Me: When I came home from my first semester of college having gained the classic fifteen pounds, my mother exclaimed, “No dessert for you!”
R: When I was going through a horrendous divorce, my mother said, “It’s a good thing you’ve lost weight. Imagine being overweight in your position.”
J: My mother didn’t say much. She just put in me on diet pills when I was ten.
Is it any wonder that all three of us are totally screwed up about weight and body image? (For the record: None of us were overweight. None of our mothers were overweight. No health issues here.) And is it any wonder that all three of us, now mothers of daughters ourselves, are doing everything we can not to pass along this particular heritage?
I have made little headway in curtailing my mother, though. She is in all other ways a loving, proud grandmother. But she firmly believes that my entire generation (that means all of you reading this) is far too sensitive, if not downright silly. PC? No, thank you. When I asked her to please refrain from commenting on the size of a stranger’s bottom in front of my 15-year-old daughter, she looked at me as if I was delusional. “Don’t you think she notices if people are fat?” she countered. (We’ve had this discussion before. Exhibit A: At my daughter’s eleventh birthday party when all the girls were lined up on the couch for a photo, she observed quite loudly: “It’s so nice they’re all so thin.” When I pointed out that they were pre-pubescent she just shrugged.)
Right now, my daughter and I go home and laugh about it all. Somehow she has a healthy body image and truly isn’t obsessed with weight. I hope it stays that way. Now if only I could get the voices out my head.
