More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for Enough

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   The Hunger That Defines Us

   

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   Emma Specter's memoir opens with a piercing confession about beauty's inheritance. Her conventionally attractive mother-with wide-set eyes, straight nose, and perfect blond bob-looms as both inspiration and impossible standard. At sixteen, discovering her mother's old press passes triggered a panic in Emma, suddenly hyper-aware of her aquiline nose, thin lips, and fleshy thighs. This moment crystallized a lifelong struggle with body image that would shape her relationships with food, love, and ultimately herself. In an era where celebrities flaunt Ozempic-induced transformations and "thin is in" dominates cultural conversation once again, Specter offers a radical alternative: what if we stopped organizing our lives around self-denial? What if hunger could be welcomed rather than feared? Our mothers cast long shadows over how we see ourselves. Though Emma's mother never explicitly told her to lose weight, meaningful looks over dinner communicated volumes. Their relationship with food was complicated from the beginning-Emma's first experiences of physical satiety came through breastfeeding, establishing a pattern of guilt around nourishment that would follow her for decades. The intergenerational nature of disordered eating becomes painfully clear when Emma describes bonding with female relatives through diet talk, performing self-deprecation as protection. Her mother, born in 1955-the same year the first McDonald's opened and impossibly lean models began gracing Vogue-survived decades of fad diets. How could she possibly have raised a daughter with body confidence when 76 percent of parents insult their own bodies in front of their children?

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   From Teenage Obsession to Weight Watchers

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   Fourteen-year-old Emma was mesmerized by Keira Knightley's hip bones in "Bend It Like Beckham," seeing them as the epitome of feminine perfection. In ninth grade, she became preoccupied with concealing her body - wearing multiple layers and strategically placed sweaters. After switching from an Upper East Side girls' school, she found friendship with fellow outsider Jazmine at a Riverdale private school. Though never truly overweight, Emma's self-consciousness was consuming. Her Ritalin prescription's appetite-suppressing effects felt like a blessing. She joined Weight Watchers at twelve, paying with babysitting money, feeling validated when learning actress Ginnifer Goodwin had started even younger. After a hiatus, Emma returned to Weight Watchers during senior year of college following weight gain from studying in Russia. The familiar point system - five for half an avocado, four for wine, free bananas - helped her lose forty pounds, dropping below her ninth-grade weight. With the weight loss came the romantic attention she'd yearned for.

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   Food as Comfort and Shame

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   Growing up globally mobile, Emma developed a paradoxically narrow palate, rejecting local dishes like borscht in Russia and Parmesan in Italy. In New York, she found solace in predictable bodega candy bars and school snacks during post-9/11 anxiety. As an anxious only child with working parents, food became her primary comfort mechanism. During college hookups, Emma focused less on the intimacy than on how others viewed her body - particularly her thinness. Target weights became moving goalposts, each achievement transforming into a new "never again" threshold. She'd trace her hip bones at night, fantasizing about concerned admirers noting her slenderness. At her new job as an assistant on an Amazon dramedy, Emma's fear of failure intensified her binge eating. The set's abundance of food - from endless snacks to catered lunches - combined with late-night work culture provided perfect cover for her disorder. With colleagues constantly discussing diet plans, her food fixation became an easy way to connect.

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   Hollywood Binges and Hidden Struggles

   Emma's job, though relatively straightforward, overwhelmed her to the point of physical anxiety when she made mistakes. By fall 2017, she had developed a precise routine of concealing her eating disorder during work hours - devouring Twinkies and Uncrustables in bathroom stalls during breaks, texting while eating. The craft services team, unaware of her struggles, carefully packed leftovers that she would consume alone in her Subaru by the trash cans, followed by periods of self-imposed starvation to control her weight. Like many closeted LGBTQ+ individuals, Emma's body image issues were tangled with questions of identity - a common but underdiagnosed pattern. Through college, she considered herself an "unsuccessful heterosexual," claiming certainty about her straight identity while feeling distant from queer spaces. It wasn't until moving to Brooklyn, after a thought-provoking first date with a woman in LA, that she began dating both men and women.

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   Queer Awakening and Self-Discovery

   When Emma moved to Brooklyn, she sought neither reinvention nor the cliche "sad girl in New York" narrative - just an affordable room and reconnection with college friends who knew her before depression took hold. Coming out at twenty-four felt late, especially compared to friends who'd been out since high school. Through Twitter connections, she became an assistant editor at GARAGE Magazine and began dating Jen, a polished magazine editor in her mid-thirties, through Hinge. Despite her fears of being a "fake gay" with minimal experience, their connection felt effortless, whether kissing outside an upscale bar or at Jen's apartment. Dating women transformed Emma's relationship with herself. Instead of seeking bodily invisibility, she learned to be seen, actively pursuing partners rather than passively waiting to be chosen. This helped her distinguish her authentic desires from societal expectations.

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   Learning to Live with Hunger

   In April 2020, during quarantine, Emma documented cherished food memories in her Notes app: hot dogs from Rockaway, Nora Ephron's key lime pie, Roman pear juice, her mom's shepherd's pie, and childhood blackberries with chocolate. The list grew hundreds of entries long, like abstract poetry. As of August 2023, Emma hasn't dieted in over a year. Though she had a recent binge - breaking a two-month streak - her nutritionist Mia emphasizes this doesn't erase her progress, especially given her previous struggles to maintain even brief binge-free periods. Now, amid another "thin-is-in" era marked by Ozempic, Emma feels detached from the culture of self-denial. Seeing New York magazine's February 2023 cover - a fork piercing a syringe captioned "Bon Appetit" - she reflects how her younger self would have desperately sought such a "miracle cure" for her hunger.

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   Embracing Appetite and Love

   Emma has learned to appreciate her hunger, understanding its daily rhythms and cravings-whether for cereal, breakfast burritos, or just coffee. Following writer Kendra Austin's wisdom to enjoy real dessert daily, not diet substitutes, her hunger has evolved from a threat into a welcome guide. Back in Los Angeles with R., her first serious partner and a food writer, Emma's relationship with food has transformed. Though selective about sharing her eating disorder history, she finds relief in partial disclosure. When R. gifted her a 2XL crop top, its perfect fit and her comfort wearing it marked a turning point in her body acceptance. Recovery isn't a love-induced miracle. While still managing binge eating through harm reduction rather than absolute abstinence, Emma has built a fulfilling life in her fat body. Though heavier than five years ago, she's found unprecedented contentment. Her journey reveals something profound: the hunger we're taught to fear might be our path back to pleasure and authentic living, regardless of our body's shape.

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