When will our bodies be enough for us?
Eight bites was a hard read for me because I personally have an eating disorder. When I was younger, I wouldn’t eat much and I was fixated with being really thin. Then, growing up I would compare myself to my mother and her sisters. Their bodies with more curves than mine, hips that looked elegant and beautiful, something I thought I never had. So, eight bites, the way Machado explored this character, was beautiful but traumatizing. Because when will our bodies ever be enough for us? Why do we let these images of the perfect body get to us? Why don’t we love ourselves enough? What is it that we can’t see? Again, many questions, that I know many answers to. But, it’s all insecurity. It’s easy to make a woman insecure and that sounds disgusting, but as nasty as that sentence is… it’s real. Especially nowadays, with trends on social media, feeling insecure is so easy when everyone has so many expectations of what you should look like. And if you have it near you, within your circle, it’s even harder. “I could not make eight bites work for my body and so I would make my body work for eight bites”. One of the most pure and heartbreaking lines I’ve ever read. Even when her daughter was yelling at her in frustration, you can hear that it was from a place of love, care and concern. She just wanted her mother to love herself. But, it’s hard to love one’s self. When you have sisters who support said eating habits, you grow up eating the way your mother did, and you adjust to that lifetsyle.. . it’s difficult to grow out of it. I loved this writing though. We often bring ourselves down to society’s expectations of us and lose ourselves along the way. And sometimes by the time we realize what we’ve done to ourselves, the most damage we’ve created is non-reversible. “I’m sorry,” I will repeat. “I didn’t know.” Most of the time we don’t know or we do but we hide it so deep within our minds because we believe that’s what best. I thought her daughter was trying to dig her out of a whole, but her mother’s regrets, guilt, hurt her more than anything. Begging for her mother to love herself, love HER, and not go through with the surgery was too much to bear. Hurt people hurt people and sometimes it’s too late too look back and fix it. She ruined herself, her identity, her body, her relationship with her daughter, but she thought it would make her happier. And I don’t know if it truly satisfied her. Deep down I think she knew it was wrong. But, we still do the things we know aren’ good for us. […] “When will our bodies be enough for us?”
