Act One: I am obscene to you "Corruption begins with the mouth, the tongue, the wanting. The first poem in the world is 'I want to eat." - Erica Jong, Where it Begins

feminine appetite is regulated in one of two ways: diet or death "'How Beautiful Women Eat': Feminine Hunger in American Popular Culture." by April Davidauskis Feminist Formations, vol. 27, no. 1. 2015. pp. 167-89. JSTOR

the insatiability of trying to heal

"[The author's ambivalence] towards her own creation may stem from her realization that, since her culture associates the excessive female body with lower classes, especially [Black people], loosening the straight jacket of restrained appetites would not so much liberate the upper class white woman, as lower their class status and the privileges that come with it." - Debra Beilke