After watching The Strike, the prison hunger strike documentary, I got to thinking about how the conditions in prisons are worse than we allow for animals.

My family and I have trouble leaving our dogs alone for more than 5 hours. We have had many conversations regarding our schedules and making sure someone is with them so they aren’t kept in their cages or left alone for too long. When left at home, we make sure they have fresh water, snacks, a bed, pee pads, entertainment, and the companionship of each other. That seems normal to a lot of pet owners, and anything less could be considered inhumane treatment, yet that same view isn’t true for prisoner treatment.

The documentary discussed how dehumanizing prisons are in the United States. Prisoners can be sent to solitary confinement for little to no reason, with no action commited by them to be there. There is evident racial discrimination and bias to who prisons send to solitary confinement. Additionally inmates would put kept in solitary confinement for incredibly long periods, with some inmates staying in there for 30 years. Some inmates were in solitary confinement longer then I have been alive. The documentary talked about the social and mental effects this had on them and how the possible death during a hunger strike wasn’t scary when they felt that they were already dead. Before this documentary, I didn’t question the impact solitary confinement could have on a person’s ability to function, think, or live. I also didn’t understand just how long people were sentenced there, but why didn’t we find any amount of time over one day troublesome.

TW: Discussion of Eating Disorders

I have struggled with body image for most of my life. I can vividly remember the negative comments my mom would say about her body when I was about 5 years old, such as “I have too much flab here”, “This is sagging”, “Look at my C-section scar, so huge”, and “I am so huge”. I can’t think of a time when the topic of appearance came up, and she wouldn’t call herself fat. And when my mom called herself fat, she was really calling herself disgusting and undeserving of love.

A lot of these conversations would lead to my mom saying, “God, I wish I had your body”. “Enjoy it while you can”, like her scars and flab were the cost for me, and I must be skinny to make all of this change worth it. “It’s fleeting!” The societal definition of my happiness is fleeting, and she was trying to live vicariously through my skinniest. I was maybe 10 years old. This is the age when my mom stopped packing my lunches, and I pretended to pack my own. This was the beginning of my eating disorder.