Early & Alone #67: A Healthy Appetite

Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash

When did you learn that having an appetite was bad? I can’t pinpoint a precise moment, but rather a series of them, one piling on top of another—a friend’s dad making fun of how messy I was when I ate ribs at their house for dinner (I’d never had them before. I was 9.), my sister’s high school boyfriend making a comment about how many donuts I ate, any of the many magazines I devoured as a kid.

When you’re a young child, you’re commended on having a “good” or “healthy” appetite, for cleaning your plate, for trying new foods. But at some point, this shifts, especially for girls. Suddenly, it’s not okay to eat more than one helping, take more than one cupcake, to eat with anything approaching pleasure.

Recently, the chef Julia Turshen dedicated four episodes of her podcast, “Keep Calm and Cook On,” to the theme of appetites. She spoke to activists and writers and a chef and a fitness trainer about what having an appetite means to them. The conversations were really interesting and made me think about what having an appetite means to me.

The most common use of the term is of course the desire for food. But you can have an appetite for many things—affection, shoes, drugs, success, fame, sex…even destruction. And I think that even with these other iterations of appetite, it carries a kind of shame. Because having an appetite is wanting. And in our culture, so much of wanting is vulnerable. It’s naked and needy. It’s cringe. Unless maybe it’s an appetite for money, for that old capitalist trophy, the almighty dollar. That one our society venerates. Mostly because it’s a classically masculine desire. Greed is good, etc.

I’m generalizing, of course. Maybe there are people out there who do not feel ashamed of their appetite for sex, for validation, for attention, for drugs, for muscles, for real estate, for gadgets, for whatever completely human thing they are wanting. But I think there are many people out there, women especially, who do feel shame as a side effect of wanting. Especially for wanting sex or drugs or food or money. There is even a stigma attached to wanting the things that women are traditionally supposed to want—a long-term romantic partner and children. Sure, you can want these things, but just don’t talk about it, don’t mourn the lack too much, don’t appear too hungry for these things. It makes those who have those things uncomfortable. Keep it quiet.

Since the pandemic, I wonder about my own appetite, specifically as it pertains to its cousin, ambition. Do I still have an appetite for a certain kind of career success, and what does that look like? In 2019, I was a mid-level manager, making more money than I ever had before, but I was miserable. I hated it. Now, I make less money, have a less impressive title. I work from home, most of the time in my pajamas, and I’m not sure what kinds of growth opportunities I even have in my tiny company. At one time, this would have looked like regression to me. But now it feels right. I like the work I do. I like being in my pajamas. I like being at home. It is a very different life from the one I had four years ago.

In these pandemic years, I think most people’s lives look very different from the ones we had and from the ones we envisioned for ourselves. In the last 10 years, I’ve moved from New York to Boston to Providence, my life telescoping in on itself, arguably becoming smaller. Does that mean my appetites are smaller, too? Does that mean I’m settling for a smaller life? Or does it mean it takes less to fill me up now than it once did?

What do I have an appetite for now? I have an appetite for words, for validation, for affection, for connection, for home, for quiet, for new places, for sleep, for books, for beauty, for stability. Sometimes I have an appetite for pizza, for salty french fries, for slightly melted ice cream, for cold beer, for bottomless coffee, for french toast and slabs of bacon, for soft chocolate chip cookies, for peanut butter out of the jar. For ribs. For donuts.

What does having an appetite mean to you? Do you think it’s changed in the last two and a half years? Is there shame attached?

Bright Spots

• I’m a Nathan Fielder fan from a while back, but I was not prepared for the chaos that is The Rehearsal. If you’re looking for something unlike anything you’ve ever seen before on television, check it out (streaming on HBO Max). But be prepared to feel uncomfortable and…confused.

• I’ve also been binging The Other 2 on HBO. I love it so much.

• I got this toy for Gizmo this week. It wasn’t his birthday but I just needed it in my life.

• Student loan forgiveness! Listen, $10k isn’t nearly enough, and I’ve already paid off my loans (more on that TK), but this is at least a small step forward.