The "Chaos and Despair" of Our Food Culture

Emma Specter on learning to live in a system that encourages disordered eating.

Emma Specter is a writer at Vogue and the author of the forthcoming book More Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for “Enough.” She was kind enough to talk to me about fat liberation vs. body positivity, why it’s so hard to heal your relationship to food, and more.

What made you want to write this book?

I had spent most of my life fearing gaining weight, afraid of getting fat, and that fear was very at odds with my politics of feminist and body liberation. And then I did gain weight that put me in the category of being fat, and that was the first time I started really writing about fatness and disordered eating. I’d gone to this gay little liberal arts college and thought I knew everything about liberation, and yet there was this disconnect around my own body and dieting and stuff. And all of that began to click for me around 2021, especially after reading Julia Tershan’s work on food and anti-diet culture. So I hope that my book can connect with someone in a similar way that hers did for me.

It feels like we’re stuck in this place where either people are fatphobic, or they’re like super body-positive in this way that feels like it ignores all the conflicting emotions people have about their bodies and food.

The reaction to fatphobia has meant that there’s this kind of over-correction where then every fat person has to be like a girlboss and always project positivity and never admit they have complicated relationships with food. And that’s why I talk about fat liberation more than body positivity. I wanted to talk about my body and my eating disorder and all of these complex things in a way that didn’t just fit one narrative or present a simple picture. I felt like I owed the reader chaos in a way that aligned with my story. The nature of binge eating, and my binge eating—when I was in these cycles of binging and restricting, I was still capable of showing up for work and doing the things one has to do to show they’re getting through the day, so people often don’t see the chaos. And the chaos is real and the chaos feels like shit. And most people who deal with having a body or eating food can identify with that, I think. So I wanted to be really honest about the chaos and despair of disordered eating and give permission to people to recognize that even when things can seem fine on the surface.

Can you talk a bit about the individual vs. systemic level of all of this? Like it’s hard to heal your relationship to your body if our entire food culture is disordered.