Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Well, that’s a load of -whatever unpleasant thing you wish to liken it to.
Media, whether digital or print, broadcast or podcast, social or corporate has a veracious and insatiable appetite for words, at times honed to provoke, to exclude, to condemn. This we know, and we all have ways of engaging, disengaging and challenging what we find unacceptable, ridiculous or downright wrong.
However, I want to look at the words we use when talking about ourselves. So, I’m going to start by telling you a story.
I’m travelling back to London just after new year. The train stops at several semi-rural stations. I’m working on my laptop. Staring out of the window in the hope that this will somehow encourage a little deep and original thinking. Two women get on. One sits beside me and the other opposite. They start to talk about food. What ingredients they’ve been experimenting with, what new combinations they’ve been trying out. And I’m sunk. They notice my distraction and apologise. Very English. I explain how much I love to talk, prepare, and share food, and at that point any idea of working slips from my grasp.
The woman next to me, let’s call her Kay, starts talking about how her love of cooking and food is a gift from her Chinese born, Jamaican raised mother. And then Kay says it;
“I think I’m a food addict.”
Addiction is a powerful word. It packs a punch and carries a thread of guilt, shame and regret. It speaks to an action and a desire out of control. It suggests that something is lacking in the individual that means they seek a ‘high’ to avoid addressing what is truly missing.
The label is full of judgment and Kay has just used in on herself.
Our relationship with food is complex. We celebrate it and fetishise it. We can make it the hero or the villain of stories. Its lack haunts the lives of too many, and it’s glut raises serious questions over our privilege and how we exercise it.
Contemporary thinking and quasi-medical fads have generated whole industries around what to eat and not eat, how much to eat and when to eat, and even the gaps we should observe between meals.
This complexity has meant that some of us have witnessed first-hand the toll that living with an eating disorder has had on a loved one. A few of us may have even been present when a life is lost because of our complex and at times dangerous relationship with food.
Food Addiction is real. The English television presenter and novelist Richard Osman has spoken of and written about his own experiences with addiction, one of many local and some global celebrities who’ve done so over recent years. And it was Osman and his appearance on Loose Women, a British terrestrial tv programme that had led Kay to say;
“I think I’m a food addict.”
And for me to ask:
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, when I’m feeling blue I prepare and cook myself a special meal. I select delicious ingredients and perhaps call to mind one of my mother’s recipes.”
Her simple description elicits this response.
“To my mind that makes you more a food celebrant rather than a food addict.”
She smiles.
“A food celebrant”. Yes. I like that.”
And my point?
In a world where we are taking great care over the language we use in relation to others, in all the communities we inhabit, in telling our own stories we need to be as careful of our language and as non- judgemental.
For as Desmond Tutu said:
“Language is very powerful. Language does not describe reality. Language creates the reality that it describes.”
And language that labels us with judgement holds us in and holds us back. We wouldn’t do it to another. So why do we do it to ourselves?
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me!
La Caminante de Luna
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