Coordination Between Sexual Activity and Food Eating Imagery

Andre Dubus' the Fat Girl

Andre Dubus's "The Fat Girl"

Louise, the protagonist in Andre Dubus's short story "The Fat Girl," has a furtive love affair with food. Throughout the story, Dubus describes this affair using the underpinnings of a real sexual relationship. It is the purpose of this paper to explore instances where Dubus's uses sexual activity/romance and food/eating imagery to convey Louise's secret love affair with food.

The story opens up with a rather explicit scene, a boy rape-kissing Louise at a BBQ, "Her name was Louise. Once when she was sixteen a boy kissed her at a barbecue; he was drunk and he jammed his tongue into her mouth and ran his hands up and down her hips." This scene sets up a key dramatic element of the story, the fact that Louise is a corpulent, sex-starved girl for must of her life. Her first encounter (and only encounter with a boy until she meets her husband) is an unfortunate experience that only serves to reinforce her bond with food (158).

As the story moves on, the narrator describes how Louise looks forward to slipping away and eating in secret, "At other times, away from home, she thought of the waiting candy with' near lust" (160). The word "lust" is used to convey a sense of sexual yearning. In short, to suggest that to Louise, food is sex.

But like a sexual affair that is both torrid and tawdry, Louise's love affair with food has a destructive aspect to it, "She did not need to smoke; she already had a vice that was insular and destructive" (160). Louise's urges to eat are debilitating. Her cravings to eat impair her ability to build strong social relationships (just as a sex-addicts behavior leads to the same result, social isolation).

Thankfully though, she meets one friend in college, a true friend, someone who is willing to accept her for who she is, a food-addict. As Louise devours candy bars in her bed, at night, in the dark (one can't help but to point out the obvious, what else do people do in bed, at night, in the dark?), Carrie tells her "You were eating chocolate, in your bed. I wish you'd eat it in front of me, Louise, whenever you feel like it" (162). Carrie is reaching out to her, acknowledging her vice, and saying, in so many words, 'don't be ashamed of your maladaptive behavior, we all have our faults.'

Carrie then helps Louise lose weight and break off her love affair with food. During this period in her life, when she's dropped some excess weight, Louise looks at eating food the way a paramour would look at spending time with an ex, "She did not enjoy it: she felt she was being friendly with a recalcitrant enemy who had once tried to destroy her" (166).

Although Louise learns the value of temperance and self-discipline, she feels as though she has given up something in the process of losing weight. That, with the exception of Carrie, no one sees her for whom she really is: a skinny, food addict (they say, once an addict always an addict). The failure of others, in particular her husband, to recognize that she is -- in her heart of hearts -- a food addict leads her to fall of the wagon. In a scene of vivid imagery, with strong sexual undertones, Louise defies her husband's wishes to have her diet, "The pie was cherry. She looked at it as her fork cut through it; she speared the piece and rubbed it in the red juice on the plate before lifting it to her mouth" (170).