It's So Hot In This Restaurant

This week’s guest columnist is Mandy Seiner, co-editor of DEAR Poetry She wrote this wonderful piece about singer-songwriter Samia.

I don’t think I understood diet culture’s relationship to elitism before now. I really love this essay because it’s takeaway about nourishment and food dovetails nicely with the thesis of this newsletter: music should enrich our lives, and we should not be ashamed to enjoy it. Bon Appetit!

Carl

TW: Weight loss / diet culture

by Mandy Seiner

Three weeks after moving to Brooklyn I had a nervous breakdown in the Williamsburg Whole Foods. I called my mom blubbering, snot pouring down my face, and told her that I didn’t deserve to live there. It wasn’t a matter of not being able to afford the food around me (though I couldn’t), but that I felt I hadn’t earned it. I wasn’t the kind of person who ate chia pudding or açaí bowls or onigiri. Those were foods reserved for people who were better than me. People who were less concerned with the opinions of those around them, though if they bothered to check, the opinions would all be kind. The girls who ate those foods woke up in aesthetically aligned apartments and wiped down every surface in their kitchens every day. They shopped sustainably, went for morning runs, and put spinach in their smoothies.

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After releasing multiple heart wrenching songs per year between 2017 and 2019, indie musician Samia dropped her first full album, The Baby. The second single, “Fit n’ Full,” came out in June of 2020 at the start of a sweltering and stressful pandemic summer where we emerged from our homes to sit on blankets in the park and stroll along with one another at arm’s length. In the song, the speaker proclaims that she is both as fit and as full as she’s ever been-- two things Samia has said she used to view as mutually exclusive. Living in Manhattan’s East Village, she felt disillusioned by her preoccupation with her body, focusing on herself instead of the sprawling and enchanting city in front of her. She was regularly distracted by her reflection in shop windows and disappointed herself by staring at it more than taking part in the events around her.

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The first few months I lived in Brooklyn, I lost 20 pounds.  It was not exclusively due to body image or beauty standards. I wasn’t building muscle or getting any healthier. I shriveled in part because of all the places to put my energy in this novel landscape, I shoved eating to the bottom of the list. 

I felt like an invader— a bad newcomer, a fidgety white girl from the midwest living among millions of people who knew things I didn’t. My fellow transplants had dreamed about the city since they were old enough to read Eloise at the Plaza, they had a level of expectation and insight. I wound up there by accident after casting my job prospect net further than I could reasonably reel in.

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Fit n’ Full’s chorus in its entirety is “If you want, I can take it off / Show you what my mama gave me,” accompanied two out of three times by the lines “It's so hot / In this restaurant / I might just get fully naked.” When the song premiered, I had rarely “taken it off” in any sense of the word. I constantly regretted having a body and regretted even more when I had to show it to people. If my body already felt unworthy of nourishment, why would I want to lay anything bare, make anyone look at it? Samia goes on to say “I'm generous and vacant” and in those words I found fellowship.

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My first couple years in the city were marked by illness and reluctance. I developed an intense case of mono that landed me in the hospital. I penny-pinched and cried in my bedroom when my roommate asked me to help her pay for new cabinets. I went on dates with men I recoiled from, and eventually one I liked. It got better, and I almost resented the ubiquitous “it” for doing exactly what everyone said it would. I found footing with college friends and work friends. I found an apartment with enough room to breathe. I fell and have remained in love. I would never dare say that the pandemic has been a good thing, but believe there is no harm in looking for silver linings. It’s inspired a fuck it attitude in almost everyone I know. Many people are no longer afraid to ask for what they want, actively participate in the treats economy, and the dreaded post-quarantine weight loss discourse never quite seemed to take off. Maybe we’re all okay with taking up a little more space in a world that we’ve realized isn’t sure to exist in its same form tomorrow.

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I saw Samia perform live for the first time at the Bowery in October of 2021. It feels cliche to the point of negligence to say that a concert was a religious experience, but it was, and no amount of banality will change that for me. Her dancing was reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch and her maintenance of energy in front of a crowd was humbling. She played Fit n’ Full about two thirds of the way through the show, during the quasi post-lunch slump where you decide to check your watch for the first time since the show’s first note. The song’s beat is unrelenting and ever-upward. There are no interludes or quiet moments and therefore no spots for anxiety about how you look while dancing along to creep in.

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By the numbers, I believe my body is currently the largest it has ever been. I can’t say for certain, because I haven’t measured anything about myself since 2020. I stand backwards on scales and close my eyes where they’re mandated. As time has marched forward, nourishing myself has become a priority and cooking my favorite hobby. I buy chia seeds and mix them into my yogurt. I blend acai juice into smoothies and have plans to sample every kind of onigiri available in Brooklyn. In 2022, I am the kind of person who meal plans and preps and champions sustenance as the number one thing anyone can concern themselves with. I am the kind of person who dines at venues Eater writes articles about. I don’t order the cheapest or healthiest thing on the menu. I take soft nudes in the restrooms of Michelin star restaurants and text them to my date upstairs. Maybe one of these days I’ll get fully naked.

Full disclosure Mandy and I participate in “Sandwich Club” where we occasionally send each other pictures of sandwichs we have enjoyed. You should start your own Sandwich Club chapter and tell us about it.