For Hazlitt, Lauren Mitchell interviews Mona Awad about her book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, and together they attest to the unhappiness and emotional energy that society demands of fat women, and the toll it takes on a body and a mind:
It is hard, it’s like, can we step outside of that culture, and you’re right, there’s a capitalist element to it, and can we step outside of that? Long enough to feel good in our own skin? Or is something going to come fuck that up, whether it’s a person talking, because they’re in it, and then you have to listen to them being in it and then you feel suddenly not good any more, or is it just going into a store and having a bad experience? There are so many ways that that little grasp on feeling good about yourself gets taken away, so quickly, just by being alive and being in the world and being around people and existing and so, I mean, I think that’s a problem, you know?
