She is also attracted to Miriam’s commitment to her Orthodox faith Rachel grew up Reform and is now, she says, “sort of nothing.” The two strike up a friendship and romance, with the “zaftig girl” taking Rachel out to eat kosher Chinese food (even literally feeding her at one point) and bringing her to Shabbat dinner at the family home. Rachel is immediately attracted to her. Miriam is plump and, unlike Rachel, appears to eat whatever she wants. Although Rachel doesn’t quite realize it, Miriam looks just like the “self-portrait” she had made out of clay during a previous therapy session - in Jewish folklore, a golem. One day, Rachel goes to buy her daily frozen yogurt and meets the new server, Miriam.
Rachel has internalized her mother’s voice so well her everyday food is both tightly controlled and joyless - for lunch, she eats a Subway salad with no dressing (“a modest caloric total of 160”) followed by plain frozen yogurt (“just 45 calories for half a cup”). At the start of Melissa Broder’s novel Milk Fed, twenty-four-year-old Rachel is beginning a therapist-recommended “detox” from her overbearing mother, who has always been critical of the way she eats.
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