“There was a time when I would have ordered a watery nest of zoodles without a moment’s hesitation. There was also a time when I couldn’t write or participate in life because I was so hungry and unsatisfied and obsessed with foods I didn’t allow myself to eat. I finally sought help last year, and now I see how problematic it is, this movement to pass off “healthy” foods as “unhealthy” foods. It sends the message — that lands particularly hard with women — that our hunger and appetites are things that must be controlled and manipulated and tricked by vegetable-shaped noodles and liters of water. I’ve used my voice as a writer to reclaim my dignity and self-respect, and one day it just clicked that the way I talked about myself to myself, and the way I ate in response to that nasty and unforgiving voice in my head, was about as far from empowered as it gets. I will no longer participate in a system that tells women we should eat less and weigh less and be less, and it is my dream for all of us to stop doing penance for eating pizza and to stop berating our perfectly fine bodies because it just makes it okay for guys to berate our perfectly fine bodies. You know the Bechdel test for movies and books? I want to create my own test that challenges women to have conversations about anything but our bodies. All this to say, fuck you, zucchini noodles. And you, too, cauliflower rice.”
