If there’s any generational curse I hope I can break, it’s this one.
After a life long struggle with body issues and finally feeling good about my weight and relationship to food, I talked with my grandmother on the phone. She’s always hosting her friends for cards and always makes a dessert. So I told her about a dessert that I had recently. Her response?
“Well, honey, have you gained weight?”
I told her instead about the half marathon I ran the weekend before and how I finally finished in less than 2 hours. I told her instead about what my body can do and not what it looks like.
Who decided that the number on the scale is the most important thing about me?
Comments
Well done and congrats for your half marathon!!
Media, marketing, all the money interests around making us feel questioned all the time… This is all out of our control.
What you can control is your mental health, your emotions and the skill to smile and wave with those kinds of comments. It’s okay to tune all that noise off because the time and effort trying to educate older (and not that older) people is a total waste.
Listen to your body, be gentle with yourself and be proud of what you have done and you can do.
Lots of love
Absolutely true. Little girls learn this early on. Then they tease and judge other little girls for being “fat”. As soon as we hit puberty, then we have men, fashion, and the media saying it. We’re only worthy if we’re attractive, and the worst thing any woman can be is fat.
And then we wonder why young people are suffering skyrocketing eating disorder rates. Or that so many young women stay with their nasty, abusive men because they need so badly to feel like someone finds her attractive.
I think when it became wrong to publicly mock blacks or homosexuals, the bigots shifted all their energy to verbally abuse fat people. Women are being bullied and shamed “for their own good”. You were bullied for “your own good”.
Patriarchy says: Be small so men feel bigger.
That’s all there is to it.
I wonder what would happen if you were direct with her about your feelings? Maybe you can raise her awareness. “My whole life, I feel I was conditioned to think my value comes from being thin or from my looks. It would make my soul happy if you only asked questions about my happiness and well being, not about my body shape or size”.
Before I went to interview with my current employer, my mom says “well, tell them that you just left a bad relationship, and that you’re making positive changes to your habits.”
I’m like WTF, mom?!? No. No, I’m not going into an interview and dumping my relationship trauma and apologizing for my body.
Somehow they forgave me for being plus sized and hired me.
I think I heard “suck it in” from my mom more than anything else.
I posted this in another sub last week, but it fits here too. My mom wrote a memoir and the entry for my 40th birthday was “cherrymerry looks so much younger than her peers because she’s kept her weight down.” When confronted, she genuinely believed that this was 100% appropriate to say and that it was a huge compliment. JFC.
I think I’ll always struggle with some level of negative self talk, but I think about how I’ll feel on my death bed reflecting on the endless amount of hours spent concerned about the way I look. It doesn’t make the condescending comments from my mother or the rude insults from porn addicted men go away, it doesn’t change the stark contrast in how society as a whole treats conventionally attractive people either, but it does give me some peace to know that I’ve decided that my life holds so much more value than just being the body I was born with.
One of the best things my parents did was not place importance on physical appearance. Mum didn’t read or keep those kinds of magazines in the house and when we did see them she explained how photos can be edited or manipulatited to look a certain way.
While both my parents were overweight they didn’t project that onto us and their efforts to reduce their weight were always framed around needing to do so for their health, not their appearance.
I feel that. I have (self-imposed) dietary restrictions, and the college attended wasn’t always great with options for dietary restrictions. I complained to my mom about it, and instead of being concerned that I wasn’t getting proper nutrition, she asked “Well why haven’t you lost weight then?”.
And then years later when I purposely lost weight, she was so weird and proud about it? Like her obsession with thinness and the damage she did to my self esteem finally got me there?
I have gained some weight back, and live across the country from her now. I went back to that state recently (not for fun reasons) and visited with her, though I didn’t want to because I knew she would have thoughts about me gaining some weight back. She didn’t say anything because my partner was with me, but I’m sure she gossiped to her friend about it later.
Congrats on your accomplishments! What your body can do is much more important than how small it is. I feel best when I’m strong.
Don’t worry, 80’s-90’s is back in style and thin was the style.
When I walk through Costco I notice I am taller and less curvy than 99% of women. I’m still worthy and so are you!
Sadly it will be about physical appearance one was or the other. People point to the happy days where a Rubenesque figure was preferred, but that was still about appearance.
I was a chubby kid and I remember sneaking into a GNC to spend my allowance on weight loss supplements, hiding them under my bed, then being too scared of getting caught to take them. My mom never demeaned me or bullied me for my weight, but I still picked up on her own insecurities about her body and added them to my own. She always kept her arms covered because she thought her upper arms were unattractive – I’ve basically never worn a sleeveless top without something to cover it up. I was going through some old photos the other day and saw myself at my church confirmation, around age 12 or 13, and couldn’t believe how much I hated how I looked at that age. Precious kids! It’s heartbreaking how much the world and our families set us up for lives of self-image struggle. Just breaks my heart.