Kristi Lea

After a single semester of Feshman Composition in college, I avoided the English department. It took only that one taste to realize that I didn’t fit with “those people”.

You know the type: the literary snobs. The ones who sneer at paperback covers graced by Fabio or tattooed shoulders or exploding space ships or dragons. The ones who pronounce the word “genre” with a twang to the n that makes it sound like they’re discussing prison inmates or dirty diapers.

Ok, so I also passed a quick judgement against a large group of bibliophiles based on my impressions of one lone graduate student. I was seventeen, clearly knew everything about everything, and already owned a collection of over one hundred fat paperback romances. And they insulted my favorite pastime. Over and over and over.

At seventeen, I didn’t know everything. But nor did I have the self-confidence to stand my ground and defend the books I loved. It would take me another thirteen years before I attempted to put words to (eletronic) paper and begin writing something of my own.

I have known all along that there were gems hidden in the bodice rippers, the sword-and-sorcery, the chick lit. The more I write, and read about writing, and think about writing, the more I realize just how wrong all those literary snobs were. Pizza really is a health food. No, that isn’t a cut-and-paste error. I didn’t just splice a food blog post in the middle of my literary musings.

I distinctly remember a particular assignment that I did in the fifth grade. Everyone had to choose a card containing the nutrition information of various foods, and draw a graph. Each graph had a series of bars, representing the percentage of different nutrients contained in the food. Mine was pizza. Every bar on my graph was tall. Pizza was clearly a miracle food–full of calcium, vitamins A and C, B vitamins, protein. It had everything.

When the teacher asked who had chosen healthy foods, I raised my hand. And was laughed at by the entire class. Despite my towering bars of nutritional greatness, depsite the hard evidence before their eyes, the rest of the fifth grade class thought I was crazy. Pizza is junk food. End of story.

I also struggled with my weight for years. I spent my twenties about fifteen pounds overweight. Not bad by some standards, I suppose. But it ate away at my self esteem. In order to solve the problem, I had to go back to that fifth grade lesson. I had to graph and analyze what I was eating. Choose options that had tall bars and flavors that I loved. I wasn’t willing to cut dessert and pizza out of my life in order to shed a few pounds. And you know what? I didn’t have to.

Twenty something years later, I still don’t call pizza “junk food”. Any more than I call romance, or sci fi, or fantasy, or chick lit, “trash”. Making a food taste good does not diminish its nutritional value. Adding entertainment–adventure, romance, horror, suspense–to a novel does not diminish the message the author was trying to express.

“That’s a miracle pill?”
“Chocolate coating makes it go down easier” –from The Princess Bride

Healthy food doesn’t have to taste like dirt and deprivation. Thought-provoking novels can have sex and ray guns. Yes, I do believe that writing fiction had a positive impact on my weight and outlook on food, nutrition, and exercise. And realizing that I can look healthy and eat dessert has had a positive effect on my outlook on writing. I can attempt to process big, dark themes and ideas, and laugh while I write.

So please pass the parmesan. Because I’m not done with my pizza yet.

Copyright 2010 – Kristi Lea