Welcome to the latest installment of “Five words from …” our series which highlights interesting words from interesting books! In this book, Vogue culture writer Emma Specter writes about her struggles around diet culture, eating disorders, and learning self-acceptance doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
“Night Eating Syndrome (NES) is classified as its own eating disorder, one that affects about one in ten people who have obesity.”
NES as an eating disorder that can be comorbid with anxiety, depression, and insomnia in adult men and women. More information and help can be found on the Sleep Foundation’s website: Night Eating Syndrome: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments.
“Frankie Shaw’s SMILF ran for two seasons on Showtime, and while the series wasn’t perfect on screen or off … the story that endeavored to tell about women parenting, class, addiction, and food was profoundly ambitious.”
Slang for “single mom I’d like to fuck,” though in some cases the “S” stands for “step” or “soccer”. In the context of the television show, the “S” represents South Boston.
“Yes, today’s teenagers have fat icons like Paloma Elsesser, Barbie Ferreira, and Aidy Bryant to look up to, but representation can go only so far and do only so much.”
Specter posits that a handful of representatives have little influence against the global institutions selling the idea that weight loss and thinness are the only routes to happiness.
“I now know that what I was experiencing was what Sonia Renee Taylor refers to in her 2018 book The Body Is Not An Apology as meta-shame, or the state of feeling shame for feeling shame about our bodies.”
Specter shares that the roots of body-shaming have been difficult to eradicate, especially when she hasn’t felt she has been able to find self-acceptance in the “correct” way.
“In times of stress or fear, people focus more than usual on the things they believe they can control, this is called terror management.”
Specter discusses that during the COVID pandemic, quarantine allowed people to scrutinize their eating and food consumption (often in disordered ways) as a means to feel agency in their own lives.