Summary

In Chapter 6, “Mothering as Encouraging Appetites,” Garbes describes her voracious appetite as a child. As an adult she also has a tendency to indulge. Throughout her adolescence and young adulthood, she saw her body “as very inconvenient” (131). She did not have the build and frame of most Filipino women. Because she was stocky, had a full chest, and body hair, her mother was unsure how to guide her hygienic habits. Garbes is unsure how her insecurities did not cause her to develop “an eating disorder or a lifelong habit of dieting” (133). She learned early on to let herself expand, “both in size and in personality” (13). She then considers the relationship between the “fat body” and “the fat mind,” both of which are considered dangerous, according to writer Carmen Maria Machado (135).

Garbes recalls her babysitter Penelope coming to...