Fat-shamed as a child by her mother and classmates, writer-performer Chelsea Frank, now 24, opens up about the complex role food plays in her life. She talks about her struggles with weight, self-hatred, bingeing and restricting, going to "fat camps", life inside an eating disorder rehab and cutting contact with her abusive mother.
Follow Chelsea on Twitter @ChelseaSFrank and on Instagram @ChelseaFrank
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338: Dear Food: I Want To See Other People
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SpookyGhost
- Posts: 222
- Joined: January 5th, 2015, 8:19 am
- Gender: Female
- Issues: Anxiety, self harm, PTSD, childhood sexual abuse, rape, emotional eating
- preferred pronoun: She
- Location: Newfoundland, Canada
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Namu
- Posts: 65
- Joined: September 4th, 2017, 8:53 am
- Gender: female
- Issues: Frustration with life's rules, which seem arbitrary and too hard
- preferred pronoun: she
Re: 338: Dear Food: I Want To See Other People
I really benefitted from the interview with Chelsea. I don’t have an eating disorder (I think), but I have an unfriendly, dysfunctional relationship with food and eating. I’ve never heard anyone speak with such honesty, coherence, insight, and intelligence as Chelsea does about eating disorders. Hearing her observations and reflections, I have some new things to think about with regard to my own eating troubles.
I didn’t realize that fat-shaming — public and private — is so prevalent. I hadn’t thought about how easy it is to assume that fat people and thin people all have eating disorders, and that everyone else doesn’t, and how unreliable body size is as a guide to whether someone has an eating disorder. I feel a little stupid, that I needed to be told that in order to see it.
It’s remarkable to witness someone so transparently still in the midst of a struggle and yet able to reflect on her past and present experience with some perspective — not lost in, or identified with, the addictive process, but instead holding onto a sense of self independent of the addiction, holding a bit of space between self and compulsion. When Chelsea talks, there's a real and present human there, not just a bundle of prefabricated, self-adjusting accommodations to internal and external expectations and perceived threats.
Delightfully, she admits to using her people-pleasing voice, even as she continues to do it. I wish Paul had given more space to that; I wish he'd invited her to switch over to her more authentic voice.
I learned a lot from Chelsea. I’m grateful to her for her generous, courageous honesty. Also, as a bonus, she’s quite funny, without the sense of urgency and compulsive performance that underlies a lot of people’s humor. I’d love to see her back on the podcast in a few years, because I imagine she'll have worthwhile things to say from further along in her journey.
Namu
I didn’t realize that fat-shaming — public and private — is so prevalent. I hadn’t thought about how easy it is to assume that fat people and thin people all have eating disorders, and that everyone else doesn’t, and how unreliable body size is as a guide to whether someone has an eating disorder. I feel a little stupid, that I needed to be told that in order to see it.
It’s remarkable to witness someone so transparently still in the midst of a struggle and yet able to reflect on her past and present experience with some perspective — not lost in, or identified with, the addictive process, but instead holding onto a sense of self independent of the addiction, holding a bit of space between self and compulsion. When Chelsea talks, there's a real and present human there, not just a bundle of prefabricated, self-adjusting accommodations to internal and external expectations and perceived threats.
Delightfully, she admits to using her people-pleasing voice, even as she continues to do it. I wish Paul had given more space to that; I wish he'd invited her to switch over to her more authentic voice.
I learned a lot from Chelsea. I’m grateful to her for her generous, courageous honesty. Also, as a bonus, she’s quite funny, without the sense of urgency and compulsive performance that underlies a lot of people’s humor. I’d love to see her back on the podcast in a few years, because I imagine she'll have worthwhile things to say from further along in her journey.
Namu
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rockfisher
- Posts: 16
- Joined: November 18th, 2018, 10:16 pm
- Gender: Male
- Issues: Porn addiction, alcoholism, sexual abuse
- preferred pronoun: he
Re: 338: Dear Food: I Want To See Other People
This was a really great show I thought. I could really relate to the issues with food and being fat shamed, I also related to thr part about being bullied in school. I wasn't bullied about as bad as she was. Great interview.