I am so sorry to read what your mom put you through, the examinations, the food control. Ugh. As a fat woman, I often wonder if thin people think about the experience of being fat at all. At least, those who come by it naturally and haven’t known anything else. It’s nice to know you have done this level of introspection and are working on those biases.
Thank you Toni! I appreciate your comment and it’s tbh my job as a person to think about these things, I think. And that’s okay- almost all of us have some trauma from our moms, right? 😉
Chiming in as another thin person to share that I do think about it, in huge part to the self-advocacy of fat people I know (or see online) who have shared their experiences with me and pointed out things like the way medical providers treat them, airplane seat limitations, clothing sizing, etc. People sharing their experiences (and often, their pain, which I'm so sad they have to) has given me a lot to think about and reflect on.
Thanks for sharing this. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a home where weight or people's sizes was never discussed. I grew up in the same era. I was always thin, my mother was not. Regardless, food was neutral. There wasn't good or bad-sometimes we had McDonald's. I ate pb and marshmallow sandwiches almost every day in high school. We had homemade dinner most nights. I remember getting to college and my roommate was very overweight. I would often get comments from men basically asking why I wasn't embarrassed to hang out with her. I was shocked.
My weight fluctuated throughout my 20s and 30s-illness, changing hormones, etc. I then went through the self hatred for years. And now? I would give anything just to be healthy. I was looking back at my planner from last year and all the exercise goals I have and I just want to slap myself and say be grateful for being healthy. Now I have a chronic illness that makes it hard to do much.
Existing in bodies society doesn't deem acceptable is rough. I mean I got teased for being skinny and to this day it still sticks with me so I can only imagine how it is for people with bigger bodies. People are cruel.
I was a full grown adult in my 30s before I realized that my mother struggled with a lifelong eating disorder, and that she subtly passed on those habits to her daughters. I firmly believe that these disorders are a form of generational trauma.
Like your mom, my mom was the 'fat' daughter of a very svelte elegant woman. My grandmother was our matriarch: petite, always put together, perfectly coiffed and rouged. She had three daughters, my mom being the eldest. Mom was what in the 1950s you'd consider 'pudgy' but otherwise perfectly normal. My aunts were all slim. My mom married and had 3 babies in the span of a few short years. The first baby only lived 3 days due to being premature. I was the 2nd. The pregnancies and baby loss exacerbated a latent eating disorder (which was probably just 'normal' eating for your typical female in the 1960s) that lasted until the day she died. I found out years later that when I was a toddler, she had to be hospitalized for a diet pill addiction (I imagine what kind of garbage she was taking back then in the early 70s, it was probably straight-up speed). In my teens, she tried every fad diet you could imagine. She would exercise for hours.
At the same time, she would cook amazing meals. Food and eating was an elaborate ritual in our family (we're Latin American/Italian so you can imagine), and socializing in our culture centers around lingering for hours around the table. Food is love. Every bad emotion was cured with food. I was the oldest of her three daughters and essentially a clone of her, physically. My 2 younger sisters were thin and athletic like my dad, I was always the one whose body she subtly policed. Praise for looking thin, passive-aggressive compliments-disguised-in-criticism if I looked chubby.
When she died 12 years ago, I remember cleaning out her house and throwing out boxes of uneaten NutriSystem and Weight Watchers meals. To the very end she was stubbornly denying herself pleasure in one form or another. So many shitty diet books by every shady diet doctor. Understandably, my grief went into food and I gained 50lbs in the decade after her death, I had permission because she was gone. Then other life events added another 20. It wasn't until the last few years that I started to realize the impact that she (and my grandmother's legacy) had on my relationship with food. Impact that I will also carry to the end of my life. Thank goodness I have no children to pass it onto. Neither do my sisters. Hmm.
I am 53 now and last year I broke down and finally had weight loss surgery. I am still struggling with the idea that I carry on my mother's disordered eating habits. I am so much more aware how, like you say, society treats big women. I'm at a weight now that I haven't been in 25+ years and it's such a mind-fuck. I can buy stuff from the cute boutiques where I used to be humiliated by the employees told that they don't carry my size. And now all the older aunties in my family are noticing my weight loss and praising me to the heavens saying how beautiful I look, asking me how much I've lost. I never told them about my surgery, because that would be another set of interrogations that I'm no longer willing to entertain. I've grown that much at least. And still, I see them subtly eyeing every bite I put in my mouth during those long family dinners.
It's exhausting how we internalize SO much fatphobia, it damages every single one of us whether we live in a small or large body. I struggle with this weird guilt that instead of fighting against diet culture, I gave in to it. My loss was as much for my long-term health as it was for vanity. I want to live to be 100, not die early like my mom. I have stuff I still want to do. I also want to wear cute clothes, nothing wrong with that.
Maybe being aware of the damages of diet culture, what it did to our mothers and grandmothers, will help this current generation to not pass it to their daughters. I certainly hope so.
I am so sorry to read what your mom put you through, the examinations, the food control. Ugh. As a fat woman, I often wonder if thin people think about the experience of being fat at all. At least, those who come by it naturally and haven’t known anything else. It’s nice to know you have done this level of introspection and are working on those biases.
Thank you Toni! I appreciate your comment and it’s tbh my job as a person to think about these things, I think. And that’s okay- almost all of us have some trauma from our moms, right? 😉
Chiming in as another thin person to share that I do think about it, in huge part to the self-advocacy of fat people I know (or see online) who have shared their experiences with me and pointed out things like the way medical providers treat them, airplane seat limitations, clothing sizing, etc. People sharing their experiences (and often, their pain, which I'm so sad they have to) has given me a lot to think about and reflect on.
Thanks for sharing this. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a home where weight or people's sizes was never discussed. I grew up in the same era. I was always thin, my mother was not. Regardless, food was neutral. There wasn't good or bad-sometimes we had McDonald's. I ate pb and marshmallow sandwiches almost every day in high school. We had homemade dinner most nights. I remember getting to college and my roommate was very overweight. I would often get comments from men basically asking why I wasn't embarrassed to hang out with her. I was shocked.
My weight fluctuated throughout my 20s and 30s-illness, changing hormones, etc. I then went through the self hatred for years. And now? I would give anything just to be healthy. I was looking back at my planner from last year and all the exercise goals I have and I just want to slap myself and say be grateful for being healthy. Now I have a chronic illness that makes it hard to do much.
Existing in bodies society doesn't deem acceptable is rough. I mean I got teased for being skinny and to this day it still sticks with me so I can only imagine how it is for people with bigger bodies. People are cruel.
I was a full grown adult in my 30s before I realized that my mother struggled with a lifelong eating disorder, and that she subtly passed on those habits to her daughters. I firmly believe that these disorders are a form of generational trauma.
Like your mom, my mom was the 'fat' daughter of a very svelte elegant woman. My grandmother was our matriarch: petite, always put together, perfectly coiffed and rouged. She had three daughters, my mom being the eldest. Mom was what in the 1950s you'd consider 'pudgy' but otherwise perfectly normal. My aunts were all slim. My mom married and had 3 babies in the span of a few short years. The first baby only lived 3 days due to being premature. I was the 2nd. The pregnancies and baby loss exacerbated a latent eating disorder (which was probably just 'normal' eating for your typical female in the 1960s) that lasted until the day she died. I found out years later that when I was a toddler, she had to be hospitalized for a diet pill addiction (I imagine what kind of garbage she was taking back then in the early 70s, it was probably straight-up speed). In my teens, she tried every fad diet you could imagine. She would exercise for hours.
At the same time, she would cook amazing meals. Food and eating was an elaborate ritual in our family (we're Latin American/Italian so you can imagine), and socializing in our culture centers around lingering for hours around the table. Food is love. Every bad emotion was cured with food. I was the oldest of her three daughters and essentially a clone of her, physically. My 2 younger sisters were thin and athletic like my dad, I was always the one whose body she subtly policed. Praise for looking thin, passive-aggressive compliments-disguised-in-criticism if I looked chubby.
When she died 12 years ago, I remember cleaning out her house and throwing out boxes of uneaten NutriSystem and Weight Watchers meals. To the very end she was stubbornly denying herself pleasure in one form or another. So many shitty diet books by every shady diet doctor. Understandably, my grief went into food and I gained 50lbs in the decade after her death, I had permission because she was gone. Then other life events added another 20. It wasn't until the last few years that I started to realize the impact that she (and my grandmother's legacy) had on my relationship with food. Impact that I will also carry to the end of my life. Thank goodness I have no children to pass it onto. Neither do my sisters. Hmm.
I am 53 now and last year I broke down and finally had weight loss surgery. I am still struggling with the idea that I carry on my mother's disordered eating habits. I am so much more aware how, like you say, society treats big women. I'm at a weight now that I haven't been in 25+ years and it's such a mind-fuck. I can buy stuff from the cute boutiques where I used to be humiliated by the employees told that they don't carry my size. And now all the older aunties in my family are noticing my weight loss and praising me to the heavens saying how beautiful I look, asking me how much I've lost. I never told them about my surgery, because that would be another set of interrogations that I'm no longer willing to entertain. I've grown that much at least. And still, I see them subtly eyeing every bite I put in my mouth during those long family dinners.
It's exhausting how we internalize SO much fatphobia, it damages every single one of us whether we live in a small or large body. I struggle with this weird guilt that instead of fighting against diet culture, I gave in to it. My loss was as much for my long-term health as it was for vanity. I want to live to be 100, not die early like my mom. I have stuff I still want to do. I also want to wear cute clothes, nothing wrong with that.
Maybe being aware of the damages of diet culture, what it did to our mothers and grandmothers, will help this current generation to not pass it to their daughters. I certainly hope so.