Random musings on food and/or privilege

Because I'm not sure if this constitutes as a "food" privilege or a Western privilege.

A long time ago, that in 2008, I was reprimanded by a teacher for telling off another student for not eating (in-class party), with the old "Think of the starving children in Ethiopia!" line Boooo, Xands, you dick.

Anyway, I deserved that, but lately I've been thinking. If you read me blog anytime last year you may have heard me mentioning something called Sunday Fasting. That was the day where, for no religious, spiritual, or even personal reasons, I would just not eat. Or eat very little. Yes, a whole day. I would either sleep or drink liquids, or eat dry ramen and cookies. You might also remember that I was basically severely dehydrated every other week. That's life!

Why? Well, part of it was because last year I couldn't afford as much. But also, I didn't want to. To be frank, even if I don't like the cafeteria food, it's constantly at my fingertips and paid for by scholarship money, so all I had to do was get up and eat it.

BUT

For one day, or maybe even a few days a week, I just randomly put myself through what's a reality for many people in poorer countries: starvation. That's basically what it was, and I know because come Christmas time I went home gaunt as a skeleton. It wasn't so much the stress of college as I had just not eaten. It was nice to lose weight but the bad thing was, once I started eating regularly of course that weight came back.

It was a mostly healthy weight and, realizing how dumb that was, I started eating regularly (for me) when I came back in January.

Now if you follow my twitter you may hear about my constant need to go make myself do that eating thing. Subconsciously I probably just want to die slowly as possible, that's nothing new. But again, the food is there. I shop for food now but again, whether I like it or not, cafeteria. The food is there, I just refuse to make an effort to get it.

The first words to mind about this would be lazy followed shortly by git.

I've been mulling a bit on this for a few days and wondering, am I just taking advantage of privilege? I think it might be. As bad as it makes me feel I have to admit to myself that I'm kind of being a jerk refusing food when people have to go without. Even if you're not living in one of those "third world" (coz I dislike that term) countries where you can't even get running water, you could be in the States or England and not be able to afford much food, and here I am with it in my hands and just going "pfft" almost daily. It's small, at least to us, but it's so important.

Not to mention it's unhealthy. I'm seriously counting calories to REMIND myself to eat, to get something healthy in my system so I don't have a repeat of last semester where I was just falling out with headaches and dehydration.

So, privilege? I think so, but me being a dick and activist!fail, most definitely. Poo.