In which I am banal

Potato chips! I have a sudden longing for potato chips.

To explain, we went to Target, and fannishly got some yummy parmesan cheese potato chips. I got to eat the rest that she didn't want. A little too salty, but still pretty good.

I usually don't eat potato chips, not because of any sort of self-restraint, but mostly because I always forget to buy them at the supermarket. Hrm, I guess it is a bit of self-restraint -- I usually try not to buy much junk food at all because I know I'll just sit here and munch on it even when I'm not hungry. Plus, I can scavenge some for free at work ;). Also, I am a picky potato chip eater. And I'm actually much more of a dessert person myself -- my dad and my sister are the two chip people in the family, while me and my mom are the ones with the sweet tooth. Because, mmmmm, dessert. And it's rather odd, but I rarely get salt cravings. Right now it's mostly fruit and juice cravings, probably because of the weather (too hot for chocolate), but other times it's a chocolate or baked goodies craving. So I usually don't get chips.

But now I am sort of hankering. I actually don't like most chips because I feel like the manufacturers put way too much flavoring on them, so that those last few bites are so salty you can't even taste the potato! I like the potato-y taste of chips, so this makes me sad. I mean, the powdery fake sour cream and onion or barbeque powder or cheez powder (so far from real cheese that I refuse to give it the -se). I don't like flavor that is in powder form. It seems slightly suspect. Although I will make an exception for Cheetos, just for the expiration-date line from Buffy and because of the way the bright, completely unnatural orange cheeze powder crusts on your fingers after you've eaten a few.

My favorite chips are usually just the plain, lightly salted ones, especially Pringles Original. I can eat an ungodly amount of those in one sitting, so much so that my lips start to crack from all the salt I've ingested. Ok, that sounds vaguely gross, but they are so good! I cannot stop! And they have such nice, biteable shapes! And they are crispy and still taste like potato!

And Baked Lays. I like those too. Whoever thought of baking these things was a genius. I am probably a chip heretic, because I don't like the normal texture of Lays. Too flimsy! Not satisfyingly crunchy enough! And... *whispers* I don't like Doritos. This feels like heresy to me, because back in Taiwan in middle school, we weren't able to get lots of American snack food, and everyone always wanted Doritos. Except... I never really liked them. I like tortilla chips, but not with the coat of cheezness. Mmmm, tortilla chips in tzatziki sauce..... mmmmm, hummus....

Er. Right then. The only rule I usually make to the light-salt-only-on-chips rule seems to be for salt and vinegar. Because. Well. Because! Salt and vinegar! Particularly when the vinegar is so strong that sniffing at the bag of chips makes your head snap back at the whoosh! I can eat so many of those. Although despite my general liking for Pringles, Pringles' salt and vinegar chips aren't nearly vinegary enough, so one must go for properly kettle-cooked ones. Actually, I have no idea what that whole kettle-cooking thing is about.

The other sort of chips that I absolutely adore to bits are the Terra Chips made of yam and cassava and taro and all sorts of other yummy root vegetables. Deep-fried root vegetables are just the best thing on earth. Mmmm. Come to think of it, there's a little pearl milk tea place here that makes taro french fries, of a sort, and they are the best thing ever. And someone told me they have sweet potato fries in the South, which makes a trip there absolutely necessary. Not that I wouldn't go anyway, because barbeque and grits and mac and cheese and mmmmmm, but sweet potato fries! Why do they not have them here?

I think there should be some sort of Food Tour of the US, or Food Tour of the World, or Food Tour of Assorted Countries, at the very least. I would so join.

Knapp, Caroline - Appetites: Why Women Want

Knapp was anorexic for a good chunk of her life, and she uses that experience as a leaping off point into the more theoretical frame. I was very sad to learn that she died of lung cancer in 2002; I liked this memoir very much.

I had less qualms with this book than I did with Kim Chernin's The Obsession. I'm not exactly sure why; it may be that going from a memoir to more feminist theory and theory about body image is more satisfying to me than a book that jumps straight into the theoretical. Either that, or I'm growing more interested in the theoretical aspect of anorexia and bulimia and other body image problems for purely personal reasons.

I tend to have more qualms about this type of theory claiming that anorexics or bulimics as a group do such-and-such because of one overriding factor. But I felt that while Knapp did somewhat get into the theory behind it, she always tried to ground it in her own experience and the experiences of others she talked to. In the end, Appetites remains a deeply personal book, which is why, strangely, it feels more universal to me.

Sometimes I have doubts as to the cultural standards of beauty influencing eating disorders, but Knapp confirms this better for me. Either that, or thinking about it much more from my end has changed my mind. I do think that the fact that anorexia seems to be a largely upper middle class and white female disease does say something. I wish there were a more comprehensive study of eating disorders in other cultures and nations as well, because I would personally be very interested in seeing something like this set in Asia.

Anyhow, I digress. I liked how Knapp connected the desire to eat with other appetites, with the desire for love or warmth. I personally connect the desire to eat with the same fuzzy feelings, as well as assorted cultural issues, so I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. That is, until people try to deny themselves said fuzzy feelings by denying themselves basic sustenance. I wonder how much of anorexia is actually a mental disorder, as opposed to an eating disorder, how much of it is rooted in self-hatred and impossible standards.

Also, even though I'm talking about many larger issues here, the thing that struck me most about this book was the neediness Knapp was feeling, the utter control she had to express over her body. Just reading about what she was doing to herself was so incredibly painful on a very visceral level. She writes that a common perception is that anorexics suppress their hunger, but in her reality, hunger consumed her. She lived and breathed food; her entire life was about controlling what she ate and how she ate it. No brain space left for the bigger, more frightening things in life that she maybe couldn't control -- she was so strictly controlling her reality via food that that was how she avoided thinking about a life path, about relationship problems or personal issues.

It just struck me so hard how she was using food and her control over food and over her body as a way out, almost. For some reason, it reminds me a bit of self-injury as a coping mechanism. Both are ways of dealing with things, externalizing pain or control, writing them on the body, making them physical and visible. They both seem to be a sort of last-ditch coping mechanism, and a malfunctioning one at that. I am not sure at all how accurate this is, given that I've had not that much experience with either. But it does seem like they could possibly get in the way of actually dealing with the underlying issue because of how they externalize the issue. Now I'm really just rambling.

I hesitate to make (even more) generalizations about eating disorders and mental illnesses, but the book is a very worthwhile and rather wrenching read.

BPAL: Thalia

BPAL: Good Cheer. Plumeria, pear and white champagne.

Imp: Hrm, interesting fruity-alcohol smell, although I'm not sure if I would have identified it as such before reading the description. I definitely smell the pear.

Wet: Ok, this is strange. It's starting to smell remarkably like vanilla. And now pear. Hrm. Except... a slightly fake pear, if that makes any sort of sense.

Dry: Strangely, it is now wavering somewhere between vanilla and powder. I'm guessing the powder is the plumeria finally kicking in, heh. Yay me and floral. At least I am consistent. Oookay. Now this is strange. It smells like vanilla. I have no idea where this has come from. I am still amazed that it hasn't turned to powder. It's completely not me, but I'm just so happy that there's something on me that doesn't smell like powder!

Fitz-rat: More food-smell! I lunge for food but get spanked. No idea why. No fair. Oh well. More interesting things to do, like figure out how to get under the couch covers again. (He actually smells rather nicely of vanilla and muskiness and very like dessert. This is all very disturbing to me.)

Fool-rat: Hrm. Newish. Boring. Will sleep. (He ran away before I could rub my wrists on his fur. Smart fuzz!)