Feed Her
“Feed her. A happy girl is a fed girl.”
It sounds like a warm, bossy blessing—something your grandmother might say while sliding a second helping onto your plate, daring you to argue with love. And then comes the darker little truth hiding under the napkin:
The shaming of the female body goes so deep, that the first ever sin was a woman taking a bite of an apple – and eating.
Not theft. Not cruelty. Not betrayal.
In one of the most influential stories in the Western imagination, the original scandal is appetite—female appetite—reaching out and taking a bite. Eve’s “fall” isn’t framed as violence. It’s framed as consumption. A woman wants. A woman reaches. A woman eats. And suddenly—history collapses like a cheap lawn chair.
It’s a disturbingly efficient script. Because if you can convince a girl her hunger is dangerous, you don’t have to lock the door. She’ll lock it herself. She’ll call it virtue. She’ll call it being “good.” We’ve been running that program for centuries—just changing the packaging. Sometimes it’s religion: be pure, be small, be pleasing. Sometimes it’s “wellness”: be disciplined, be light, be “clean.” Sometimes it’s fashion: be effortless (which, as every woman knows, takes exhausting effort). Different altar. Same sacrifice.
Hunger isn’t the enemy.
There is nothing shameful about appetite. Hunger is not a moral failure—it’s a living signal. The body speaking in plain language. And appetite isn’t only about food. It’s about life. It’s wanting rest without apologizing. Wanting pleasure without footnotes. Wanting seconds—of dessert, of love, of time, of possibility—without turning it into a courtroom defense.
A woman eating is not a catastrophe. A woman being trained to fear her own hunger? That’s the catastrophe. “Discipline” can be devotion… or punishment. Yes, structure can be wise. Health matters. Strength is holy.
But there’s a difference between caring for yourself and trying to become “acceptable.” One asks: How do I nourish myself? The other asks: How do I shrink into safety? And the female body, historically, is rarely allowed to simply be. It must be managed. Edited. Corrected. Reduced. Smoothed. Unaged. Unhumaned. Meanwhile, a man softens and becomes “distinguished.” A woman softens and suddenly she’s “let herself go.” As if her body is a rental car returned with crumbs.
Feed her is not cute. It’s radical.
Feed her real food, yes—warm, satisfying, honest. Because starvation—literal or symbolic—makes people compliant. Feeding makes them alive. And aliveness has always threatened anything built on control.
About that Apple
Whether you take Genesis as theology, literature, or history’s most successful cautionary tale, the theme is blunt: The feminine is blamed for reaching.
Not for malice— for motion. For wanting knowledge. For wanting experience. For wanting more than the assigned role of “good girl” in the background. She eats, and suddenly she’s dangerous. But maybe the “sin” wasn’t eating. Maybe it was awakening. Maybe it wasn’t a fall—maybe it was a departure from obedience. And perhaps that’s why the story still lives in our bones: because women are still punished, in small daily ways, for having hungers of any kind.
So here’s the rebellion: Feed her.
Not because she needs fixing. Because she deserves love – and food – without conditions.
And if the old inherited voice whispers—Careful. Don’t want too much. Don’t take up space. Don’t be greedy —smile at it like you’d smile at an outdated relative who still thinks women shouldn’t vote. Then take a bite anyway.
Because if the first scandal was a woman eating… the sweetest rebellion is a woman who is finally, unapologetically fed.
