Jack Monroe (@bootstrapcook | Twitter)
British cookery writer Jack Monroe has hit back at online commentators who have criticized their appearance.
Monroe is currently on a media blitz promoting their book, Cooking on a Bootstrap. The book offers nutritional recipes for those with limited finances.
Monroe, 30, who identifies as genderqueer and non-binary, established a huge online following from 2012 onwards with their blog, A Girl Called Jack. As a single parent of a young child, and with limited income, Monroe developed the art of cooking good quality meals, cheaply.
The blog, renamed Cooking on a Bootstrap in 2015, led to writing commissions and TV appearances. Monroe has become a campaigner around poverty issues and gender identity and sexuality.
Cooking on a Bootstrap is their third book. Monroe made a film for the BBC’s Politics Live strand last week. In it, they discuss cooking with mental and physical disabilities. Monroe talks about experiencing depression and having arthritis.
‘I eat for a living’
However, they took to Twitter yesterday to address some of the reaction to the film. In particular, a stream of comments from people regarding their appearance. Monroe briefly took a break from Twitter earlier in the year, saying at the time it felt ‘abusive‘.
‘I’ve had quite a lot of nasty comments on my @BBCPolitics film about food and poverty, taking aim at my weight,’ Monroe said yesterday. ‘I have been trying to ignore them, but actually, I have something to say.
I’ve had quite a lot of nasty comments on my @BBCPolitics film about food and poverty, taking aim at my weight. I have been trying to ignore them, but actually, i have something to say. pic.twitter.com/OWQ46QZZTS
— Jack Monroe #bootstrapcook (@BootstrapCook) September 9, 2018
‘I had a ten year eating disorder in high school, and at my worst, weighed under six stone. I was anorexic, and slowly killing myself.
‘When I was a single mum on the dole, I was painfully, desperately thin, starved with hunger and depression and anxiety and poverty.
‘Now, I’m a bestselling cookbook author. I eat for a living. My books contain chapters on pasta and rice and potatoes and pudding and I love them all with gusto and glee. I’ve made my peace with my body. It is what it is.
‘But what it is is – at the moment – a UK size eight to ten. What it is is stressed, overworked, exhausted and thinner than I’d like … battered by arthritis and depression. What it is is not your business.
‘This body has survived suicide attempts, abuse, poverty, malnutrition, anorexia, and starvation. It grown an actual super brilliant human, it has dragged me through over thirty years of life, and I love it, and I’m proud of it, and fuck you.
‘That’s all.
‘EVERY. BODY. IS. BEAUTIFUL’
‘I have more to say, actually,’ Monroe continued.
‘Anonymous people on the internet tweet me to say I’m ‘fat’ as though body fat is shameful.
‘It isn’t. I’m not riled by the words you use, I’m astonished that you feel my body is your business at all.
‘EVERY. BODY. IS. BEAUTIFUL
‘Bullying is shameful.’
The original tweet has been liked over 2,000 times and had hundreds of re-tweets.
Monroe was interviewed by Gay Star News on video last year (see below). Monroe has been approached for further comment.
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See also
Read this non-binary writer’s powerful letter on why Twitter is abusive
Britain’s most-hated newspaper columnist loses libel case against non-binary celeb
