease that they would contaminate when they did. Roxane hated that when she called 911 after she hurt her ankle, she had to clarify that she was fat since huge people were greatly discriminated in the shows and films she watched.
In one of the shows, I have watched, Insatiable, the lead character, Patty, who has an eating disorder, feels like she needs to binge whenever she felt discouraged. Even though she put herself on a diet and exercised a lot and eventually lost weight, she still felt like she was not enough. Her snacks were once snatched by a guy who thought she was not supposed to eat as she was already fat enough. People do not understand that a person may eat to cover up something (Mahan and Raymond). For Patty, she ate when she did not feel good enough. For Roxane, she ate to stop feeling bad about herself after she was gang-raped. Roxane ate to forget what was done to her when she was 12, make herself invisible.
In my opinion, people who are huge should not be discriminated against because of their body size. People should be able to feel comfortable like other people everywhere they go. The society should learn to accept the vast people and try to help them out if they try to lose weight (Sobczak). If they eat to hide something about themselves, it is wise for those around them to try to understand and help the huge people overcome their troubles.
Roxane assumes that she is all on her own and comes to realize once she gets hurt that she is loved and has people around her. Roxane concludes that she does not have to die as she is loved. The strength of her argument that fat people are discriminated against is that she has experienced discrimination first hand. The weakness, however, is that she does not realize that there are people around her who care. I agree with the position of Roxane that huge people are indeed discriminated against, but I am against discrimination. The major clarification I would like to obtain is the methods she is using to love herself more.
Work Cited
Mahan, J. Kathleen, and Janice L. Raymond. People do not understand that a person may eat to cover up something. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2016.
Sobczak, Connie. Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!). GŸrze Books, 2014.
Wesch, Michael. The Art of Being Human. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018.