Vogue culture writer Emma Specter describes her struggles with binge eating and yo-yo dieting, and how she made peace with her body, in her memoir More, Please (Harper, July). PW gave the book a starred review, calling it an “incisive report [that] will intrigue readers of all sizes.” Specter spoke with PW about wellness culture, queerness, and the importance of fat influencers.
What prompted you to write about binge eating?
The thing that felt the thorniest and least examined in my life was my eating disorder and my binge eating specifically. Writing about eating disorders has become mainstream, but I hadn’t yet seen what I was feeling, which is, “I’m going to work, I have friends, there are a lot of things that are going right in my life, and yet I can’t seem to stop doing this thing that makes my life worse.”
Why did you include interviews with science writer Sabrina Imbler and food writer Bettina Makalintal, among others, in your memoir?
I’m a white woman who grew up in a big city, upper middle class. The typical representation of an eating disorder in popular culture is that it’s a disorder among high achieving white girls—that’s the preponderance of what’s out there research-wise and anecdotally. That doesn’t mean that my story shouldn’t be told, but I didn’t want to structure the book in a way that felt like my story was in competition with anyone else’s. I didn’t want it to sound like I was saying, “This is the valid way to have an eating
disorder.” I wanted to bring in the plurality of experience.
How did you come to draw connections between disordered eating and being closeted?
It was really hard to separate my desire for thinness from my desire for approval from men. I felt like it was easier to alter my body than to alter my mind or my confidence or, God forbid, my sexuality. It made me miserable for a long time, but on some level it felt like the safer choice. But I don’t want to equate being out with not having problems anymore in the food department, because that’s unfortunately not been the case. Even in queer life you have to actively seek out spaces where there are people of all kinds of bodies.
How does wellness culture reinforce the urge to be skinny?
I’m really dismayed at the ways in which diet culture has put on a mask of wellness. I work very hard to have a sense of dignity, which in my case means living as a fat person. But so much wellness literature seems to be saying that expressing that
validity or pride in yourself includes chasing the fitness dragon. And we’re not calling it a fitness dragon. We’re calling it “feeling your best for you.”
What helped you finally give up dieting and feel comfortable in a larger body?
I wish desperately that there was a thing. Time is part of what it took for me, which is the last thing that someone who’s suffering wants to hear. Sometimes, it’s about seeing the same fat influencers, and repeated exposure to the idea that being fat is not in and of itself a bad thing, and that to be a fat person is not to be lesser than a thin person. I wish I’d internalized that the first time I heard it, but I don’t know where I’d be now if I hadn’t heard that at all.
