I remember peering around the doorway to watch as my mother turned this way and that, examining her slender body in a full length mirror. After shaking her head and grabbing the skin around her stomach, she would move off to the closet and reappear with the statement “I feel so fat today”.
She never aimed those words at me, but something inside me understood that our bodies were not to be trusted. They were definitely not a source of happiness…she was right about everything else in life, so this too must be true.
Instead of hearing what was under those words, something deeper and more emotional, as a child I took them at face value.
Overtime what I begin to believe was:
- It’s normal to dislike your body
- Your body is a measure of your success
- The scale can dictate your happiness
- It’s hard to have a body that you love
As a teenager, I adopted her language repeatedly saying “I feel fat” and spending far too many hours grabbing my stomach and critiquing my body. Though fat is not a feeling, I certainly felt something deep inside each time I looked at my body that was definitely NOT appreciation.
I was taller and least 30lbs heavier than my mother, so her words were interpreted in my hormonal mind to mean if she was fat I most certainly needed to lose weight to ever be happy.
Maybe it would have been different if she were actually overweight, but I doubt it. These weren’t discussions we had, they were observations through the eyes of a child without exposure to other female figures like a sister or aunts.
80% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat and girls’ self esteem drops at age 12 and doesn’t improve until 20.
In the end it was my mother who saved me from a life of fat talk. As I watched her age and women around her constantly remark they wish they had a body like hers, while she shrugged off their complements I realized that wasn’t the life I wanted. I didn’t want to be sad each time I stepped on the scale and I didn’t want to have these negative conversations with myself. She often told me if I didn’t like something to change it…so I did.
One day during my weight loss journey, I stumbled upon running. It sucked. I was awful. But there was a pride in doing it that I’d never felt before which began to change everything. It certainly helped me to lose weight, but it also gave me a whole new sense of my body. I wanted to treat it well. I wanted to be proud of it, heck I was proud of it after all those miles, which were not and are not easy for me!
I learned a lot of other things from my mother like how to chat with random strangers in the checkout line, being early to every appointment {it’s rude to be late!}, being organized and always striving to do my best. This just happens to be one lesson we both wish I’d never learned.
My mother is still someone I greatly respect, so I share this story largely to help others understand that little ears and eyes are watching to see how you treat your body. They are taking cues from you, so take care with how you treat yourself if you wouldn’t want your child to be treated that way too.
Share this story to help #FightFatTalk so more young women can grow up with better body images.
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