Campus Pigs- the Sorority's Porky Past

Chapter 1

Lindsey blinked in the light, irritated to find herself waking up for a third time that day. Her constant oversized binges were sending her into consistent and, by all appearances, unavoidable, food comas, and she’d napped after her breakfast shake, after her lunch, and now again after her post-lunch snack. Her days had become entirely monopolized by eating and sleeping, and Lindsey was full, uncomfortable, and most pressingly of all, bored.

She shifted beneath her covers, unsure of what time it was but certain that she hadn't missed dinner. Abigail would’ve never allowed that. She fumbled for her phone lost among the tangle of blankets and clicked it to life, confirming it had only been a few hours since her last meal. She didn't have to start dinner for a while, and now that she was more alert and her naptime fog was clearing, she could smell whatever Courtney was working on.

Lindsey had to admit that Courtney was an amazing chef and, despite the treasurer's sycophantic adherence to Abigail's rules and expectations, Lindsey actually liked Courtney. At least, when Courtney wasn't the one in charge of feeding her. Lindsey knew what was on the line for her sisters and could agree that an out-of-house suspension was unthinkable, but simultaneously felt little sympathy for her not-quite-volunteer prisoner guards.

Making bland conversation with the girls she didn't know as well as they watched her eat was one thing, but being fed by the girls she spent more time with was like torture. The whole thing felt so contrived, so unreasonable, but there was nothing either party could do. As much as Lindsey hated to admit it, she’d follow Abigail's instructions the exact same way if she were in their position. She’d be sad if it were Karina or one of the other girls she considered a friend, but truthfully she'd mostly be glad that she wouldn't be the one stretching out her belts and waddling around with food on her face.

She shifted into more of a sitting position and winced as she felt a pang of overfullness shoot through her middle. She was becoming more and more accustomed to the feeling of perpetual fullness but nonetheless no more accepting of it, and the odd, pressing feeling dominated her attention and made her own body feel foreign to her. She swung her feet to the floor, unsure of what to do with extra time where she wasn't required to stuff her face until it hurt, and sat on the edge of her bed for a moment in limbo, socked feet pressed to the floor and one hand resting on the small swell of her bloated tummy in an attempt to recreate the effects of Courtney’s earlier belly massage.

Her phone buzzed and she jumped for it, eager to have anything other than food to think about.

‘Come to my room’ Aubrey had sent, no superfluous emoji to redress any tension like most girls their age would send.

‘Y?’ Lindsey sent back, already pushing herself into a standing position to follow Audrey’s instructions despite her feigned reluctance.

‘Guard duty. Don’t feel like coming downstairs’ came Audrey's simple reply.

Lindsey stood, brushing crumbs off her sweatshirt and mentally tearing through her closet for something to wear. She’d been living in sweats for the past four days and wanted something slightly less slouchy to wear in front of Audrey, Lindsey's desire to impress the impossibly beautiful, standoffish girl that Lindsey had always felt she wasn't cool enough for higher than unusual.

She decided against jeans, well aware that the buttons would have to come undone once she started in on her dinner, and settled on a pair of black leggings and an oversized t-shirt featuring an obscure band she couldn't name a singular song from that she’d stolen from a former fling. Her inclination to impress Audrey had been strong from the moment Lindsey first laid eyes on her, but since the conversation she’d had with her the day of the pizza-eating contest, that unconscious desire to be accepted by the striking, whip-smart loner had been exacerbated dramatically.

She stood in her mirror posing back and forth, analyzing herself from every angle to make sure that her chosen outfit covered her bloat. She sucked in her cheeks and frowned, hoping that her face, rendered puffy from an excess of sodium over the last few days, didn't make her look too fat.

She made her way up the stairs to Audrey's room, exercising the one bit of defiance she could by not asking Abigail or Courtney if she could take the stairs and burn a few calories, and found herself rapping on Audrey's door, her heart unexpectedly thrumming. Audrey had always been intimidating, but this feeling was markedly distinct from intimidation. Lindsey was nervous.

She wasn't sure if it was the fear of judgment at her new gluttonous role within the sorority or if it was concern that Audrey was watching her more closely than the other girls, was taking careful note of her gain and the way that it impacted her life. Knowing that Audrey's dissertation was based entirely around the campus pigs contest and the social constructs it emphasizes and tests the limits of, Lindsey felt like an experiment, a lab rat whose actions Audrey would be assessing and dissecting. She didn't know how to act in front of someone who was studying her every move in an academic context, and that uncertainty settled in on her all at once as she stood waiting for Audrey to answer the door.

“It’s open,” Audrey called from behind it, and Lindsey turned the handle slowly, already self-conscious about everything she did and every choice she made.

“Hey,” she squeaked when she walked in, grimacing at the warbling pitch of her voice.

Would Audrey write about that? Make a note of how the onset of the subject's weight gain immediately led to reduced confidence? Lindsey shook her head, steadying herself, and tried again.

“Hey,” she repeated more evenly.

“Well, hey hey to you,” Audrey said without taking her eyes off of her laptop screen, her fingers flying over the keys uninterrupted. “You can sit.”

Lindsey crossed the room to sit on Audrey's bed, wondering how it was possible that her first time doing so was only four short days ago that felt like lifetimes. She sat, crossed-legged, and watched Audrey's back and she continued to type furiously, the silence punctuated by the pocking of her keyboard. Lindsey settled in further, getting comfortable as she realized that Audrey would be this way for a while, and pulled out her phone.

“You don't have homework?” Audrey asked without turning the second Lindsey’s phone lit up, startling Lindsey and making her jump.

“No,” Lindsey assured quickly. “Well, yea, a little, but I'm going to do it later,” she corrected, considering for the first time what her workload after four days off from classes would look like.

“Suit yourself,” Audrey said with a shrug, returning to her task.

Unsure if the initial question had been a way for Audrey to invite conversation, Lindsey hesitantly tested the waters.

“So, is that…is that for your project?” she asked after a while.

“Yup,” said Audrey, popping the p as was her trademark.

Lindsey immediately cringed at the silence that followed, coming to terms with the fact she’d misread the situation and the girl didn't want to talk, when the rapid typing suddenly stopped. Audrey swiveled her office chair towards Lindsey and gave her an inquisitive look that spoke volumes and yet was simultaneously near impossible to read.

“Are you doing ok?” Audrey asked, looking deep into Lindsey's eyes as if searching for a truth. “Really. Are you?”

“Yea,” mumbled Lindsey quietly. “Yea.”

Audrey waited, still staring.

“It’s weird,” Lindsey finally went on, pressured by the intensity of Aubrey's gaze. “It's all really weird. To eat this much, to eat this kind of food, to have everybody focusing on me. It's making me feel crazy.”

Audrey nodded, her attention rapt.

“And I hate the fucking guard duty, it’s so twisted.”

“Why?” Audrey prompted

“Cause it's literally insane! Like, am I wrong? That it’s insane, and we’re all just pretending it's normal. Abigail is force-feeding me, the whole sorority force-feeds someone every year, and we all just act like it's normal.”

She paused her rant, realizing that this was the first time she’d been completely honest about the things she’d experienced since being chosen as the house's pig. She hated every element of the situation and thought she’d made that clear, but as she spilled her guts to Audrey, she realized that there was much more to complain about, much more that she hadn’t addressed whatsoever.

“And all the food is so greasy and heavy,” she went on, her tirade building steam and only serving to make her angrier. “And they make me eat till it hurts, it's like a punishment for something I didn't even do.”

She paused again, her hand falling to her middle as it had so many times over the past four days.

“And I feel like I already see differences,” Lindsey admitted, shocking herself. “I feel like I'm already getting fat and I see it every time I look in the mirror, you know? My face looks like a moon, like, it's so swollen. My whole body is so bloated. And I know I've already gained some weight. I mean, at least a little. Based on the amount of calories they've had me eating, I should've gained like 4 pounds by now. I'm literally four pounds heavier than I was the last time I was in this room. It just makes me feel so out of control, you know? So helpless. All I have time to do is eat and sleep and yet I’m somehow still exhausted, it makes me feel so lazy.”

Audrey nodded encouragingly.

“And this is all just the beginning!” Lindsey cried, largely unaware of the fact that her volume had increased right alongside her discontent. “It hasn't even been a week yet, imagine how big I'm gonna be in a month? In two months? I’m gonna be waddling around and stuffing my face while all of you guys watch to make sure I’m still eating enough, it's a fucking nightmare! How is any of this even allowed? And, and-”

Lindsey cut herself off abruptly, realizing that Audrey was still watching her carefully as her rant became a meltdown.

“It's just not fair,” Lindsey finished quietly.

Audrey nodded.

“It’s not,” she agreed, her gaze as hypnotic as ever. “I’m not gonna tell you it's not so bad because I know you probably don’t wanna hear that right now. But if you’re the numbers type, I can tell you that your odds aren't so bad.”

Lindsey scoffed.

“Yea, they aren't so bad, they're perfect,” Lindsey scoffed. “Phi Lambda wins the campus pigs contest every year.”

“No, no, your odds with the weight. And losing it. I’ve been looking into a lot of former pigs for my research and more of them were able to drop the weight than you might think.”

Lindsey's eyebrows crinkled in confusion and disbelief.

“Pigs lost weight?” she asked incredulously.

“Tons of them.”

“But the only one I know about is Tiffany, and-”

Tiffany is certainly an outlier," Audrey excitedly interjected, her passion for her work evident in her tone. “There haven't been many Phi Lambda girls, at least, not many that I've been able to get in touch with, that dropped weight after the contest. Even fewer that dropped back to size, although I’ve personally only been able to confirm one. But what I've found is that other houses, both sororities and fraternities, have much higher rates of success in terms of regaining their previous health and size. Did you ever notice that?” she asked, giving Lindsey no time to provide an answer. “Because I didn't. Other houses lose weight. Not all the weight, but as a whole those participants don’t stay at the size of their largest weigh-in. Some houses have insane success rates, and it's always the losers. The losers can drop the weight after, and for some reason, the winners don’t. It’s added this element of intrigue to my hypothesis that really broadens the complexity of the topic, it's been fascinating.

Lindsey nodded, unhappy with the information Audrey had provided but pleased that the standoffish girl had chosen to nerd out in front of her.

“But that doesn't really help me, right?” Lindsey confirmed. “Cause nobody from Phi Lambda actually loses all the weight they gained.”

“Except Tiffany,” Audrey corrected. “To the best of my knowledge, Tiffany is the only person in history to both win the contest and actually return to her original size. No one else has ever done it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Lindsey muttered, drawing a laugh from Audrey.

“You can do it,” Audrey encouraged, still chuckling. “You can do whatever you set your mind to, but fair warning, everything you’re doing now just works against that. The contest creates an addiction, and it's not just to food. Obviously, sugar consumption can be habit-forming and addicting, yea there can be a physiological or emotional dependence on food, but the results of this contest are really specific. It's how full you always are. You’ll get addicted to the feeling of your stomach being completely full. Eventually, you’ll start to feel hungry without it. I’ve realized that the addiction component is the most significant impediment to weight loss after the contest. The winners can’t drop weight because they keep eating the same way they did when they were still competing.”