At 20 years old, Nicole stood five feet seven inches tall, weighing around 115 pounds, just like me when I was that age. In her photos, I noticed we wore the same underwear: striped, violet high-waisted cotton briefs from Victoria's Secret.
A Glimpse into the Past
It was the year 2000. I was 12, and the Victoria's Secret Angels epitomized thinness and perfection. I would steal catalogs from my mother's secret hiding place in the back of her closet, staring at the models. The internet was still in its infancy, and social media did not exist. One afternoon, after a series of clicks, I stumbled upon The Spark, a website blending celebrity news and contests that predated shows like The Biggest Loser and My 600-lb. Life. Among its contests was one called The Fat Project.
That is where I first saw Nicole. The website editors selected two thin, attractive young adults—a man and a woman—and challenged them to gain 30 pounds in 30 days for a $3,000 prize. Nicole and Eric shared an apartment, weighed in daily, and posed for front and side photos wearing only ratty cotton underwear, including Nicole's violet briefs that matched mine.
A former homecoming queen from Haleyville, Alabama, Nicole's bio page stated she was "tired of people judging her for her good looks—so she's agreed to ruin them." She lamented unwanted attention, saying, "That's all anyone ever looks at. So I want to get disgustingly fat and see how everyone reacts."
After school, I rushed home to my father's HP computer, logging onto America Online to follow Nicole's daily consumption. I was captivated by this young woman who did not want attention for being thin. Instead, she sought to disappear by gaining weight.
I learned the contestants had fasted to lower their starting weights. After the initial weigh-in, they began eating: three large pizzas, two liters of Coke, cream-filled donuts, and Chinese takeout. The editors posted photos of the feast. Nicole capped her day by posting a picture of her bare belly, reclining on a couch in pajama pants. Even seated, her taut stomach showed no excess.
"Time for dinner," my mother called, and I quickly logged off. I pulled up my shirt and pinched my own belly, mentally calculating how many calories I would allow myself.
The Dark Side of Spectacle
The Fat Project was an extreme diet reflected in a funhouse mirror, a cruel circus of gluttony. Website moderators mocked the contestants, hurling insults about their bodies and morality. Nicole sought liberation, but the spectacle turned her into a laughingstock. Yet, it felt revolutionary to watch a woman willingly sacrifice what I believed was her only source of power: her thin body.
I could not get enough. My appetite and I were locked in a battle of wills, and watching another woman give in to her desires made me feel more powerful when I resisted mine.
Fat activism had not yet reached my corners of the internet, nor my home in small-town Appalachia. I grew up in West Virginia's "Chemical Valley," named for frequent industrial spills. At school, we often sheltered in place—not from tornadoes or hurricanes, which the mountains blocked, but from accidents at plants along the river. I attended a fundamentalist Christian school at the end of a winding mountain road. As a girl, I felt safe as long as I followed the rules. Chapel services featured preachers who mentioned Jesus's love and grace only in passing, lest we feel too free.
But at home, I fantasized about freedom, daydreams brought to life online. On Day 2 of The Fat Project, photos showed Nicole in baggy overalls shopping for "the worst foods America has to offer": Little Debbie Cakes, SpaghettiOs, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter, chips, margarine, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Just one day in, Nicole had gained 3.5 pounds, though the moderator speculated most of it was still in her intestines. She still looked as thin as before. But soon, her body changed. Her underwear grew tight, her belly button enlarged, and a photo zoomed in on her midsection featured two red arrows pointing to newly grown love handles.
I felt titillated by her thighs now touching, her belly spilling over the elastic of her underwear. It was thrilling to see the consequences of her indulgence—and exciting to see a woman who looked so similar to me showing off excess without apology.
Confessions and Discoveries
"I've been struggling with the sin of masturbation, Anna," my friend Jessica confessed at a sleepover, the blue TV light illuminating a tear on her cheek.
"What do you mean?" I asked awkwardly.
"What do I mean—masturbation?" Jessica looked at me with superiority. "You don't know what masturbation is?"
"Of course I know," I said defensively. "I just... I know how boys do it. But girls..." I trailed off.
I regretted my ignorance as Jessica politely explained female masturbation, then shared her PG-rated fantasies. She concluded with, "Do you know what I mean?"
"Oh. Yes. That. Of course," I said. An express train ran through my veins. I did not know what she meant—except, I realized, when I looked at Nicole's growing body, I did.
Each afternoon, I eagerly awaited pictures of Nicole eating. I waited impatiently for the dial-up connection, then clicked to The Spark's daily report: Nicole pressing whipped cream into her mouth, eating a whole pizza, standing in her underwear with an arm in a bag of chips. Some days, editors posted photos of her newly developed cellulite. I was exhilarated examining her pale, dimpled skin. Each day, she hit a higher number on the scale, and I thought, This is what I would look like at this weight. I was disgusted even as I tightened with pleasure.
Nicole's freedom to embrace her appetites—and the images of her expanding flesh—thrilled me. I could not see then that The Fat Project was not empowering for her. Like much reality-adjacent and confessional media of that era, supposed liberation often shifted into exploitation and humiliation.
As Nicole grew, pictures zoomed in on her belly's skin, showing fat folds and cellulite—"the dark side of Nicole." Why was it called "dark"? I wondered. Wasn't she eating what she had never allowed herself? Or did the contest see her as a shadow of her former self, a different person because she was heavier?
Near the end, close-up photos showed Nicole in the same bra and underwear set from the start. Her weight gain was compared in zoomed shots of her gut, legs, kneecaps, and fingers. "She used to be a homecoming queen, and now even her jewelry doesn't fit," the website copy said. A star-shaped tattoo on her right hip bone had stretched and distorted into something like a snowflake.
Reflections on a Digital Age
Almost a quarter century has passed since I sat at my parents' desktop computer, stealthily reading updates on The Fat Project. The body surveillance Nicole signed up for for a paltry sum has become a rite of passage for many girls. With social media, young women can turn their bodies into a project to be viewed and monetized. Unlike at the turn of the millennium, they can morph their appearances with filters, apps, and AI, blending fantasy and reality to curate digitized selves. Unsurprisingly, adolescent girls' mental health is plummeting, particularly regarding body image and disordered eating.
Though we experienced a brief respite from the moralization of body size with the body positivity movement, that liberation was short-lived. As American culture swings right, body positivity has been replaced by SkinnyTok, Ozempic, and a resurgence of diet culture. Women's political rights are eroding, with legislation that could make it harder for some married women to vote. As women's rights shrink, women's bodies shrink too.
I feel grateful that I have mostly been the voyeur, not the object of these ubiquitous body performances. Like the 12-year-old who dialed up the internet to watch Nicole, I sometimes still find myself online consuming content where women offer up their bodies. I protest bedtime by scrolling reels, one woman after another pointing the camera toward her gut, thighs, and arms in search of likes, virality, and perhaps a bit of cash. The game is the same, but what is dark is not an individual's changing body. It is our insatiable appetite for consumption.
Excerpted from "Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl" by Anna Rollins ©2025 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Reprinted with permission.
