Cult of Body (Cool for the Summer)… (2-3) – Commentary

Commentary (The Receipt)

If you’re here, you’ve probably already read Cult of Body (Cool for the Summer)… and had at least one moment of:

“Okay, I feel called out,”

and maybe another of:

“Wait… I also feel weirdly defended.”

That tension is exactly what this one is built on.

What this piece is really doing

On the surface, this reads like:

  • “Here’s my body type,”
  • “Here’s pro-ana,”
  • “Here’s why this is fucked.”

Underneath, it’s doing three things without asking you to clap for any of them:

  1. Outing my wiring – being blunt that slender bodies light up my system.
  2. Refusing to turn that into a commandment – your survival > my arousal.
  3. Pulling the camera back to culture – how the whole system trains all of us to worship one shape.

It starts with “You’re my body type” on purpose.

That’s the most dangerous version of this conversation:

“The thing that’s trying to kill you is also the thing that turns me on.”

Most people either:

  • sanitize that away (“I just like healthy :)”), or
  • romanticize it (“I’m into sick girls, it’s just my thing”).

This piece tries to sit right in the middle and say:

“Yeah, this turns me on and I won’t let my kink vote on whether you get to live.”

The confession isn’t the point.

The boundary is.

Why I dragged my own body into it

One of the easiest ways to get hated — especially around ED — is to be the Flawless Voice With Opinions™.

So I intentionally walk you through:

  • that I have my own long-term, non-cute body insecurities
  • that some of them weren’t my fault
  • that some of them were shaped by depression and neglect
  • that they’ve never actually ruined a relationship, dynamic, or sex life

The point isn’t “feel bad for me.”

The point is to say:

“I’ve got my own shit too. I don’t get to sit on a throne of perfection and tell you not to wreck yourself for beauty.”

And that line:

Most of the time, the harshest critic in the room isn’t the person seeing you naked — it’s the one living behind your eyes.

…is me tipping the lens from “look how weird you are” to

“look how loud your own brain is, even when other people are fine with you.”

I wanted this to hit:

  • people with ED
  • people who’ve never had it but live in body shame
  • and people like me, whose arousal patterns could accidentally feed someone else’s disorder if we’re not careful

without turning any of them into villains.

Pro-ana as “religion”

Calling it “The Cult of Body” isn’t just a cute line.

For a lot of people, those spaces feel like:

  • church
  • family
  • the only room where everyone speaks your numbers

You share:

  • stats
  • tricks
  • progress shots

and from the inside it can feel like belonging, not horror.

So the piece tries to honor that feeling while still naming the cost:

“It feels like home until you try to leave and realize the entry fee was your life.”

That’s why I push the language from:

  • “mirror problem”
  • to
  • “nervous system problem that chose calories as its grammar.”

I’m not talking to you like:

“You’re vain and silly.”

I’m talking to you like:

“Your brain found a survival strategy and then turned it up so loud it became its own form of self-harm.”

That’s a very different kind of respect.

Drawing a hard line around harm

There are a few places in this piece that are basically vows:

My arousal map is my problem.

Your survival is not negotiable.

and

If staying with me ever depends on you staying unwell, I’m the problem, not you.

Those are there because this is the line, and I’m not blurring it for anyone.

  1. To make it very clear I’m not glamorizing ED as a kink.
  2. To give anyone reading this a line they can borrow for themselves.
  3. To mark where I stand if you ever bring your body into my orbit.

The piece is saying:

  • I won’t praise you for starving.
  • I won’t pretend I don’t see you fading.
  • I won’t hide behind “it’s just my preference” while you bleed years off your life.

If there’s a hierarchy here, it’s:

Your heart, your organs, your time on earth

> my hard-on.

Full stop.

Why I didn’t slap a hotline at the end

This is the part where a lot of pieces go:

“If you or a loved one is struggling, please call…”

Those resources do matter.

If they work for you, use them.

But I didn’t want to tack on a generic “get help” sticker just so I could feel noble. For me, that would be more shallow than my body preferences.

So instead, I put the responsibility like this:

  • If you know this is killing you (inside, outside, or both),
  • you deserve real, boring, not-for-aesthetic help:
    • actual doctors
    • actual therapists
    • actual information
    • actual people who take you seriously even if you don’t “look sick enough”

Where you go, who you trust, what you choose — that’s yours.

I’m not your clinician.

I’m the voice sitting next to you going:

“You’re not vain, you’re not stupid, and you don’t owe anyone your pulse.”

How I want this to land

I wrote this so that:

  • someone deep in ED can feel seen without feeling egged on
  • someone in recovery can feel respected instead of reduced to a PSA
  • someone who’s attracted to “that body type” can’t hide from how dangerous that can get if they’re careless

If it lands the way I intended, it should feel like:

  • a confession
  • a boundary
  • and a small, sharp knife cutting through some of the bullshit that keeps people stuck

Not:

  • a fetish ad
  • a diet ad
  • or a moral lecture

If you’ve lived any version of this — as the person starving, the person watching, or both — and you still felt like a person reading this instead of a problem to solve?

That’s where I wanted us to meet.

On the companion track: “Cool for the Summer” – Demi Lovato

The companion track isn’t random.

Demi Lovato has:

  • spoken publicly about struggling with an eating disorder
  • survived an overdose
  • done the long, ugly work of getting into a better relationship with their body and their life over time

“Cool for the Summer” is:

  • a glossy, pop, forbidden-flavor song
  • basically about a same-sex fling that’s framed as “don’t tell your mother”
  • fun, slightly reckless, and very “I’ll figure out the consequences later”

So pairing that with this piece does a few things:

Preference & taboo

The song is literally about:

  • “This is what I want.”
  • “This might not be socially approved.”
  • “I’m doing it anyway.”

That’s the same tension as:

  • “Slender bodies turn me on.”
  • “That doesn’t mean I’m entitled to you ruining yourself for me.”

Survival & aftermath

Demi exists as an example of:

  • someone who lived through an ED
  • lived through addiction
  • and still gets to make messy, sexy music on the other side

That’s the energy I want hovering over the piece:

“You can have a past with this, and still be here, still be complicated, still be hot, still be alive.”

Summer crush vs. lifelong cost

The song is about a fling season.

ED is not.

A summer crush is cute.

A cult of body that steals decades isn’t.

Putting them together is my way of saying:

“It’s okay to have fleeting attractions, forbidden flavors, weird crushes. It’s not okay to build your entire health around them.”

Cycle II – Coming of Age · 03 · Commentary (v1.00)

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