This post deals with eating disorders and might be triggering for some readers.
I don’t remember what was said before or after, but I remember my mother saying this: “That’s why you’re so f*cking fat.”
We were at a campground, on a family vacation. I had been taking too long in the shower, according to her, and she’d come to get me so that we could go do whatever excursion she’d scheduled for that day.
The topic of my body had no place in the conversation that I can recall. But, still, there it was. (There it always is, really.) I vaguely remember her commenting on my food choices from the previous evening, but 24 years later I’ve no idea what I ate that night or how much.
What I remember very clearly is my mother telling 12-year-old me I was fat.
That one sentence confirmed all of the fundamental fears I had about myself.
I was fat. Fat was bad. Therefore, I was bad.
Ugly. Undesirable.
Unlovable.
Watch: How you can improve your daughter’s body image. Post continues after video.
Top Comments
I totally understand you and applaud your decision to parent your daughters differently. I am 33 and obese. I admit it- I am what I am. I can recall being told when I was younger by my grandmother (and my mother at times although less often) “you are such a pretty girl but you would be so much prettier if you were thinner” and I would try to starve myself, I would eat bad things and then feel the overwhelming sense of guilt and that I was stupid for not being able to control myself, I would desperately make myself ill. But then I would get so hungry I would have to eat and I would feel like a failure. I think for me that has damaged my self image and was for many years an eating disorder. I still feel guilt after eating something bad but I don’t (and can’t) starve myself or make myself sick. I hate my body, I try to love it and I fail. I just can’t love something that makes me feel repulsed (and repulses others). The words weren’t meant to be hurtful, I know the intention was out of care and love but the same grandmother that said those words also bought me lollies and chips every other week (I don’t blame her for eating them! That’s on me- it’s not her fault I’m fat but she did contribute). Yes I lacked control as most teenagers do but they were conflicting words and actions. I am now about to undergo weight loss surgery and re learn to eat- I’m petrified but I’m also excited. It’s not about being a pretty girl but a healthy one but the words still haunt me all these years later. I have been body shamed more than I can count and when it comes from home, that’s the deepest scar of all.
I was always thin, up until my mid forties, when I was diagnosed with a mental illness and put on medications, which caused me to gain weight. As a teenager, I became anorexic and obsessed with being as thin as possible. I believe the main cause was my dad, who was a vicious and nasty individual. My mum and one of my sisters were a little overweight. Another of my sisters, just a child, was not overweight; she was just a tiny bit chubby. My dad was forever yelling at my mum and these two sisters, that they were fat pigs who sat on their lazy, fat bums all day. This gave me the message that it was bad to be "fat" and that it made a person worthless. So I ate as little as possible and weighed myself daily. At one point, I got down to 45 kilos. People would tell me I was too thin and needed to eat more. I just couldn't. Besides, then, just the same as now, overweight people were fat shamed and laughed at. It's all still exactly the same today. A person's size and shape should not be an indicator of their value as a person. And both "large" and "little" people do not need other people to tell them what they need to do and to eat in order to gain better health. Chances are, most people already pretty much know what they need to do and to eat in order to have better health.