Author’s Note:

Minxy Muffins

Struggling with an eating disorder for over a decade can make for a strange relationship with food. For me, eating has at times felt like the guiltiest of pleasures, verging on shameful whenever I’m caught indulging in it. Loving food is a completely natural instinct, but in a culture where six-packs and thigh-gaps are equated with individual worth, it sometimes seems that enjoying eating has become as taboo as sex in Victorian England. Reading the piece in its completed form, I can see it as my attempt to put words to this weird snack-shaming I feel while simultaneously poking fun at the culture that has made vanity a social obligation.

However, on a less philosophical and artsy-fartsy note, the only thought I really had in mind when I started writing “Minxy Muffins” is that I felt particularly goofy that day, and that, heck, I really like muffins. If it makes my readers reconsider how food and body image tie into their sense of self-worth (and life in general), then, sure, that’s great—though all I really wanted to achieve with the piece was to make people smile. Giggles are also acceptable.