Food Love I started out loving food, like anyone. I loved to eat sugar toast, sugar cereal with milk, ramen noodles, bagels, and Burger King was a treat (we go there after YMCA on Sundays, swam up our appetite for cheese burgers). I knew nothing about food back then, never truly hungry, never worried about food, food was social, things tasted good. American midwest tacos (our family discovered soft flour tortillas... wowza, yum!) the night my mom told me she was pregnant with her fourth daughter, named her Carolyn Grace. I wish I could remember loving Jo Hope, but it's lost. Carolyn Grace was love at first sight. Tiny yellow freckles. The baby! The baby is almost 45 now, and has two young kids (one looks just like her). Kids like simple food. In Minneapolis, we knew about pizza, and tacos, (and then soft tortilla tacos with Ranch), and chocolate chip cøokies from the Cookie Factory. Dad would go to this discount place also, where Hostess snacks were very cheap. We would raid the snack pantry and hide our shares, to make sure no one else ate them. Something changed for me at the end of 10th grade. I was always into sports and fitness, but a simple assignment in school, to give a presentation on something important, changed it for me. I learned about anorexia. Not sure how I found out about it, but I loved fashion magazines, and was starting to internalize beliefs about how female persons should look for high white society (I didn't know anyone in that type of people group), but I was seeing advertisements everywhere, and some popular movies (anything over PG wasn't allowed, and they (my parents) tried to limit television, but it still got through: the standards. The reason I was so vulnerable to it was I was so pretty according to their standards. I was *this close to looking like a model. I got attention from people everywhere for my beautiful blond hair, big blue eyes, and spacey, smirky smile. Positive attention, no matter what it's bestowed for, feels good. It feels like a direction you should go, if you want more of it. At some point, I stopped worshipping my own beauty, and noticing my shortcomings, according to “them.” French models, etc. No fat. That's the rules. No fat. And legs twice the length of normal girls. That's how they look. The impossibility of achieving such a height didn't stop me from trying to meet the other requirements (no fat).
I love fat now. Recently read this Japanese novel where the protagonist is a journalist covering a “serial killer” who's also a “foodie.” Hence the title, BUTTER.
I love butter. I'll never, ever give you up again, butter. More about food, later.