I made this TikTok in jest, mainly because my biggest M.O. is to remind people to eat breakfast. Not only for the bad breath, but for the multitude of metabolic and mental health benefits eating in the morning provides.

What shocked me the most about the virality of this particular TikTok were the comments. Many of which demonstrated people’s shock that skipping a meal could be bad.

….But, who told us skipping a meal was good…?

DIET CULTURE DID!

Meal-skipping, intermittent fasting, keto and every other fad diet that focuses on long-term restriction of calories is not sustainable, and often leads people down a path of disordered eating.

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What is Disordered Eating?

Disordered Eating is defined as a broad range of abnormal eating patterns, which vary in frequency and severity. These could include but are not limited to restricted eating, food avoidance, binge eating, purging, and extra focus on food and body image. This is notably different from a full-blown eating disorder, which are defined in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), as a mental health condition that is diagnosable by severity and frequency of abnormal eating behaviors and issues surrounding body image and food.

I’d also like to note here that fasting for religious/cultural reasons is not a part of the DSM-5, nor considered disordered eating.

The main difference to point out is that disordered eating may not always be due to body image issues or food avoidance, but rather time, money, and access to food.

Food fears, like foodborne illnesses or contaminant outbreaks, can contribute to food avoidance in the population as a whole, and with the recent uptick in publicized cases, could you blame anyone for avoiding a salad or two?

Disordered eating may also be sporadic, due to changes in food security, including losing a job, lack of transportation, lack of grocery stores, or affordable food in a given area. It’s also important to acknowledge that just because a food is available, does not mean an individual wants that food. This could be due to allergies, intolerances, or preference.

Other related issues, like ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder), are more common in children and neurodivergent individuals. In these cases, disordered eating may have very little to do with body image, and more to do with color, texture, and taste.

So, how does this relate to diet culture and meal-skipping?

Diet Culture, which can be described as the social pressure and impact of emphasizing certain body types as healthy and good, and other bodies as unhealthy and bad, has warped our brains in many ways, including the idea that thinner is better.

I’ve written several substack essays on this, and as always I recommend reading Sabrina Strings’ work on this, as it was formative for me.

What diet culture always fails to acknowledge is that every single human is physically different from another (even identical twins can have small differences).

This means that what looks “healthy” in one person, is not in another. One body type cannot be the epitome of health, because human beings vary far too much.

However, in modern society, we view thinness as the blueprint for attractiveness and health. We praise it, but can shame it in the same breath. We see this in the news cycle with ozempic, celebrity body shaming, and pitting bodies against each other of what is too thin, but not thin enough?

Unfortunately, when you grow up with these ideals, the quickest thing many people do to “watch their weight”, leads them to disordered eating.

It can start slow, i.e skipping breakfast or lunch, avoiding dinner, cutting out carbs or fats. People will say their fasting to drop weight, or going on a cleanse, and it’s seen as being “healthy”, and taking control of your life. We, as a society, applaud these behaviors even though in another context they’d be described as a mental disorder.

This is not to say those with diagnosed eating disorders are bad, or people looking to adjust their diets to include more fruits and vegetables are in need of help, but rather that the extreme of any behaviors is NOT to our benefit. Restriction of any form to look a certain way can be a dangerous risk behavior. Particularly those in larger bodies, who are often told to restrict as a way to drop weight.

The focus on caloric intake vs. adjusting nutrient intake is a personal irritation as calories are simply measures of energy, if you want change focusing on nutrient density is where you should be, BUT I DIGRESS.

This is how we get to endless comments on my TikTok stating that they always skip meals, or fast for weight loss every other day. These are not sustainable behaviors for anyone. Short-term gains are not worth the long-term implications for restriction or binge eating behaviors, of which there are many.

What personally scares me the most is how many of these behaviors and disordered eating practices are normalized within modern culture, and even more so, for larger bodied individuals. This is fundamentally incorrect as long-term restriction at any size can be dangerous.

Everyone needs to eat, no matter their size.

Snacking as a Harm Reductive Practice

The demonization of snacking has been ever-present in our society. This is due to the war against ultra-processed foods and the many other issues that people attribute the American health crisis too.

To be clear, excessive eating of ultra-processed snacks is NOT recommended for your overall health. But snacking does not inherently mean eating ultra-processed foods!

Before we can get to a point where no one eats ultra-processed foods, we need to focus on creating a stable food system.

Or perhaps nutrition education so people can make informed food choices.

Or understand that having a bag of potato chips every once a while does not make you morally corrupt?

The refusal to address that fresh food is becoming more of a luxury is infuriating as a food access researcher. Of course, I want every single person to get their daily fruit and vegetable intake, with a perfect amount of carbohydrates, fats, and protein, but that is NOT the reality we get to live in.

Not in this administration, and not in many before it.

Food access has been a major problem in this country since it’s inception, and just because we no longer record it, doesn’t mean it’s not a real.

(Note: The Annual Hunger Report stopped collection in 2024).

This is why we need to work with the systems in place, and practice harm reduction to address disordered eating, meal-skipping, and food access.

(See linked substack essay on harm reduction in food access work.)

We are fighting multiple things at once:

1. Diet culture, thin is in, but not too thin, muscle mami, protein only;

2. A growing instability in the food environment, food scarcity, contaminant outbreaks;

3. Limited food access, including time and food availability, limited nutrition education, volatile economic climate and job market

There is no way to address all of these with black and white thinking. We need to practice flexibility, empathy, and understanding as we move towards a more health-forward and prevention-based approach to health and chronic disease.

I suggest snacking as a way to move forward, as it allows people this flexibility. Snacking doesn’t have to mean eating a slim jim, but it can look like grabbing a granola bar on your way to work.

It means that you may not have time to make a full blown lunch, but maybe you grab a protein bar from the corner store. Instead of having a continental breakfast, you get a smoothie, or even better you make one at home from frozen fruit.

Its means EDUCATING people on alternative choices that still allow them to eat something, and not avoid food for the sake of weight loss, or time constraints or money constraints.

It means saying to yourself, “it’s time for a little snack”, when your stomach grumbles, instead of waiting another 4 hours because it’s not the “proper time” for food.

This is about acknowledging and educating people on their hunger cues. It can even look like reminding people that skipping meals can lead to bad breath lol.

It doesn’t mean shaming people, or judging their actions. It also doesn’t mean placing morality on the foods we eat, and why we eat them.

Food has no morality, remember that!

So, if you’re reading this, and you’re feeling a little frustrated because you can’t have a full breakfast everyday, think about how you can reduce the harm to yourself. Keep snacks in the house for breakfast, have some granola, clementines, nuts, fruits, etc. I’d rather you eat a scoop of peanut butter and a banana, then give up entirely.

Because something is always better than nothing.

Thanks for reading, and remember please eat your breakfast <3.

My body, and the space it took up, led to a lot of very confusing interactions as I grew up. Being physically bigger than many other girls my age, and also being Black and “well-spoken”, led people to the assume I was much older than I was.

Around puberty is when these changes started to illicit more direct responses from not only men, but women too. Suddenly people started to state how “grown” I was.

This is when the policing of my body began.

This is where my body became the subject of desire, ire, and obsession.

The “Madonna/Whore” Complex and Creation of “Jezebels”

I was around 13 at the mall with my friends, probably wearing brown uggs and skinny jeans, with a HARD side part bang, when I realized more boys were giving my friends and I attention.

Boys at school, also reaching puberty, began to recognize our bodies were changing, and so did grown men. This is not something that is new to many young women, but a burden that falls heavier on little black girls.

Little black girls get labeled “fast” for getting cat called by grown men, lambasted by their own families for daring to wear clothes that showed their bodies, instead of policing the strange men that commented on their bodies in the first place…

This same practice of blame and adultification of young girls can be found in the Madonna/Whore Complex (MWC) . A phenomenon that commonly occurs in heterosexual and cisgender dynamics, but not exclusively, which puts a woman into two categories: the mother or the sexual creature.

This create a narrative in which women must cannot exist as both, and in the context of heterosexual dating, places certain woman in a matronly category, and others in the slut category.

The mother: kind, sweet, caring, doting, angelic

The whore: manipulative, overly sexual, promiscuous

This framework is often held by women too. Once they become mothers, they resign themselves to only being a giver and a caretaker, forgetting that sensuality and sexuality can exist at any time of life including motherhood.

While also shaming the “whore”, the woman who chooses to be single, who dates, who lives their life in the way they want.

This complex even seen in the Bible and within Christianity, with the juxtapositions between Mary, mother of God, and Mary Magdelene, the “prostitute”…. more on that later.

The “Whore” and the “Jezebel”

The nature of the “Whore” ideology deeply aligns with that of the “Jezebel” trope.

Black women face this quite uniquely when we take in the historical context of the “Jezebel”. A trope created to suggest a narrative that Black women were the cause of their assaults due to their sexual deviancy and/or temptress ways. Created during the time of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and perpetuated through modern times.

Ciara of Summer House (recently in the news cycle due to her “friend” dating her ex) was initially put in the news cycle several years ago, when her then partner, a white man, called her a Jezebel.

The term was created as a way to blame Black women for their existence as the reason they were assaulted, stared at, fondled, harassed, etc. Once again…never placing the blame on people partaking in the bad behavior.

Our bodies become spectacle, our humanity taken away for daring to have thighs, butts, breasts, that were womanly in nature.

As a child, this all felt so frustrating to me. The focus was always on hiding my body, hiding my curves, and hiding things that naturally came to me. I know now that it was simply protection, because it’s easier to make the child a “whore” or a “jezebel” then the a victim of the society we live in.

If your very existence incites mens’ desire, and other women’s obsession (mainly non-Black women), then what else can you do but hide yourself away?

And this is how we get to the policing of young Black women’s bodies, mine included, and the sanctity of the “mammy” and the “madonna” are created.

Mammification and the Madonna

Black women are often touted with words like “resilient”, “strong”, “nurturing”, “protector”. Even Beyoncé came out with a song called, “Protector” on her last album, Cowboy Carter, in reference to her children.

We, in many ways, are the manifestation of the traits associated with motherhood. These traits alone are not the problem, but the push to have Black women always be the caretakers, nannies, problem-solvers, and effectively “mammies” of the world.

We saw this come up in the most recent election cycles, citing how “Black women please save us!” or even the “Black girlfriend” effect videos that became popular a few years ago.

And in a way, I think Black women take this as a nod to the work we do, and continue to do, but when do we get cared for?

In my head, this goes back to the creation of the “Mammy”.

The “Mammy” much like the Jezebel/Whore dynamic dehumanizes the Black women in very specific ways. The “mammy” archetype operates almost like a eunuch, 0 sexuality or sexual desires, their hair often covered, darker skinned, bigger bodies, older, and often sassy.

The mammy trope became so popular that it’s been used to sell products as way to market their quality and reliability.

As someone who was once called Aunt Jemima in college, by a white man, because he saw me with my hair wrapped. This trope still very much lives on.

As I go out and live now in a predominantly white city, random women, mostly non-black, come up to me for help, they have come to me crying, they have come to me drunk asking for advice….and then they get upset upon realization that no… I am not the magical negro… and no I will not allow you to trauma dump on me at a bar while I too am trying to have a good time.

This has been so new to me, as I grew up in a predominantly Black space, and went on to move to very multi-cultural cities, I didn’t realize how often Black women are sought out to soothe and to heal others.

At a younger age, I found this to give me purpose. I wanted to be the one there to help fix, I wanted to be useful, I wanted to be wanted.

What this looked like in practice was very unreciprocal friendships, unrequited crushes, and a major lack of boundaries.

I’m working on it, it’s my Saturn return after all.

What I have not been prepared for is the backlash that happens when you reject the “mammy”, and stand in the power of being your own person, in a world that demonizes the “whore”.

The Madonna of it All

The Madonna, like the Mammy, is one of non-sexual existence. She often is depicted holding the baby Jesus with a halo surrounding her. Noting the mystic and holy nature of her being. As the mother of Jesus Christ, the Madonna is also the protector, the nurturer, and the teacher, with hair also often covered.

She in many ways is treated like a magical being, with the Immaculate Conception referring to her conception, not that of Jesus’. She is patient, the voice of reason, and also a teen mother.

Pregnant, but not tainted by sexual deviancy; Smart, not without an earthly husband also guiding her; holy, but due to her proximity to her son.

All pointing out very interesting connections of what the Madonna imagery really showcases. A chaste young girl who was able to still become a mother.

All the responsibilities of motherhood and child-rearing with very little focus on her own humanity….quite similar to that of the Mammy….

Mary Magdalene, the Fake Creation of the Intelligent Woman as Promiscuous, and Taking Control of Your Narrative

I first learned about Mary Magdalene in pre-school, like all good Christian girls, I went to Sunday School at my baptist church. I don’t remember them ever using harsh words such as “whore”, but it was always implied that she was formally bad, turned good, because of meeting Jesus Christ.

I always felt confused by her storyline, even with all of my private, Catholic education, it never really added up to me.

Shouldn’t the men who partook in the sale of her body to survive also be cast out? I suppose Jesus himself also stated something similar in the way of “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” ….veryyyyyyy gaggy line to be honest.

Sometime in college, I finally got around to watching the Da Vinci Code, which when it came out while in elementary school for me, I recall people being furious. Sighting it as blasphemy and harming the institution of the Church.

spoilers ahead but this movie came out like 20 years ago.

Come to find out, it’s because they imply that Jesus had a counterpart, Mary Magdalene. She was not a whore, she was not the madonna, she was also divine in her own right. She was his partner in spreading the gospel, not some random woman he took pity on.

They argue that the Church determined the Gospels people read today, tossing out versions that did not align with the “Church’s vision”, including that of the Gospel of Mary.

…And why on Earth would they allow for that vision to be tainted by a woman being involved.

Suddenly, Mary Magdalene is diminished to the “whore” the very thing that still plagues women who dare to exist in their own bodies and think freely.

This led me to read “Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel, & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet” by Meggan Watterson.

Suddenly, it started to click.

If a woman who was educated, seen as an equal to Jesus, and had her own gospel were to lead the Church, would these tropes even exist? (…Christianity and the Transatlantic Slave Trade do go kind of hand in hand….)

An intelligent woman has more agency to say no, an intelligent woman has control of her body, an intelligent woman cannot be controlled.

So, what would the Church do? Remove her gospel, deem it invalid or heretic in nature, and move on to a male-centered, often contradictory gospel.

Now, I am not a historian or theologian, and I do not pretend to know the inner workings of ancient Catholic creeds, but I do know patriarchy, and this reeks of it.

And patriarchy, much like white supremacy, racism, and sexism, have all used Christianity as a tool to harm and oppress.

The connections between “Whore/Jezebel” and “Mammy and the Madonna” become quite clear when you see the context. If one of the few examples of women in the Bible is demonized as promiscuous, while the other Mary, holy and chosen by God; It makes for a very clear picture of how to keep women in their place.

When the narrative can be controlled, then it justifies the harm done, particularly to Black women. Suddenly the narrative can shift from

evil person commits harm towards a Black woman → promiscuous Black woman seduces holy man with her wily nature.

It creates a pathway for sexualization, diminishing intelligence, and still creating space for caretaking and emotional labor.

This is why we must take control of our own narratives.

New Orleans and Taking Control of the Narrative

In the latter half of my 20s is when I really started to like my body. I was living in New Orleans, and I remember moving from New York, and suddenly everything about my body felt right. I felt more comfortable with my curves, I started to accentuate certain features. I lived for a crop top, still do.

I was enjoying myself. Not for anyone else’s enjoyment, but my own. What I loved about New Orleans is that it was so normal. Maybe it’s Mardi Gras, or the different colonial histories, or maybe just the energy there, even the heat, but everybody was always half naked.

It didn’t matter your size, your age, your gender, your sexual expression, people were and are very free there. Living in a way that made these tropes disappear. Mothers are out on the parade route with their babies in hand, dropping it low, double-caked up and loving it. Topless pools were normal, women and femmes were encouraged to let their freak flag fly, and it was all so matter of fact.

I attribute much of my forethought and freedom now to my time in New Orleans, funnily enough, a very Catholic city.

My narrative became my own there. I dressed up, I wore what I wanted, I expressed myself through my clothes, sexuality felt normal and tangible, as did motherhood at some point. The two ideas were not separate, and they should never have been.

Women can exist as sexual beings, intellectuals, and as mothers and caretakers, and they do it. every. single day.

Black women for too long, have been the subjects of a specialized vitriol around being single women and also motherhood. Even in more modern times, we have the “Video Vixen” vs. “Welfare Queen”.

And as I get older, I firmly believe this is done to suppress the innate power available in loving your body, loving who you are, and not being afraid to express it.

Since moving to Austin, I have carried on this freedom of expression in clothing especially, I do not hide my breasts, my hair is bigger and natural, and my thighs go with me everywhere.

This simple existence has resulted in women coming to me at bars and trying to fondle me, drum on my breasts, grabbing my butt, and most recently a 37 year old man saying nothing else, but a drunken stare and “I like your boobs”.

Confusion tends to occur when I actually assert my physical boundaries and tell them to stop, or I’m asked to explain my what I do.

Most don’t account for a Black girl out at the bars in Austin to be on her third degree, but here I am. ~Utter and sheer confusion. ~

Unfortunately for them, I exist in my body wholly, I create my own narrative.

I am no one’s mammy, no one’s jezebel, no one’s whore, and surely not the madonna. I’m just Lauren.

Daring to be sexy, daring to be black, and daring to be smart.

For more on Mary Magdalene, I recommend this pod ep from Back to the Borderline:

For more on Black Women and Body Politics:

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

Jezebel Unhinged: Losing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture

The Body is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

Nothing was really tangible, nor did it really work. I went on birth control, only to still bleed heavily on my placebo days. Had worsened moods due to the combination pill, and my weight and acne also continue to wax and wane.

This is not to talk poorly about the use of hormonal contraceptives because they are life-changing for so many. However, it was not until I understood how Estrogen impacted me directly, that I was able to find a birth control that works for me, and find foods to not only help with estrogen regulation, but my anemia as well.

I wanted to make this video as a beginner’s guide to understanding estrogen and how food can serve as a way to help manage it better. This is in addition to modern medicine, regular movement, and stress management!

Rarely a complete answer, and always an opportunity for a yes, and!

Thanks for watching!

Sources:

Citations:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4057300/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22353-estrogen
https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/testosterone--what-it-does-and-doesnt-do
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15734604/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29573619/

I have been a twilight fan since 2007, read all of the books, rewatched each movie multiple times, and never tire of it. Though the Twilight Saga sings the praises of abstinence, marrying far too young, and weird age-gaps, it somehow encompasses a form of childhood naiveté that is comforting. Maybe it’s Kristen Stewart’s performance or perhaps my ongoing interest in Robert Pattinson’s shy, smart, tortured boy persona, but it hits.

For my viewing, I selected New Moon, the second in the series, and for those who do not know the plot, a quick synopsis (spoilers!):

Bella (human) and Edward (vampire) are finally happy after a rather scary, near-death moment for Bella a few months prior (vamp attack). All for her to almost get attacked AGAIN by Edward’s brother after a rather egregious paper cut (BLOOD EVERYWHERE). Edward decides this is the final straw, and his entire family must abandon everything, and he specifically must abandon Bella, for her own good. To do this, he lures her into the woods of Washington state, tells her he never really loved her, and states and empty wish for her to stay out of danger. This leads her to a months long depressive episode, in which she is saved by the love and admiration of her friend, Jacob, who also happens to be a werewolf. Ultimately, the movie ends with Bella saving Edward’s life by stopping him from suicide by way of the Volturi (evil vamp cult). Bella runs to him across an Italian courtyard, it’s dramatic, Robert Pattison is shirtless, he says he never meant anything of the hurtful things he said, and doesn’t ever want to leave her. The movie ends with him returning to Forks, WA and asking for her hand in marriage…..

…..Right.

Edward Cullens, Attachment Styles, and Letting it Go

As a pre-teen reading Twilight, I remember thinking THIS is love, this is what it must be. TORTURE. PASSION. PAIN. The movie and book paint Edward as the tortured artist type, who believes himself to be the devil, and not deserving of love. While Bella, an over functioning anxious young girl, believes that she is not worthy of the “godly” figure that is Edward. And here we have, the worthiness wound. Fully activated insecure attachment styles based in how they view themselves.

It’s a perfect depiction of the anxious/avoidant cycle. The man who was alone for over 100 years, finally meets a girl he cannot stay away from. But like many avoidant cycles, he chooses to run from the dynamic, and tells himself it’s for her own good.

As an adult watching this, I kept thinking how this warped my mind. How it groomed me for avoidance in men as the blueprint. It fuels the “they always come back” rhetoric and supports the theory that someone who abandons you in that way, really does love you. Another reframe of the old adage of, “oh he’s mean to you because he LIKES you”. It emphasizes a narrative that the emotional overwhelm of men in relationships should be expected, tolerated, and even accepted when they inevitably come back to you.

With Bella, this need for closeness after withdrawal looked like sending unreceived emails to Edward’s “sister” Alice, seeking co-regulation with Jacob to fill void, and then literally diving 50+ feet off of a cliff for “fun” just to see a vision of him….

She continues to perform acts of self-harm for his attention. And ultimately it leads her to still be his savior. She flies halfway across the world to save him from his attempted suicide with the Volturi, even though, she has believed that this man did not care whether she lived or died. He sees her and takes it all back, and suddenly they are in love! All is well! No mention of the months long torment she endured, just that he needed her back….

The danger with this narrative is the reiteration of self-flagellation as the blueprint for getting and keeping a man’s attention.

It teaches the anxious partner that they just need to throw a fit, and their lover will return. Dysregulate yourself and your love will reappear, like magic, ready to recreate the cycle. It teaches us that when people state a clear dislike and disregard for us, that they must not REALLY mean it. It reinforces the edward cullenisms, aka tortured soul who loves deeply, but believes himself the devil, and therefore becomes the king of avoidance. It’s quite a played out trope in my experience. Stand up!

Unfortunately, sometimes people really do just not like you anymore.

Sometimes people are not being avoidant, sometimes they just don’t care. It’s a hard reality to swallow that they don’t always come back, they sometimes move on, happily at that.

Clinging on to dynamics that make us unregulated, insecure, and even harm ourselves, is not true love. It is misalignment in practice.

Let that person go, acknowledge the love there, but they cannot meet you where you are going. We cannot be everyone’s savior, and sometimes we cannot be the one to be saved.

Although, I deeply dislike the “let them” theory by Mel Robbins due to simplification of detachment ideology, but what I will take from that is you should and must let people show you who they are. And like Maya Angelou stated, “when people show you who they are, believe them”.

Staying in an unfit dynamic to be a martyr to some tortured love dynamic does not make you better or more healed, it makes you stuck in a time loop very similar to the one created by Stephanie Meyer about a vampire/human love story.

Get outta there!

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500 Days of Summer, and the Belief that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl will save you

Post-Twilight phase, like many young teens in the 2010s, I got into indie sleaze, 80s rock (just The Smiths), and wearing shorts with doc martens.

Along with this came 500 Days of Summer (2009), touted as a “romantic comedy”, more like romantic horror, but I digress. Another quick synopsis (spoilers included!):

Tom meets Summer through work. Tom becomes obsessed with Summer as he gets with all women he dates seemingly. Every woman becomes his muse. Summer, the epitome of the manic pixie dream girl, becomes Tom’s light, his muse, his very reason for his existence. She begins to feel this intense energy, his need for reassurance, his obsession with her happiness, and begins to pull back. She states definitively that she can’t really be “anyone’s anything”, they toy with each other more, then finally the breakup happens. Tom drops into a depression, obsession, and overall anger/dissatisfaction with life. Till suddenly, he sees Summer again, they get along, it’s light and fun, he begins to hope. All for this to come crumbling to realize she is engaged to be married, and just wanted him as a friend again. He, for lack of a better phrase, crashes out, and decides to get his life together. Goes out for a job to be an architect, and in the interview room meets….Autumn. His next victim…lover lol. Fin.

This movie was deeply formative, and every few years I find myself changing my opinion on who was worse. Tom, the anxious partner, who clearly had very little sense of self and far too much pressure on the relationship. Or is it Summer, the avoidant partner, who strung him along for her own enjoyment and cure to boredom, still wanted access to him even after finding a new partner, and stating how she never felt sure with Tom (brutal scene).

This is the issue with the avoidant/anxious labels, there is not a clear villain, in the same way there is no clear hero. We all have the capacity to hurt and harm in romantic relationships, and acknowledging that is a hard reality that many TikTok therapists choose to ignore.

I think the far more dangerous trope here is the creation of the manic pixie dream girl. A blueprint created by Zooey Deschanel’s kooky performance as Summer that invokes the freedom of the 60s hippie mixed with the sexual freedom of the modern woman. Tom ties his entire being and happiness to this version of her, without seeing her as a full human. Simultaneously, comparing any new partner to a falsehood of his own creation. He continues to search for a feeling that does not exist, chasing the impossible, until one day he stumbles upon another woman, who just happens to have the name of the next season after Summer. Will the cycle repeat or is he really entering a new “season” of life that won’t recreate the pattern.

I suppose the idea is that Summer was in many ways his catalyst, his spiritual awakening to find himself, fueled by manic pixie dream, and emphasizes the use of women as the method to get men to self-actualize… many such cases.

Chasing and Not Attracting

When you chase the manic pixie dreamer, you chase a literal dream, they are not a full person, they are an idea. This often means that the pursuer often finds these characters to be inconsistent, confusing, and fleeting. Making it catnip for those of us with attachment issues, because if you chase after an idea of person, you never have to be met with the reality of a real relationship. The reality of love is far scarier and much more tangible. It requires presence, stability, and effort.

To love is a conscious choice everyday, to be in right relationship is a true act of will. Love is as always a verb, as bell hooks reminds us. Love is not a feeling, that is limerence, love is an action that takes you witnessing your partner as a whole being. A being capable of mistakes, of fear, of confusion, of showing up imperfectly.

Tom was deeply incapable of such a thing because he created a version of Summer for his own pleasure and enjoyment, and the second she deviated, he became insecure, angry, and pre-occupied with getting her to be definitive about their future and choose him.

Summer, on the other hand, did what many avoidants do initially, and that is people-please and fawn to the point of manipulative oblivion. She lived her life in a way that avoided long-term commitments, treating people has fun little jaunts, never as a serious reality. The second she sensed this in Tom, instead of leaving immediately, she dragged it out, became distant, annoyed, and mildly rude even.

She stopped trying, rather than acknowledge her own fear of intimacy with him, because ultimately she knew something was misaligned. She was also searching for this “feeling”, like a magical glowing sign saying, “marry this one!”.

They both hurt each other, because they both believed love was only a feeling, a spark perhaps. Summer remarks that one day she just “woke up and knew” with her fiancé. As if a magical fairy came down and told her, it was her time.

(And yeah, I’m gonna be honest, that’s a looooooooaaaaaaad of bullshit if you have ever experienced anxiety, ADHD, or literally any form of critical thought.)

We ALL experience doubt, fear, confusion in romantic relationships, the point is that you sit with yourself, you can determine what is anxiety, what is fear, and what is real misalignment. Summer, however, exhibited traits of “Taxi Cab Theory”, which many associate solely with men/male characters. Taxi Cab Theory is the idea that men will shuffle through partners without their so called “taxi light” on for real relationships, meaning they are not actually emotionally ready or available. Until one day, unknown to anyone else, their light will just be on. And whoever they pick up is who they end up with.

Unfortunate, but true for many. Perhaps Summer didn’t wake up sure about the new man, but maybe he did let her show up as whatever self she wanted to be. Maybe he let her wander, be emotionally distant, or had enough money that she didn’t care. Perhaps Summer finally had her own light on after therapy, journaling, or the wake up call of Tom, to sit and decide she was ready for “real love”.

That decision does not come in a split second, and is not a feeling, it is a moment carefully crafted by connection and understanding over time. A conscious choice. To pretend it’s just random takes away the reality of the situation, and the agency of those making the decision to be in partnership.

Illusions of Choice and the Modern Dating Landscape

This issue is ultimately a bigger societal problem of modern relationships and has created an illusion of endless choices. We all think we have more time, and more people to go through, and instead of sitting in the real sh*t that comes with relationships. We hyper fixate on little things, as the reasons why that “magical” feeling is not there. It allows for emotional distance from partners who are doing all the right things, but perhaps, for the Summers of the world, their light is simply not on.

But how could it be if they only know how to be the object of another’s desires? How can you know how to feel about someone, if you don’t know who you are? This is how the magic of the manic pixie dreamer wanes, they decide they can no longer fulfill the fantasy.

The hero becomes the villain, and we are back to square one.

So, the key to getting away from Edward Cullens, and not becoming a Summer, or a Tom?

Living your life for you!

Knowing who you are and what you stand for. Setting clear intentions when dating, being present, not bringing people along for your own comfort. Do not seek out new people or relationships simply for fear of being alone.

Be alone. Find out who you are when no one watches, so when someone does show up and want to witness you, you know how to witness yourself, and the mirror they show back to you contains a self-image you are proud of.

Thanks for reading <3. Move gently with each other!

Share The Second House

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Some additional resources:

1. https://blogs.bcm.edu/2023/04/25/the-truth-about-fried-food/

2. https://www.eater.com/23156528/fried-chicken-south-virginia-black-women-history

3. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-the-maillard-reaction

Mine, which has been told me to me on several occasions begins at the Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.

The very first time I tried to befriend a man.

I could not have been older than 4 years old, shy, and probably very nervous about going to a big place like Chuck E. Cheese.

The story goes, that a boy in the ball pit was slinging the hard plastic toys right at me, so much so, that my dad was visibly angry, or so my mother says. After the ball pit assault of toys, I ran to my parents, and said: “Look I made a new friend!”.

And here it is, the beginning of “if he’s mean to you, he likes you” rhetoric that has ruled much of my life.

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No Man’s Mother, No Man’s Therapist

In bell hooks’ book, “The Will to Change”, she writes about showing men and boys the way back to themselves. She discusses the idea that because of patriarchy, capitalism, and other ills of society, men must be taught how to love properly. BUT they must have the WILL to make these changes.

As a cancer sun and mercury, much of my life has been spent trying to prove my worthiness of love; by being loving, by being giving, and choosing understanding and patience, a practice especially practiced toward men.

As women, we are conditioned from a young age to believe that men are simply incapable of the emotional depth and kindness that women are. Therefore, much like babies, we could never hold them accountable for their faults or the wrongs in relationships. “Oh, he’s just a guy”, or “boys will be boys” has been pervasive in society for all time. No solve, no accountability, just keeping the status quo.

We just have to keep loving them till they suddenly change…

And though bell hooks was a genius and visionary, this is perhaps where we may differ.

You CANNOT love someone into themselves.

Especially people that have been conditioned to emotionally suppress and deny the one thing that could lead them to actual connection, which is love and kindness. I feel like this is where I must say “not all men”, but the men that have gotten out of this space have had to do serious work that is, often, quite isolating.

bell hooks also discusses this phenomenon of isolation. Men who choose to be loving and vulnerable further isolate themselves from male connection due to the patriarchal aversion to emotional intimacy. She proposes that this is perhaps why many men choose to stay with their heads under the sand, keep that same status quo, and stay in relationships with other men with minimal emotional intimacy or depth.

This is what leads to so many men in my life having “best friends” they talk to once a year. What looks and sounds like estrangement to me, seems like deep, emotional depth to them. This is where the curse begins with male friendship because we often don’t have the same requirements and understanding of what true friendship is.

The normalcy and frequency with which women give love freely is foreign to the average man.

However, as a woman who has befriended men, this burden of connection falls back onto us. We can no longer be just a friend, we become the mommy, the girlfriend, the therapist, the boss, the planner, and whatever other hat we need to wear for their comfort.

Suddenly, you’re a full-fledged nanny with very little to show for it.

I found myself filling the emotional voids of these men. That is until they got a girlfriend, and suddenly I no longer existed. I did not want to be the girlfriend in this dynamic, rather this highlighted their sheer incapability to hold any form of real camaraderie and intimacy with more than one person at a time.

To be clear, not all of my guy friends have done this, but it is always a shock when you realize that your guy friends are, in fact, still men.

They can treat women poorly, they can expect you to be seen, not heard, and even objectify or belittle you all within one phrase.

For many years, I thought my value lied in this space. I could be the mom, the therapist, the big sister, the fill-in girlfriend for couples events. In a way, I think perhaps my own skewed vision of what womanhood was supposed to be clouded my judgment.

When Neptune left Pisces a few weeks ago, my delusion suddenly ended. I realized what was happening; the unsung labor, the emotional toll, and the realization that to these men, I wasn’t fully a human. I was some mystical entity, their personal room of requirement for their emotional needs.

The worst part being that they couldn’t even see it.

Boundaries, Little Boy Syndrome, and Right Relationships with Men

As I’ve reached the end of my 20s, been through the pits of a hard breakup, and on my second iteration of graduate school, boundaries have become my best friend.

As my life continues to get busier, and my purpose continues to shape up, boundaries are the only way for me to exist and take care of myself.

However, for many of my guy friends, this has caused a…disconnect… an anger… a tantrum even? Much like a little boy would if his parent took away his favorite toy.

This shift has elicited an interesting response from a few guy friends of mine, that looked much like a swelling anger for not meeting their needs or expectations any longer.

In reality, all that happened is I started acting like their other guy friends, occasional check-ins, jokes, silliness, very little emotional depth, just vibes. This shift led me to realize that perhaps there was an underlying anger that I, a woman, had the audacity to not serve them. To be my own person outside of their needs.

Expectation and Misogyny

A tiktoker I have been enjoying named Kristen, recently made a video stating that misogyny can be less overt, and show up as a lingering expectation of care.

For example, the expectation that I, as a woman, will not question the actions of my guy friends. Or the expectation that I as the sole woman friend will do free therapy, tell them they’re doing a good job, or check-in once a week just to make sure they’re “alright”.

To be clear, I do genuinely enjoy doing these actions for people I love and care about, and in right relationships, this treatment is reciprocal.

Women friendships have taught me these right relationships. They have shown me how to be present, what it means to give and receive love, and show up during hard times.

Many men have not ever been shown or taught this.

This education was not casual or unintentional. I read books on love and relationships for fun, I listen to podcasts about modern social dynamics, I talk to my friends about how we show up, I engage with the idea that I can be wrong, I never pretend to be perfect or infallible.

My guy friends, often, never do this. They never interrogate this thought. They don’t entertain the idea that they can mess up, that they CAN be the bad guy, that sometimes, you are the villain in someone else’s story. No this does not make you bad, but it does make you human.

If these thoughts never come up, how could I ever engage in right relationship with them?

I realized this very month, that I can’t.

After two larger blow-ups at me, for quite innocuous reasons, and even acknowledging my own faults or mistakes, I still got lectured on “not asking why enough” and “not being supportive enough”, when asked if their other male friends ever got this talk, both parties stumbled, and said “no but you’re different” “it’s different, Lauren, I care about you, and I love you, so that means I expected more from you.”

…. right, right.

The tiktoker I mentioned, Kristen, also recently discussed this in a video. To paraphrase, she points out that someone ascribing their happiness to the actions of another person is a form of emotional avoidance. I would also say emotional immaturity.

What I have found is that these men, unknowingly, were using me for emotional regulation. Unfortunately for them, it is not my responsibility to regulate the emotional dysregulation or discomfort of a man.

My job is to regulate myself, apologize when I have hurt or offended, to sit with my actions, and make changes to not hurt again. These men I have found only know one part of this, perhaps the apologizing part, which rarely leads to changed behavior.

And due to this, I have reached a final reckoning. I have no space in my life for men, who require me to be their emotional regulation tool, to be their cheerleader, and be lectured the second I do not give them the exact attention they want.

I only have room for right relationships. This is not to say that men cannot enter right relationships with women friends, they absolutely can. However, the selfishness that is inherent to a patriarchal society bleeds into everything, and until that is interrogated, there will be no path forward.

To men reading this, YOU must make the decision to change, to try, to do better.

The will to change does not come from women, it comes from men waking up, teaching themselves and each other, that love is an act, and cannot rest on the shoulders of women.

Thanks for always supporting and watching <3

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

- Excerpt from “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou

I wake up early naturally, but on this cold January morning, I heard the trill of my alarm and thought….here we go. It’s not that I have a sense of dread upon waking up, but it’s as if my body gears up for battle. I wake up with drive and determination that I WILL cook a full continental breakfast all before 8:30, post on my professional instagram with a witty caption, shower, drive to class by 9, and still have time to grab a coffee. I could do it ALL. Yet, here I am writing this Substack because the title of this essay came to me as something like a spiritual download of a meme. As many downloads often due…

Who are the “Young H*es” and Why Must They Cook Everything on High?

The “young h*es” trend has gone viral now on multiple social platforms, calling out the many idiosyncrasies of being a young woman. From cooking food on high, to overloading laundry, to carrying all your groceries in one go. I have been there, and I am often still there.

And yet, still I”ll rise.

The “Caged Bird” poem by Maya Angelou has always resonated with me, something about the way she describes the knowing that comes with aging.

She knows why the caged bird sings because she’s lived it.

It feels quite trivial to compare the profundity of Angelou’s “Caged Bird” to this trend, but it applies. At least in my head.

The life of a young woman is one that is rampant with judgment, confusion, and societal pressure. Perhaps we cook things on high because how else would we squeeze in a meal before a work shift? Perhaps we feel the need to carry all the groceries in at once because who else is going to help us?

The practice of young womanhood is one frustrating realization after another that we are ultimately existing in a world that does not fully support our rest, our autonomy, or safety.

“Young h*es” make due. “Young h*es” protect themselves.

The mere invention of this trend making h*e synonymous with woman is the biggest tell within itself. To be a “young h*e” and figure out a life for yourself within the patriarchal and capitalist society is a true talent.

The caged bird sings of freedom, and so do the young h*es. Freedom from the judgment of what a man deems as acceptable womanhood.

I deem womanhood as being grounded in who you are. Running on your own time. Doing multiple loads of laundry because you can. Cooking food at whatever temperature works. Having fun when you want and how you want.

There’s no figuring out womanhood, you’ll know after you get there

What I have found the most interesting about this trend is how everyone woman I know can relate. It feels like a very “I am Spartacus” moment, where we all admit that we all like to press +30 on the microwave instead of plugging in the actual minutes.

It leaves me wondering if we are all “young h*es” then what is youth, what is adulthood, what is being a woman?

Britney Spears Always Knows

I'm not a girl
Not yet a woman
All I need is time
A moment that is mine
While I'm in between
I'm not a girl

-Britney Spears, “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman”

We must define our womanhood on our own. The liminal space that Britney talks about is uncomfortable, but an absolute necessity. We just need time. We need time for ourselves, time to mature, time to think, time without pressure.

We all go through life with these gigantic pressures around what being the perfect woman is. This doubles by 10 with being a woman of color in America, and particularly a Black woman. I’ve written about the expectations of bodies on here, which would be enough to make anyone feel inadequate. But now this?

And perhaps this is why I return to “Caged Bird”. I understand the frustration, the trap, and the confusion of being a young, adult woman. The constant dodging of general life threats that are all too common for women.

We all, unknowingly, sing of freedom. The freedom to live without care of others’ perception. The freedom of safety. The freedom of community care. The freedom of graceful aging. The freedom of simply existing without some random man on the internet trying to make women feel small.

So I propose, perhaps young h*es cook everything on high because we know there are better places for us to be, perhaps we know that if this meal goes a little quicker, we are one step closer to the womanhood we all seek. A womanhood that is safe, grounded, and entirely crafted by us.

so maybe…. give the young h*es a break?

-signed a young h*e, not yet a woman

(now please go listen to one of Britney’s greatest hits “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman)

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts…”

- from the play “As You Like It” by William Shakespeare

I was 14 in my English class when I first heard this speech. Out of Shakespeare’s many works, I assume this one remains quite popular due to it’s resonance with the human existence. All of us actors in our own right, different stages, different parts, but acting nonetheless. An idea echoed by Kurt Vonnegut’s “We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be”, from his novel Mother Night.

These concepts haunt me. If we are all just pretending and performing, who are we to each other? Are we all co-leads in some sick and twisted life long play?

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Homophone (ˈhä-mə-ˌfōn)

1: one of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or derivation or spelling (such as the words to, too, and two)

2: a character or group of characters pronounced the same as another character or group

Phat and Fat, identical sounds, different spellings, different meanings, and very different cultural origins.

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Most of my life, I assumed everyone knew the difference between these two words. To notice the different use of the words in speech, it is entirely on context clues of a situation. I made the naive assumption that everyone knew that context, at least until this past summer…

While out on a river, I made a joke about us all having phat *sses, essentially meant as a compliment to our beautiful rear ends. However, after the excursion, I had the rather mortifying realization that other people may have taken the meaning of “Fat”, not “phat”.

Most women, I thought, wanted a big butt. This narrative had been pushed to me my whole life. Having a flat anything was seen as unattractive. The goal was always to be “thick” and if you could help it, “slim thick” specifically. Coming up in the age of the BBL, Kardashians, and other impossible body standards, saying someone had a “phat *ss” was a HIGH compliment, coveted even.

As I’ve grown up, and my friend groups diversified, I am constantly reminded of just how different cultural beauty standards are. Leaving me with questions on homophones like Phat and Fat and how they were created.

Below I’ve posed a few thoughts on the matter using the work of Sabrina Strings’, “Fearing the Black Body”, Miriam Webster, and Pop Culture.

Origins of a Word: Phat Vs. Fat Definitions

Phat, as defined by Miriam Webster, is annotated as slang, meaning “highly attractive or gratifying”. While, fat has many more definitions, ranging from “having excessive body fat” to “full in tone and quality”.

Phat, made popular by Black Americans in the 20th century, has always been associated with something good, something cool, something to aspire to. Lest we forget, the words of Nicki Minaj in Anaconda, in which she proclaims, “I gotta big PHAT *ss”. I find this repurposing of the word “fat” to “phat” such a fascinating reclamation by Black people.

Fat, often seen as an insult, is commonly used to degrade people, and associate their size with worth or health. It’s become a way to determine social status and attractiveness, centering thinner bodies as the ideal, and larger bodies as something to pushed to the side or judged.

So, how and why did Black people become the first to co-opt this word to mean something positive? We look to none other than Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings.

“Fearing the Black Body”

In 2019, I was listening to a podcast called “The Nod”, while getting ready for work, and came across this episode. It featured the Brittany Luse as the host, interviewing Sabrina Strings, on her then new book “Fearing the Black Body”.

It is not an exaggeration to say this book awakened something deep within me, arguably the trajectory of my life, just from one podcast episode. Suddenly everything made sense, and gave explanation for the creation of these homophonic words.

The book begins with “Part 1: The Beauty of the Robust”, starting with the first chapter “Being Venus”. In this chapter, she goes on to explain how women in larger bodies were the norm, and even considered more desirable.

She does this by framing this concept through art, showing images like “The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli, which depicts Venus, the Roman goddess, the epitome of love and beauty, as a curvier figure with fat on her body. This was the aesthetic that was beautiful, coveted, and depicted in fine art.

However, around the same time that Western Europe began the transatlantic slave trade, a great sociological storm began, which combined the evils of Christianity, xenophobia, eugenics, and just plain, old racism to associate fatness with black bodies, therefore, making it undesirable.

(this is super, quick cliff notes version of this book for the purpose of this essay, but please read the ENTIRE thing, and take notes!)

Reclamation of “Phat” and Loving Larger Femme Bodies

Sabrina Strings goes on to explain that during the several hundred years of slavery, and post-slavery reconstruction era, “Blackness” was seen as something to stray away from, particularly the Black woman’s body type.

Not only has fatness been associated with Blackness, but historically also laziness and gluttony. She argues that the thin aesthetic was another way for white American women to assert their difference from Black women in American society. They viewed being in a larger body akin to savagery and lack of control with food.

In her latter chapters under “Part II: Race, Weight, God and Country”, Strings explains the creation of “Thinness as American Exceptionalism”, detailing how the closer one got to thinness the closer they got to the American ideal of beauty, and therefore became “American”. She discusses how other immigrant groups, could look to these beauty standards to further assimilate into the new concept of “whiteness”.

This led me to my proposed theory on how '“phat” came to be, stated below in a classic if, then statement.

If Black Americans, especially those descended from the enslaved, were the only group that could never assimilate into “whiteness”, then maybe they chose to create and reclaim what beauty and being “fat” meant for them? Creating “phat”, almost in rebellion of the negative connotations it held.

A word has no power when it means something different entirely to the listener, even if it sounds the same. It created a culture of appreciation and even love for larger bodies. However, this love was conditional, and exclusive to specific femme body parts, and not all body types.

Impossible Beauty Standards and Fatphobia

It is no secret that Black women are often associated with a different body type than other races in the United States. As I previously mentioned, as young teenage girl, it was almost expected. It also meant my body was often policed more than it should have been. I suspect this is the case for many Black women. Not allowed to be too big, not allowed to be too small, fat distributed ONLY in specific places, often only meant for the gratification of others. Fat only becomes “Phat” when it’s around your thighs or your butt, anywhere else and you’re judged. Creating a double burden of fatphobia, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Fatphobia runs rampant in our culture now, but often ignoring the racial origins that make the hate on larger bodies even more sinister.

Society has over-utilized “health” as the reasoning for warring against larger bodies, and by and large, Black women’s bodies. This same harmful ideology falls over into other races as well. Without knowing it, white women also fall into the fatphobia rabbit hole, often without knowing what they fear, a larger body, is not the enemy.

I’ve heard horror stories from white friends about how they were persecuted for their larger bodies growing up, always made to feel undesirable, in some cases, ridiculed or lectured by women in their households for not being small and dainty enough. Fat, becoming the worst slur that could be thrown at them. Once again, fascinating.

I think back to the situation that made me want to write this essay, and I actually get a little sad. What a mental prison we are ALL in when it comes to these words. If phat can only be awarded when perfectly shaped, and fat used the second your body changes, did we actually reclaim it? If one person is still harmed by a word, and another hears a compliment, what meaning does the word take on?

Or does the real reclamation come from restoring mundanity to the word? Treating it like exactly what it is, a descriptive adjective, no morality attached to it, just a descriptor.

I don’t have the set answer to these, but I do think we have work to do when it comes to it. As a society, we must reckon with the fear we have around fatness and fatphobia.

Being in a larger body does not inherently equal bad health, the same way being in a thin body doesn’t equal good health. Body composition, muscle mass, age, stress, physical activity, mental health, etc. account for what makes us all functioning humans, and yet we seem to only focus on physical manifestations of weight.

*Quick biological tangent*

From a biological perspective, this is also true. Mild levels of adipose tissue are necessary for the functioning of the human body, and even more functional for babies and small children. The only dangers come when this fat tissue is around vital organs, or more centrally located, highlighting factors that are not exclusive to people in larger bodies.

Let’s All Chill on the Body Talk

This instance has reminded me that once again, sometimes it’s okay to just not comment lol. I also hope it serves as a reminder to you, the reader of this essay, to keep your body comments, EVEN IF it’s compliment, to yourself. We all have our own stories with our bodies, we all have things we get hung up on, and the LAST thing we need is somebody bringing them to the surface.

Though, my initial jokes could have been taken differently with a different crowd, that doesn’t mean they were necessary. There’s enough chatter in the media to last us all a lifetime without adding and reinforcing it in our interpersonal relationships.

I suppose this essay is a way for me to reckon on committing one of my many personal deadly sins, aka engaging in body commentary, but I am human, and am still digging through the 29+ years of body discourse imprinted on me.

Onwards and upwards! Cheers to body neutrality! And remember, when in doubt, just keep to yourself!

I lost both of my grandmothers relatively early in my life. My mother’s mom at the age of 16 due to complications from early on-set Alzheimers’, a sick and twisted disease that robbed her of herself. My dad’s mother, who passed when I was 20, succumbed to long-term complications related to a stroke she had when I was quite young.

For both of these women, I barely got to know them as their full selves. Both afflicted with health issues, I almost saw them as younger siblings. I attribute this to the fact that they both moved in with us for a big chunk of my adolescence, which made my barely formed brain associate them with inconvenience rather than comfort. I used to beat myself up for ever having such a feeling, but I was a child. A confused one at that, trying to process how adults could revert back to a childlike state, when I needed the same type of care.

In some ways, it feels like I helped with their second childhood. I helped my parents be caretakers, I became self-sufficient, so as to not be a bigger burden, and I minded my business. From what I’ve heard, a lot of eldest daughters adopt this mindset, mind just happened to be in reference to my own grandmothers.

I often feel I was robbed of their wholeness, which I had only seen glimpses of. Both afflictions, a stroke and Alzheimer's took away different core parts of their being: speech, memory, overall body functioning. They were there, but not? A strange feeling to watch people slip from their core selves, and be able to do nothing about it.

I talk about how this relates to my current understanding of attachment and grief here.

The movie, Benjamin Button (2008), shows this through the literal transformation of Benjamin back into a little kid as he ages, losing his memory, then his speech, this his ability to walk and talk. In the movie, they even diagnose his child self with Alzheimer’s.

Perhaps this is why I cling to these stories about my grandmothers, their former selves becoming holy deities, hoping that if I can understand their mythology I can better understand myself.

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Urban Legends: Almeda and Janyce

My parents often told me stories about them as if they were urban legends. I suppose in many ways, they could be considered as such. When we look at how the history books present the early 1960s for Black women, it’s paints a picture of trauma, stress, fear and oppression. The overt racism, mixed with the inherent misogyny, highlights a particularly sinister form of OG misogynoir.

That, however, was never the story I was told.

My mom’s mom, Almeda, who I affectionally referred to as “Grandma”, was born in North Carolina, raised in Virginia, a basketball star from what I’m told at Norfolk State, and a Gemini. She was vibrant and by 25, living in Maryland with her young daughter as a single mom.

My dad’s mom, Janyce, or “Granny”, was born and raised in D.C, a Howard University graduate, chemist by trade, and Leo/Virgo cusp (!) she too was a single mother with a young son all before the age of 25.

For many Black woman, being a single mother is painted as a failure, and yet I only heard of them spoken as a success.

My dad’s mother, Janyce, was often described to me as a brilliant individual with a gift for creation both in art and science, owned her own townhouse, a Cadillac, and put my father through private school up until the age of 18. She was dripped out before dripped out was even remotely in the lexicon. My father made remarks often of how he wished I could know her prior to her stroke, which occurred when I was 4 years old. She was brilliant in more ways then I probably ever knew. An artist, a seamstress in her own right (she made the dress for my christening), and simply too cool for men. Even her old age she remarked that the worst thing a young woman could do is to get married. Get your education, be clever, own your own things, a lesson I am now grateful I was told.

My mom’s mother, Almeda, a lifelong teacher and advocate for women’s health, worked and directed several women’s health clinics throughout the 70s and 80s, while training and mentoring social workers across DC and Maryland. I was told stories of her going into middle school classrooms, in the 70s might I add (!), explaining the female reproductive system, birth control, and showing plastic models of the uterus. Revolutionary in my eyes, and groundbreaking in a time when birth control was new, and Roe V. Wade hot out of the Supreme Court, and women’s rights rapidly changing.

Connecting The Dots, Stumbling into Legacy

Over the past year, I’ve been trying to find the words to write this piece, I keep coming back to the idea of legacy.

I, now 29, have found myself in a PhD program for a STEM degree, writing pieces about the bioavailability of iron for menstruating women (feel free to read that here), and suddenly I realize, Kamala Harris was right. I DID NOT just fall out of a coconut tree. I am the sum of the many women that came before me, even the women I feel like I did not know. I am a scientist who’s work focuses on public health interventions…the love child of a chemist and a social worker if you think about it.

The phrase “time is a flat circle” comes up when I think about the work I do and who my grandmothers were. Without trying, I came to know them through my own passions. I wonder if somewhere up there, they sit together and chuckle at how despite my greatest efforts to avoid this path, I am here.

In the eternal search “to find oneself”, I’ve realized coming to home to myself was really just coming home to them.

In writing this essay, I googled both of my grandmothers, I was curious what I would find. I knew Granny had been a primary investigator for several patents through the 80s and 90s. Upon looking it up, I came to find over 30 pages of inventions in which she was the lead on the patent case, for things like “Method of densifying a porous substrate by means of a matrix containing carbon” or “Method for encapsulating electroluminescent phosphor particles”. Now I read these and I recognize words, but they hold zero meaning. Only causing my deeper awe and admiration that this was her everyday. Just understanding and essentially approving hundreds of complex chemical inventions. That’s wild to me!!! How cool! 25% of my genes come from a woman who understood “encapsulation of electroluminescent phosphor particles”…. that’s very badass to me.

In looking for my Grandma, I found this Washington Post Article, describing an attack by pro-lifers with smoke bombs on the Ophelia Egypt clinic in the mid 1980s. A clinic that served predominantly Black communities in Ward 8 of DC, and as I learned from this article helped curb the infant mortality rate from 27.2% to 13.7% within 2 years. This also happened to be the exact same time my grandmother, Almeda, was the director of this clinic.

Though it’s a short quote, it nearly brought me to tears. The realization that she was fighting for the same things, I’m fighting for now: education, access, and support for vulnerable communities; a legacy built before I was even a thought.

Though my grandmothers were described as legends, I still am in awe of things I found. I am thankfully stumbling on to these paths, these legacies, coming home to the work that grounds me, realizing that the work, like my grandmothers, have always been there.

I do believe we decide our own fates, and yet, by divine intervention (and maybe protection), I’ve landed right where I’m meant to be.

An Unspoken Inheritance: A Grandmother’s Love

For both of my grandmothers, I was far too young to truly process their loss, but as I get older and think about who they were at 29. With children too?! How????? I barely feel like I have anything together, how could they be raising children too? And yet, they did, and I am here as a result. Their convictions on loving so strong, that even with illness, through lost memory, lost speech, I always felt their love, their prayers.

I feel closer to them now more than ever, maybe because my brain is forming up a bit more, maybe because I’m doing the work I’m meant too. I wonder if we would have been friends, or what advice they’d give me. Simply based on astrology alone, I feel a yap session would have been in order for us. I think they would have asked about school, dating, what my friends were like, was I happy, and of course, “do you know how much I love you?”.

And I did, I do, and I always will.

Thanks for reading.

Epilogue:

Though I’ll never know exactly what they’d say about me now, it feels like an honor to get this far into my career in public health and nutrition science. And through the year I have been trying to write this essay and reflect, I now know that it is an honor to them. My urban legends, my personal deities, my ancestors on the altar.

I carry not only their cheekbones, their eyes, but their passion, their determination, their ambition, their humor. I carry them with me.

If you still have your grandparents in your life as an adult, cherish them, ask them questions, take notes, write them down, listen. And remember that your grandmother’s prayers, a continuation of their love, may be the greatest gift we could ever inherit.

P.S. thank you for reading this very healing essay, grief is never linear, and you can heal and talk through loss at any time, no limit!

excitement beamed through me. “FINALLY!”, I thought.

Early on a Friday morning in September, the slow, harmonious opening to Olivia Dean’s sophomore album hummed into my ears.

It felt like I was in tune with something, maybe the Universe, maybe a higher power, maybe just a young, British woman from the UK, who’d also experienced heartbreak in her lifetime.

All the above perhaps.

2025 has been an impossible year, astrologically a Mars year, numerically a 9 year (2+2+5). For me, a grief year. The year of the snake, which absolutely entailed a great shedding and clearing for newness, but not without pain.

Different than the year that I had experienced prior, but nonetheless one that had to happen.

This album was a journey through the many forms of love, and I think that’s why it felt so resonant for so many. Love is not exclusive to romantic love, and can hurt us all the same regardless of circumstance. To love is to be vulnerable and open, and in all the relationships that require it, it’s scary.

We get hurt, we lash out, we get angry, we regret. Songs like “Let Alone the One You Love”, “Close Up”, and “Loud” feel like odes to the confusion and anger of heartbreak, while “Man I Need”, “A Couple Minutes”, and “Nice to Each Other” feel like optimistic yearning both for something new and something we wish we could go back to.

I am grateful for this album, and the flood gates it’s opened to sing bell hooks praises and talk about love. Love often becomes taboo in a culture that teaches vulnerability is a weakness. A culture I have been attempting to exit from for years, but am still enmeshed with. It is one thing to read about love, a whole other thing to practice it.

There’s something even more beautiful about these messages about love coming from Black women. It’s soft, and vulnerable, and cushy and it’s reflects how I feel underneath the bravado of “strength and resilience”, the most common tropes projected on to us.

bell hooks teaches this through her many essays and books, and Olivia Dean brings it to the forefront of this album. I’m grateful, inspired, and writing about love publicly. oh, how the tides continue to change.

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bell hooks and her fascination with love

When I first listened to this album, before hearing any press, I KNEW it had to have been inspired by bell hooks. “the art of loving” was a key phrase used in her book All About Love (please read!). I read this book in 2021, after many years of crushes and confusion. I read this and got my first exposure to what love meant, not just romantically, but in family, friendship and in community.

Love is a concept that I think many of us assume we know, or understand. As bell hooks would argue, love, within in a patriarchal, capitalist culture is under attack. This love is created through fear. Fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, shame and obligation, even control.

I think that’s what i felt love was: obligation and control. of self, of others, of the world.

bell hooks was my first introduction to love as praxis. Love is work, but good work. love is effort and respect, but not at the expense of yourself. It is not control, it is not confusion, it just is.

I, like Olivia Dean and bell hooks, have become obsessed with the concept of “love”. Not the love I was raised on in the media (fantasy Disney love) or the love I was taught (obligation, shame, control). But this seemingly distant version of love that felt pure, safe, and vulnerable. How does one experience it? Where does it start?

What does it mean to actively choose to love? What does it look like to forego shame or embarrassment for the vulnerability of love? Olivia Dean sings about it in her song “I’ve Seen It”.

I’ve heard it laced in every song
And still the words all come out wrong
It doesn’t always answer when you call
Brings out the worst, brings out the best
I understand it less and less
I guess I’m not supposed to know it all

- “I’ve Seen it”, The Art of Loving, Olivia Dean

Love is all of these little things. Love is talked about constantly, but how do we get to it? I’m beginning to realize after 29 years that there is no scientific formula to understand it. Love just happens, and you actively work to keep it flowing. Surprisingly, this processing has led me back to the biblical definition of love.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

-1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

I cannot tell you the last time I went to church, I did attend both Catholic and Episcopal school till the age of 18, and went to a Baptist church most Sundays till at least 16. I would not consider myself as someone who subscribes to organized religion, and yet, when I think about love I come back to this quote. It to me is one of the most pure texts from the Bible. It feels poetic, because it is.

This definition of love, to me, matches with bell hooks’ description of love. Not dark, or possessive, but honest, authentic, and enduring.

Rupture and Repair and “The Art of Loving”

The rupture - repair cycle was something very new to me. My therapist first mentioned it to me in the beginning of 2025, after I told her about a disagreement I had.

In my experience, rupture often happened, with family and with friends, over my 29 years. Before I continue, I would like to say this is not an indictment of my parents, they did quite a good job, with the emotional tools they learned.

However…..emotional regulation and repair was not something I understood till this past year. I was modeled on how to rupture respectfully, but not how to repair. I could definitely have an argument, but I was taught how to win. I was taught to show no weakness, no vulnerability, be smarter, don’t cry, or be given something to cry about.

This began my life as a rupture robot. Breaking things, and saying “oh well”, after relationships were ruined. throwing people away and in some ways throwing the version of myself that cared about them away.

I could always move on, there were always more friends to make, crushes to have, everyone was replaceable so why repair something I deemed as broken.

‘Cause, you know, I’ve done all the classic stuff
And it never works, you know it
So can we say we’ll never say the classic stuff?

- Nice to Each Other, The Art of Loving, Olivia Dean

This cycle often ended after the cool down for me, and somewhere in my mid-20s, occasionally a reconnect with no mention of the rupture. But I truly had no idea how to approach repair and fully resolve. Resolution for me felt like an abandonment of self.

But this is “the art”, loving is an act. As bell hooks says in All About Love, “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”

I think for many years this cycle had me stuck seeing love as only a feeling. I did not understand that to engage in love, you must first be loving to yourself.

The rupture and repair has to start from within.

To forgive yourself first, that is the act of loving. It sounds so simple to write out, but it’s true. You cannot get to a place of understanding or forgiveness or others till you forgive yourself.

And this is not the whole, “love yourself to be loved” crap that is often touted in self-help books. We are all worthy of love for daring to be a soul in this life every single day.

But to engage actively in loving, I have found I had to first admit my wrongs, and then forgive to move forward. Change my actions towards myself, to then change my actions towards others.

Even this essay is an act of love to myself. To write, even imperfectly, vulnerably, is another act of showing love to my voice, my sense of self. It says you are here, and you are important, and your thoughts are interesting and worthy to be read. Your existence is easy to love.

I’m the perfect mix of Saturday night and the rest of your life
Anyone with a heart would agree
It’s so easy to fall in love with me (me, me)

- So Easy (To Fall In Love), The Art of Loving, Olivia Dean

Perhaps this essay is actually a form of resolution. A way to reset, hug, and care and repair the internal ruptures that life and love can cause.

Say it three times fast in the mirror and maybe Popeye will appear with some spinach instead of the boogeyman.

Anemia is defined as “low levels of red blood cells”. This quick definition does not encompass all of the frustrating symptoms that come with anemia like fatigue, shortness of breath, easy bruising, mood shifts, etc.

Anemia has several causes, however, the most common cause being blood loss. Starting at puberty, about 50% of the population experiences monthly blood loss.

In 2024, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute reported around 1 in 4 Americans could be considered anemic, including absolute and functional iron deficiency.

…. this isn’t a pretty statistic….

I was officially diagnosed as severely anemic in 2022/2023 (I was so dizzy back then that the years have begun to blur). I was shocked, scared, and confused. My doctor put me on tablets, and stated that if they didn’t work within a few months, I’d have to consider iron infusions.

I was pretty taken aback considering all I really knew was this may explain my ice chewing habit. (chewing ice is not technically a symptom of anemia, but has been seen as a result of anemia in some people.)

Many people, I’m realizing, feel this way. Confused and unsure of what to do or what is going on in their bodies, or how to address it. Today, we change that!

So bookmark this, come back to it, read it all now, take a few notes, whatever works!

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We’ll be diving into:

• Why Iron is Important

• The Two Forms of Iron: Heme and Non-Heme

• What Helps Absorption: Vitamin C and Vitamin D

• What Hurts Absorption: Polyphenols

My hope is that you leave this post feeling a little less overwhelmed, and a little more capable of tackling your anemia.

I also added a few images and sources for how to interpret your iron test results.

Small disclosure that the processes I will be going are pretty complex metabolic processes, and I will be simplifying them to the best of my ability. I won’t be going into every single protein, reductase, or enzyme, but I always encourage further research! All sources for imagery are cited in the citations section.

Iron: Our Literal Lifeblood

Iron is an essential micronutrient, meaning it is necessary for humans to function, however, it is not needed at the levels of a macronutrient like protein or carbohydrate. It’s essential to our diets as humans do not just make this on our own, AND we can lose it quite easily, i.e if we bleed.

What Does Iron Do?

We know we find iron levels through blood tests, but what does it do with the blood?

Iron’s main job is to transport oxygen around your body. Without iron, your body cannot produce energy.

(remember how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell? aka it’s producing energy, and that energy cannot be produced without oxygen!)

How Does Iron Do This?

Iron enables the binding of hemoglobin* to oxygen in your red blood cells. These same red blood cells then go around the body transporting oxygen around, think of it as little breaths of fresh air to the rest of your body.

*hemoglobin is a protein found in blood that contains iron.

To Heme or Not to Heme

Iron comes in two forms:

• Heme: Animal-Based; Fe2+ a.k.a ferrous iron

  • Examples of Heme Rich Foods: Red Meat, Organ Meats (i.e. chicken liver), sardines

• Non-Heme: Plant-Based; Fe3+ a.k.a ferric iron

  • Examples of Non-Heme Rich Foods: Leafy greens, Beans, Lentils, Chickpeas

Both are important, but the body treats them differently. As you can see from the photo above, the form of iron the body uses for oxygen transport is Heme, or ferrous iron (Fe2+).

This also points to the fact that these two forms of iron are digested differently. Heme (ferrous) iron is absorbed a bit quicker in the body, while non-heme (ferric) iron has to be converted to ferrous iron (Fe2+) for absorption.

In the image below, you’ll see non-heme iron on the left and heme on the right. Non-heme requires more work for the body to absorb (conversion of Fe3+ to Fe2+ requires electron donation).

Non-heme iron is still important! Most foods that contain non-heme iron have other amazing nutrients, like fiber, protein, vitamins, etc.

Why this is important to know:

If you are someone like me who does not eat red meat, and does not frequently partake in chicken liver, then this is big!

When I found out I was anemic many years ago, my first google was to figure out how to help get my iron levels back up, when the only recommendations are just “eat more meat”… ya have to do a bit more work.

Leafy greens and beans are great, but they do need a little help, and that’s where Vitamin C and Vitamin D come in!

A Helping Hand: Vitamin C and Vitamin D’s Impact on Iron Absorption

Vitamin C: The Great Donator

For some reason, we always attribute Vitamin C to assisting in our immune response (big pharma propaganda - Vitamin D does more for you there!).

However, Vitamin C DOES help with iron absorption, especially with absorption of non-heme iron.

When Vitamin C is readily available and non-heme iron has been digested, the magic can begin!

Through the process of oxidation, Vitamin C donates an electron, allowing for ferric iron (Fe3+) to be reduced to ferrous iron (Fe2+). Iron is absorbed and can go to be stored.

Vitamin D: The Great Inhibitor

Vitamin D, another essential micronutrient, most often received from the sun, can help with iron absorption by inhibiting, or stopping pro-inflammatory proteins and down-regulating Hepcidin.

Lol, okay… but what does that even mean?

Good Vitamin D Levels = Regulated Iron Management (a.k.a Iron Metabolism)

Let’s look below:

When we have adequate Vitamin D levels, our bodies regulate other processes. In laymen’s terms, Vitamin D tells the body to reduce inflammation signaling proteins (cytokines). This message goes to two places: your bones and your liver.

Message 1 gets to the liver, where Hepcidin lives (protein that tells your body how to regulate iron).

Once Hepcidin is told to relax, that message then gets back to your gut where iron is absorbed. It tells your body how much iron to store and how much to circulate.

Message 2 gets to the bone. The bone is where we make new red blood cells (erythropoiesis) and iron recycling occurs. Hepcidin also has a role here by communicating how much iron should be released from macrophages (white blood cells).

Why is This Important To Know?

If you are finding yourself on iron supplements and your levels are not changing, these are some other points to ask your doctor about. Are your Vitamin D levels low? (psst…. most Americans have very low Vitamin D levels).

How does your Vitamin C intake look? Could you add in some more citrus to your diet?

Is there anything else in your life that may be impacting Vitamin C or Vitamin D levels?

Tea and Coffee: The Secret Enemy of Iron Absorption

As we may have all seen, the matcha craze has taken over the U.S, and though green tea has amazing antioxidant properties, it also has a little beef with iron absorption.

Polyphenols, a naturally occurring compound found in plants, can inhibit iron absorption. As coffee and tea are derived from plants, many contain polyphenols that can bind to iron. This can then stop adequate absorption of iron in the digestive tract.

This is a frustrating problem, as tea and coffee have other health benefits (i.e. antioxidants). However, it can be a good place to start if you are struggling with your iron levels.

If you’re someone who isn’t struggling with iron-deficiency this may not be an issue, and could even be helpful if you have excess iron levels. However, for people who menstruate, experienced recent blood loss, or struggle with anemia, it could be good to consider this.

So, Supplements?

The first defense for fighting iron-deficiency in the United States is usually iron pills. If you’ve ever been on these bad boys, you know they kind of suck. They hurt your stomach, they cause constipation, and they don’t always work.

Of course, they are better than nothing, and if they work for you, please continue!

However, here are some other things you can do, in addition, to help your iron intake:

• Increase your leafy green intake + vitamin c intake (non - heme + vitamin c = good!)

• Increase your meat consumption, for my vegans, vegetarians, or abstainers of red meat, consider doubling up on plant-based proteins or liquid iron if you are struggling with iron intake

• Watch out for excessive tea or coffee if iron levels are low

• Check your Vitamin D levels with your doctor

As always, please refer to your PCP, dietitian, or GI doctor, if you are having additional symptoms like blood in stool, bloating, stomach pain, or other adverse issues.

All recommendations and material is for educational purposes only.

The Tl;DR:

• Heme = Animal Based Iron; Ferrous Iron; Fe2+

• Non-Heme = Plant - Based Iron; Ferric Iron; Fe3+

• Vitamin C helps your body absorb plant-based iron.

• Vitamin D stops your body from producing pro-inflammatory proteins that disrupt iron regulation.

• Tea and coffee can inhibit iron absorption.

• Eat leafy greens, red meat, and citrus!

Interpreting Iron Blood Test Results

For interpreting Iron Test Results:

Common Conditions and Iron Levels:

This chart shows how certain levels measured may show up on a blood serum test for iron levels. For example, if you were iron deficient, you may have low iron and ferritin, while you have high TIBC, or total iron binding capacity. This would signal your body is able to properly bind with iron, BUT there is not enough for it to bind to. Low MCV would also point to smaller than normal blood cell size.

Thanks for reading, if you’d like to see this for other, vitamins let me know!

Citations:

Image of Heme vs. Non-heme Iron: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347798474_Iron_Therapy_in_Inflammatory_Bowel_Disease?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6Il9kaXJlY3QiLCJwYWdlIjoiX2RpcmVjdCJ9fQ

Image of Roles of Iron: https://madebydiet.com/en/iron-in-the-diet-iron-rich-foods-excess-and-deficiency-symptoms/

Image of Vitamin C and Iron: http://www.spring8.or.jp/en/news_publications/press_release/2018/180820/

Image of Vitamin D and Iron: https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(16)30148-0/abstract

This may seem small in the grand scheme of all of the massive changes this administration has streamlined since January, but it has bigger implications.

The United States has been measuring food insecurity with the annual Food Insecurity Report has come out every year since 1995.

More on the history of the Annual Report.

And exactly 30 years later, it’s stopping it.

The reasoning cited by the current administration seems to focus on redundancy, fear-mongering, and over-politicization of food.

I, too, feel that it’s become quite redundant to remind people that the United States has a food problem. I find it quite fear-inducing to think over 13% (18 million) of households were considered food insecure as of 2023. And I would even agree that people having a right to nutrient-dense food has become FAR too political, because isn’t food a basic human right?

Sadly, I’d like to remind you that the United States, actually does not agree with that. The United States has continued to vote “No” to recognize food as a human right.

Why Do These Reports Matter?

The statistics on food insecurity you’ll find in the food insecurity report shine a light on the prevalence of food insecurity in the US, and therefore provide precedent for funding initiatives to address it. These stats are used to fuel reasoning for research, budgets, government programs, and pretty much any attention given towards food insecurity.

Taking away these measures DOES NOT take away the problem. Pretending people are not going without food does not make them suddenly food insecure.

With the rise in grocery prices, decrease in job security, and general growing uncertainty of what’s going on in the United States these days, taking away one of the primary measures for food insecurity will only do more harm than good.

The food insecurity report is used for the following:

1. To monitor, evaluate, and adjust government entitlement programs like SNAP or WIC (food assistance programs) at the state and federal level

2. To create and adjust food policy and legislation, i.e. the Farm Bill

3. For justification for non-profit programming, research, and interventions to address food insecurity

As a researcher who specifically studies food access and it’s affect on health outcomes, I’m…. concerned. I’m not sure how else to put it. Of course, there will still be data tracked, perhaps by non-profits, perhaps by certain states, maybe even through research institutions like colleges and universities.

But having federal support taken away WILL impact how we track food insecurity.

Why is Addressing Food Insecurity Important?

I recognize that I live in this data day in and day out, but let’s break down why studying food insecurity matters.

1. Food insecurity has been associated with higher chronic disease risk in low-income individuals. What this means: When people don’t have food and they have low-income, they’re more likely to develop chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, or heart disease.

2. Food insecurity is often associated with micronutrient deficiencies, like iron-deficiency anemia or B12 deficiencies. What this means: People who have inconsistent access to food are more likely to be anemic or deficient in B12, which is a vitamin necessary for amino acid metabolism and DNA synthesis.

3. Food insecurity is associated with negative health outcomes for children. What this means: Children experiencing food insecurity were more likely to experience negative health outcomes like asthma, depression, and overall worsening health symptoms.

4. Food insecurity is also associated with increased risk of negative mental health outcomes. What this means: Individuals experiencing food insecurity (in this study during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic) had an increased risk of mental health struggles like anxiety and depression.

Maybe it’s a bit woo woo, but it’s true ~ everything is connected~.

Health problems don’t just appear out of nowhere, they are a collection of how we live our lives over time. Having access to food is a huge part of that.

How can we expect to “Make America Healthy Again”, if we aren’t even supporting people to feed themselves?

Sources:

• https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/21/health/hunger-reports-usda

• https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us

• https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings

• https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/144/4/e20190397/38475/Food-Insecurity-and-Child-Health?autologincheck=redirected

• https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-021-10631-0

• https://www.jabfm.org/content/37/Supplement2/S156

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652326606X

• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2806885/

• https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic

• https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program

All my life I have run from grief. I think I experienced more loss in my life before the age of 20 than most on average. By 25, I’d lost all four grandparents, two of my parents’ best friends/my godparents, and the slow, but sad loss of friendships that deeply broke me.

And yet at 29, I finally realize that you cannot outrun what stays with you forever. The love I held for all of those people still lingers, it creeps back up on a random Tuesday night when I’m scrolling TikTok, or a Saturday morning when I’m peeling an apple, and remembering my grandmother peeling each slice with love in her kitchen.

It’s always there, but as I recall, I ran from every reminder of these losses when it came down to it, I could not be present. I could not except the inevitable.

I thought if I could outrun it, then it didn’t happen. I could keep things as they were.

This, I have learned recently, is my own cosplaying of avoidance. Mirrored from my parents, and their parents before them. An emotional shutdown. Because the immensity of such loss cannot exactly be fathomed in real time.

We are the only species who knows it will come, but we still are never prepared. Perhaps that has been my issue. If I can prepare for anything, I’ll never be found in those pits of despair.

But we are not bigger than death, we are not bigger than loss. and we do not control time or even other people.

*Cue Grief*

Grief has a way of reminding you that it happened. That it was all real. My grief keeps the people I have lost with me, and admitting that grief, means admitting that they are actually gone.

So I’ve run. I’ve pretended.

I have experienced grief in all of it’s forms, and yet the grief I have felt from a loss this summer seemed to open up the gates of hell.

Because there are two types of loss: those that we choose, and those we don’t.

This was the kind I didn’t choose.

Perhaps this grief stems from the reality that this person is still around and existing. But life goes on, without me, and my life goes on without them.

Life persists. And it’s hit a particular type of nerve that I didn’t know I had.

The grief of losing someone who lives on and forgets you existed.

A pain I have only known truly once before. But the dots did not connect until now.

We all have childhood traumas, but our adult lives seem to always bring out what lurks in the shadows. Maybe it’s my Saturn Return, maybe it’s Maybelline!

the irony of being forgotten and flashbulb memories

At age 8, my grandmother, my world, my caretaker, my champion, started to act strangely. She went from loving and intentional, to forgetful, angry, and confused. By age 10, she went missing for a day, she had moved in with us, and she forgot my name.

There’s a particular pain in witnessing someone who raised you say to your face that cannot remember who you are.

In psychology, this is called a flashbulb memory. I go back to it, more than I’d like to admit. It’s vivid, dulled mildly by the years, but I can still set the scene.

I was in our living room with both my mother and grandmother after church. I remember having the realization that she wouldn’t ever use my name, only baby, sweetheart, and/or other affectionate names.

Something in my tiny baby brain understood she didn’t know my name, but how do you tell a 10 year old that their pride and joy has a rapid neurodegenerative disorder? Well, you don’t. Or at least my parents didn’t.

(I do not in any way fault them for this, it’s the first time living life, I wouldn’t know what to do either.)

I boldly asked her, “Grandma, what’s my name?”, almost in a gotcha tone. I just knew it, she would still know my name, it would be funny! She replied back, almost confused, “Sorry baby, no one ever told me your name.” After looking at my mother for answers, to which I think she was too shocked to give. I immediately began to cry, and swiftly ran up the stairs to my bedroom, and shut the door.

I was angry and betrayed. I felt it was intentional, she WANTED to forget me. My baby brain took this and decided she must not love me anymore. I shut down, and I could no longer connect.

It’s interesting to realize where your first moments of self-protection begin, but I definitely think this was mine.

This memory explains many my biggest fears now, forgetting. Being forgotten, and forgetting others.

Grief is the reminder. It is love persevering.

I pride myself on being a good friend, partner, daughter, always wanting to check in, ask for updates, call, be there, because the alternative feels so dark, so hurtful, and so preventable while you have the choice.

My grandmother did not.

Her memory of me and who I was to her faded, but never her affection towards me. Sometimes I wonder if this is an outward manifestation of how losses work. Your present mind may forget, but maybe your subconscious always remembers.

Grief, as a badge of love and honor

Strangely, exploring this grief from over 15 years ago, is allowing me to understand my grief now. Why I run, why I try to fix, and why I cling on to it.

I wear it sometimes like a trophy. An honor.

If you have the option to remember, shouldn’t you want too? If you have the option to avoid the end, shouldn’t you? I remember EVERYTHING, don’t I get a prize? Aren’t I the most loving?

No.

The finality of an ending is the gift, and reminder that all pain comes to an end. But…. you have to let it end. So what you are left with is fond memories of love, kindness, and happier times.

Our brain protects us, and so does the grief, but only to a point. The love that was always there, which has morphed into grief, becomes a reminder of how we loved. But holding on so tightly to the dark sides of it is not what we were meant for.

Summers of Grief

In this summer of deep grief, I have felt all forms of it, maybe for the first time in my life. I couldn’t outrun it. I attended the funerals of my high hopes. I mourned the dream. I held the wake, and took the role of the widow to my own long-lost desires.

It’s a scary feeling to think you are the only person in the world feeling this way. It’s even scarier to think I am the only person mourning it this way.

To think that they’re happier, to think I’ve been forgotten.

But, what is the alternative? To forget myself?

Impossible. I allow myself to be forgotten. I allow the grief to well up, and flow through me, to let it out. I admire it.

How wild, I tell myself, that your love is soooooo strong it endures?

How powerful that you can do the one thing you always feared? Remember.

Your love still perseveres. and so do you.

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The cover image is Ophelia by John Everett Millais (1851-52). It depicts Ophelia, a character from Hamlet, who has drowned physically, but drowned metaphorically in her own grief and sadness. Read more here: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-ophelia-n01506/story-ophelia.

As I write this in 2025, MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) has run rampant, everyone thinks they need absurd amounts of protein, and many believe food dyes are the root of all their health problems (see my Substack about that here.)

But I keep coming back to the same thought: do people actually know what they’re saying?

I’d love to think that maybe they don’t, but there is a strong possibility that people are simply confused, or maybe misinformed?

So, let’s clear the air, set some ground rules, and emphasize the importance of precise language.

FOOD APARTHEID VS. FOOD DESERT

Food Desert was first coined by the Scottish Nutrition Task Force in 1995 as a part of their Low Income Project Team. As the term gained notoriety, the definition has been both adapted and contested in modern nutrition and public health circles. So much so, that it has come to encompass more than it can logically stand for.

As it is commonly defined, a food desert refers to an area that has little to no access to grocery stores, these areas also tend to be lower income. This term has become the go-to definition to describe all forms of food access issues. What I have found is that it doesn’t not accurately or adequately describe the real issues at hand. Here’s why…

What is “Food Apartheid”?

Food Apartheid, a term created by Karen Washington, better encompasses the full picture of the food system, including historical, racial, and environmental factors that lead to individuals not having adequate access to food.

In the following excerpt from an interview with Guernica Mag, Karen Washington describes the difference between the two terms:

Who in in my actual neighborhood has deemed that we live in a food desert? Number one, people will tell you that they do have food. Number two, people in the hood have never used that term. It’s an outsider term. “Desert” also makes us think of an empty, absolutely desolate place. But when we’re talking about these places, there is so much life and vibrancy and potential. Using that word runs the risk of preventing us from seeing all of those things.

“food desert” sugarcoats what the problem is. If you bring a supermarket in, it’s not going to change the problem. When we say “food apartheid,” the real conversation can begin.

Why You Should Use Food Apartheid:

1. Deserts are naturally occurring, people not having adequate food access is not: Deserts were not constructed, they exist, just like an ocean exists, because nature made it so. (We could go into the deep geographical reasoning for deserts, but I am not a geographer, and I notably got a D in that class my freshman year of college lol.)

2. Deserts are not devoid of life: There are indigenous peoples around the world, and especially in the Americas, that are based in desert geography. They have life, they have culture, they have people. When you describe an area as a food desert, you instigate the idea that 1) deserts are barren 2) the place you are referring to is barren. Both are most likely wrong.

3. Food Apartheid adequately addresses the intentionality of areas without adequate food access: Most areas without access to adequate food is not due to the people there, it is often due to the city layout, rural nature of a town, or lack of local governments’ investment in grocery store infrastructure or transportation. It is does with intention, and without care.

4. Food Apartheid acknowledges the role of systemic racism, geography, and environmental factors that impact food access: The intentionality of cutting off access to food is deeply rooted in the idea that only certain people should be afforded the luxury of food accessibility. The more we call it what it is, the more we can actually make a change.

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The Very Large Umbrella of Food Security

Food security as defined by the USDA, refers to several different quantifiable variables relating to food access, ranging from High to Very Low Food Insecurity. Overall, the definition focuses on reliable access to food, including variety, desirability, and quality of said food.

(note: In the USDA definition, they define whether anxiety is tied to gaining access to food as a factor of food security, which I find vital to it’s definition.)

For example, you may live close to a grocery store, but if that store is at a high price range, is it still accessible? The answer is no, you are still vulnerable, and still considered food insecure.

Nutrition Security focuses more on the nuance within food security specifically variety and quality of the food accessible to an individual. This term focuses more on the dietary needs of individuals and nutritional adequacy.

It gives more specificity to matters relating to food access that go past having access to food. The quality of that food matters, the cultural relevancy of that food matters, the nutritional density of that food matters.

Hunger is the final term under the food security umbrella, and one that should not be used lightly as it refers directly to an individual’s physiological condition, as a result of access to food. I think hunger is a term that is used casually, but in the context of food security is incredibly serious.

The more we discuss these terms the more we can understand the gravity of individual’s going hungry around the world, especially in relation to Gaza, Tigray, and South Sudan, which have been experiencing famine at astronomical levels.

(see my instagram post on the IPC Hunger Scale).

Language Matters

As our world continues to be fall under strange and unfounded rhetoric, a return to word’s meanings feels timely. It’s okay to do a quick google, to think before you speak, and double and even triple-check what terminology you are using.

Having the words to use to call out atrocities like hunger, famine, and food apartheid are important. Knowledge is absolutely power, and the more we educate each other, the more power we have.

The more ya know, am I right?

Sources: For More Learning

1. Origins of Food Desert As a Term: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7299236/

2. Definition of Food Deserts: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2006.00217.x?casa_token=z_JaVioh-Z8AAAAA%3ACiKX29wkmZTN_mVvCEb1dICZIIm_NWWCDskkQJkGeu4SosBKSyGGzsYnBGIno0TPCV-HkXl_pzw3QQw

3. Food Apartheid and Cultural Contexts: https://www.nrdc.org/bio/nina-sevilla/food-apartheid-racialized-access-healthy-affordable-food

4. Definition of Food Apartheid: https://www.climatejusticecenter.org/newsletter/food-apartheid-explained

5. Full Guernica Article: https://www.guernicamag.com/karen-washington-its-not-a-food-desert-its-food-apartheid/

6. Definition of Nutrition Security: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/nutrition-security

7. USDA Definition of Food Security: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security

8. IPC Hunger Scale Explained: https://fews.net/about/integrated-phase-classification

9. Nutrition Security Definition: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/nutrition-security

And no, I don’t mean long, extravagant, beautiful lunches, followed by a sweet little siesta. One of those nice lunches where you may not even go back to work after. I mean that 30 minute lunch break spent stuffing your face in the middle of your shift or workday, just so you can clock back in to your shift at Lululemon. (…speaking from personal experience…)

The ability to brunch has even become a status symbol of sophistication and fun. A cheeky day time mimosa? Pancakes at 2pm? You’re rich!

As we begin to live in an increasingly intense work-before-life world, I wonder what other small moments will begin to evaporate.

I cannot tell you how many times I have skipped lunch while on a shift, or in a rush, or even simply because I figured I’d just eat a big dinner.

But I wonder do rich people skip lunch? I cannot imagine Jeff Bezos is skipping out on a cute lunch somewhere in Capri.

The History of Lunch

Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the history of lunch, as I felt like it was relatively new concept. I came upon this BBC article from 2012, and realized my assumptions were partly true. Lunch, as a concept, is directly tied to capitalism, but not in the way I thought.

Lunch, derived from “nuncheon” meaning a short snack in between meals.

It began as a means to keep people working in between long factory hours. Breaks were only given to lower and middle class working folks to sustain their intense and long hours.

Lunch, funny enough, seems to have been a poor man’s meal. So then, how has it become another meal to skip?

Meals as a Concept Are a Luxury

I am a firm believer that a meal is what you make it, and therefore the type of food you eat at a meal should not really matter as long as you are eating. Breakfast is whatever meal you eat when you wake, lunch is whatever you eat in the middle of your day, and dinner is whatever you eat before bed. Timing doesn’t really matter.

Maybe this is why lunch feels like a luxury to me. As a working class person, I’ve always treated it more like a nuncheon, a quick snack in between my two big meals.

I’d love to be able to lunch on a rooftop in Capri, but I am not rich, and I do not have time for such luxurious fantasies.

But we deserve those luxuries, don’t we?

We deserve a lounging lunch. Not one stuck behind a computer screen stuffing our face, or in a break room trying to get in some sustenance before greeting a pack of teenage girls eager for some hotty hot shorts (lululemon still haunts me).

I want to sit and enjoy every morsel of my food.

I want to let my body digest it, I want to take a little nap after!

But this is not a luxury afforded to most in a capitalist society. Work is the end all, be all, and existing outside of set meal times is for those who get to be out of the system to their financial status.

Capitalism morphs and shifts with the times.

The pendulum has swung within a century from lunch as a sign of working class/poverty to a sign of ease and luxury to do whatever you want with your day.

Time has become the ultimate indicator of wealth in a society run by capitalism. Endless time = real wealth.

Think about the movie “In Time”, with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. The entire premise being that time was the real currency, the elite moved with ease and relaxation, while the poor traded seconds simply to exist a little bit longer.

This is why I get so passionate about my meals, breakfast and lunch especially. To carve out time for yourself to eat is an act of care, an act or resistance, and act of love.

Rage against the capitalist machine, EAT LUNCH! EAT BREAKFAST!

SATURN RETURN INCOMING AND THE VENUS/URANUS CONJUNCTION

Like many 28 year olds or those born in the latter half of ‘96, my Saturn return has begun… or rather just the beginning. (it will rx in the fall but alas still messy.)

Read more

This is a phrase my mother would say every big family dinner growing up. We ate rice with any meal that offered the opportunity.

Sometimes rice by itself, sometimes rice with butter, sometimes rice with soy sauce, occasionally just butter.

It had a permanent residency in our cabinets, and I’m sure if I went to my parents’ home right now, I’d find no less than 3 bags of basmati white rice from Costco in their pantry.

I never gave much thought to it, but rice always remained apart of my staple diet. No matter what, I, too, kept a bag of white rice handy.

It was my saving grace in my early IBS days, it went with every meal I knew how to make in my early 20s and it just so happened to be filling, affordable, and accessible everywhere.

But WHY were we rice people? I never questioned, I just innately understood.

And then came diet culture. Around the time I was a teenager, white rice started to get a bad rep. Everyone was shifting to brown rice or quinoa, white rice became the enemy, the fattener, the bad guy. None of this was new, but it was knew to my young and impressionable brain.

But why? If everyone eats it, how could it be bad?

Most cultures around the world utilize rice in some way, white rice especially. It felt pointed. This food I had been eating since I could eat solids was suddenly unhealthy….diet culture… is that you?

28 years later, and I am now putting all the pieces together. And I believe it may have roots in the Gullah Geechee of the Carolinas, or at least I have a hunch.

Bloodlines and Carolina Gold Rice

My mother’s family all hail from the Carolinas, specifically Western North Carolina. My grandmother, her parents, and their parents were born there, slowly moving up to Virginia within the 1940s-1960s, and eventually settling in Maryland. But like many Black residents of the DMV region, we all have roots in the Carolinas somewhere (it was a running joke growing up that everyone has a cousin in North Carolina).

Both North and South Carolina are made up of differing landscapes that range from the coastal beaches to the central plateaus all the way up to Appalachian Mountains out west.

Vast, diverse, and wildly underrated.

I grew up driving through the Carolinas to get to Myrtle Beach, a long 8 hour drive fueled by BBQ and the installed DVD player in my dad’s truck.

What I didn’t realize as a child was the history of the Carolinas, and the immense culture there. Now at 8 years old, I wouldn’t expect myself to be an expert, but the older I get, the more I see the deep context in which I live, and it’s influence on my culture but also the food I eat.

(I did NOT just fall out of a coconut tree!)

Carolina Gold Rice and the Gullah Geechee

Carolina Gold Rice, aka Carolina Gold, is a type of rice that can only be considered authentic when grown in the Carolinas. This one crop changed the southern economy.

I would guess that most people when they consider cash crops farmed during slavery, they consider cotton, maybe sugar cane, but rarely have I heard people mention rice.

The grain itself thrives in the coastal Carolinian climate, and so it became the crop of choice for the region. Even being deemed “gold” as a way to emphasize it’s money making potential.

The swamp-like humid conditions of places like Eagles Island in North Carolina made the perfect landscape for rice cultivation and made way for innovations of the Gullah Geechee come into play.

The Carolinas were slave states in the pre-Civil War United States, with the numbers of enslaved as of 1860, totaling to almost 800,000.

(that is more than the entire state of Wyoming presently).

These people, who were ripped from their culture, and their ancestral lands, developed their own culture and way of life, despite the pain and trauma of slavery, and developed amazing technological advances for rice cultivation.

The ancestors of the modern day Gullah Geechee people were chosen for this exact reason. Western Africa, also described as the rice coast, had similar landscapes and climate, making the people of the region an ideal target for slave traders headed to the Carolinas. Further demonstrating how even without acknowledgment, it was known and understood that the work of rice cultivation was SKILLED labor that required a deep understanding of nature, science, and engineering.

Innovations created by the Gullah Geechee like irrigation systems were used to control water flow with dams and levees, which have been found in present day Eagles Island. The practices developed required skill, precision, and talent, a recognition and sentiment that the enslaved were not afforded at the time and often still aren’t.

One of the most interesting facts that I have learned from writing this was how these same conditions for rice farming, which often led to isolation and an environment wrought with mosquitoes and dampness, also led to a more attuned preservation of West African traditions.

We know of the steep cultural traditions of the Gullah Geechee today because of this preservation. The traditions have been featured in T.V. shows like Gullah Gullah Island, High on the Hog, and Chef’s Table.

Rice, The “American” Diet, and The Myth of “Unhealthy” White Rice

Carolina Gold was the first American rice grown commercially, and yet has faded into mild obscurity if you’re not a culinary nerd or from the Carolinas. What I find fascinating is how the traditions still deeply live on, even if people don’t know the origins.

Did you really think the idea of the one-pot, one-meal came from the NY Times Cooking page?

Rice-based dishes like Purloo and Pot Meat demonstrate the origins of American* cuisine. These meals featured ingredients that were common to the region like seafood, okra, and meats or meat scraps that could be cooked quickly, feed many, and were affordable.

*The idea of American cuisine is complex and not often well-defined. Many people say that there is no true American cuisine, which I find to be lazy and quite ignorant. To erase “American” cuisine is to also erase the vast and expansive history of Indigenous American cuisine and ignore the cultural contributions of those forcibly brought to the Americas who made amazing culinary dishes and invented cuisines known and revered around the world.

We celebrate and uplift dishes like Paella, Orzo, Stir Fries, Risotto, and a myriad of other rice/grain based pot meals, but yet, we have our own version right here from the heart of the Carolinas.

This is not a condemnation of other cultures’ cuisines, they are fantastic, and some of my favorite dishes to order out. I just wish the same admiration was given to the traditional cuisines of Southern Black people, who’s culinary creations informed an entire range of modern day American meals.

Diet Culture and the Demonization of White Rice

Ads like the one above often make me giggle, but that’s been after a life long journey to get over the internal diet culture bully telling me that white rice was bad for me.

Let’s be clear, white rice, like any other grain has very clear benefits for us.

1. It’s an essential nutrient: Carbohydrates. The kind that our brain runs off of.

2. Easier to digest than other grains.

3. Often enriched with vitamins and iron.

It also just tastes good….

I’m not here to make you only eat white rice, and I would not lie and say that brown rice does not have equal benefits, and higher fiber than white rice, but white rice is not the real enemy here. Diet culture is.

Almost any food can be okay in moderation and succumbing to the idea that white rice is bad for you, also can lead to an abandonment of many of our cultural traditions.

As I stated, I am white rice person, my family are white rice people, it is deeply engrained in us, in our ancestry, in our cuisine, it is who we are.

To abandon white rice is to abandon the beauty of the cultural traditions of those that came before me. And that demonization is not mine, it is diet culture’s.

Brown Rice vs. White Rice

The differences between brown rice and white rice are marginal, with white rice barely edging over in calories, and brown rice only a gram or two more rich in fiber than white rice.

The difference is not as intense as diet culture would have you believe. So eat your white rice, eat it with pride, and excitement and admiration. Eat it without shame.

What We Can Learn From This:

As the saying goes, if we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it. I think we could also add, if we do not learn from the past, we’ll never appreciate it.

Much like many Indigenous peoples’ have stated for as long as this land has been colonized, the people that came before us were intelligent, knowledgeable and knew how to take care of the land, without further harming it.

The Gullah Geechee were already doing innovative, creative, and sustainable practices in the coastal Carolinas, a region that is now subject to massive climate change impacts and coastal erosion.

What could be learned from their rice cultivation practices? What could be understood by paying respect to the work they have already put in? How can we study their use of land resources and learn from it?

As climate change continues to change the way we live, and the way we farm, perhaps it would be worth it to go back and retrace some steps, see where we can learn, and give credit where credit is due.

Sources:

• https://www.scseagrant.org/carolinas-gold-coast-the-culture-of-rice-and-slavery/

• https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/dec/21/gullah-geechee-rice-fields-north-carolina

• https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/ls21-355/

• https://www.geecheekunda.com/land-and-agriculture-sustainable-practices-in-geechee-gullah-communities/

• https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm

• https://www.carolimas.com/what-gullah-geechee-culture-has-contributed-to-the-american-diet?srsltid=AfmBOoom2IMx04R1vIG45bDj7zBZ1l6r4b415XjdR2FQ82QyjCEeCS0J

• https://www.seriouseats.com/carolina-gold-heirloom-rice-anson-mills

Somehow, carbohydrates have become the scapegoat for weight gain, and the first thing suggested to cut when trying to lose weight.

This feels insane from a nutritional science perspective seeing as carbohydrates are our body’s main energy source.

However, as I look back at my own upbringing I remember having negative thoughts around bread and rice, and all the other very helpful carbohydrates that fuel us.

One these memories stemming from Mean Girls (2004). The cult-classic quintessential early 2000s cheeky rom-com.

As I was only 8 years old when it came out, most of the jokes went over my head, HOWEVER as a cultural touch point for early 2000s culture - it is clear it infiltrated all of our little brains.

This will NOT be an essay on the ills of this movie, which I’m sure have been deeply explored, but rather a callback to how pop culture shapes our food choices even when we don’t realize it.

Kalteen bars, Teen Weight Loss, and Body Shaming

A pivotal point in Mean Girls to ruin Regina George’s “bod” is the introduction of the Kalteen bar. A bar used by her mother while living in Africa to help undernourished children gain weight. (Do they even say which country? An essay on the erasure of Africa as a continent for another day…)

The way Cady, Janice Ian, and Damian decide the best way to destroy her is to prey on her insecurities. Cady claims the bar can “burn carbs”, which once again…. is not the weight loss hack many people think it is, but alas it works!

For the full scene I’m referencing go here.

What I find fascinating about this, as I watch this almost 21 years after it’s release, is that this way of thinking is STILL happening.

The shame around weight gain, the shame around eating carbohydrates, and even the willingness to try something unregulated to lose weight.

**hint, hint the growth of GLP-1 prescriptions in populations that they were not made for***

What’s even more sad is when you come to the realization that these girls are supposed to be teenagers. Your body is still growing, and we are pushing the narrative that we should be only focused on “losing 3 lbs”….? Nope. Not it.

Carbohydrates are literally the way, the truth and the light for your body. It simply cannot exist sustainably without them. So, let’s discuss what they do for you.

Carbohydrates:

• are body and brain’s main source of energy

• help maintain blood sugar levels

• help with digestive health (i.e. fiber)

And for more on carbs, see this old Substack article I wrote last year.

CARBOHYDRATES WHERE IS YOUR PR TEAM??? YOU ARE SO IMPORTANT AND MUST BE CELEBRATED!!!

The Resurgence of Diet Culture as Pop Culture and Carbohydrate fear

Movies are an excellent way to take a purview into the past, and Mean Girls is a perfect time capsule for diet culture and body politics of the early 2000s. The scariest thing that I’ve begun to realize is how within not even 25 years, this type of body shaming is back into popular culture. (…but did it ever really leave?)

We had some brief moments in the 2010s of body positivity, Health at Every Size (HAES), and of course the growth of body modifications like BBLs, but diet culture never seems to die, it reinvents itself.

Enter Skinny-Tok, Ozempic, Quick Mass Celebrity Weight Loss, Protein Only diets… etc.

And with all of these growing weight loss trends, what is the first to go…. carbs. Generic carbs. Rarely do I see anyone differentiate or explain the different types of carbs, how quality of carbs can change depending on the food, or how carbohydrates are ESSENTIAL MACRONUTRIENTS.

The funniest trick is that weight loss will never be successful or maintained when you deprive yourself of macronutrients - let alone the one that gives you energy. Diet culture wants to see you stuck in these patterns of shame and confusion.

Protein. will. not. save. you.

Eat your carbohydrates and take care of yourself. Ignore the “mean girls” of 2004 and the current mean girls of the internet who tell you otherwise.