This made me cry
DeeDel32
Posts: 542 Member
Please read this and share.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/8760102/When-your-mother-says-shes-fat
Here's the text of the article:
Dear Mum,
I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful - in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I'd pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I'd be big enough to wear it; when I'd be like you.
But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ''Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly and horrible.''
At first I didn't understand what you meant.
''You're not fat,'' I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ''Yes I am, darling. I've always been fat; even as a child.''
In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:
1. You must be fat because mothers don't lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I'll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.
Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself.
With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ''Oh-I-really-shouldn't'', I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty.
Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.
But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves.
Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at 79 years of age. She used to put on make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face.
I remember her ''compassionate'' response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ''I don't understand why he'd leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You're overweight - but not that much.''
Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.
''Jesus, Jan,'' I overheard him say to you. ''It's not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.''
That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad's ''Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less'' weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else's food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate.
As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth - as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own - paled into insignificance when compared with the centimetres you couldn't lose from your waist.
It broke my heart to witness your despair and I'm sorry that I didn't rush to your defence. I'd already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I'd even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ''simple'' process - yet one that you still couldn't come to grips with. The lesson: you didn't deserve any food and you certainly didn't deserve any sympathy.
But I was wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it's like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is crueller to us than we are to ourselves.
But this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and it stops now. We deserve better - better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.
And it's not just about you and me any more. It's also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only 3 and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential. I don't want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves.
The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends - and the people who love them - wouldn't give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body's thighs or the lines on its face wouldn't matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.
Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ''flaws'' is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back.
Let us honour and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.
Love, Kasey xx
This is an excerpt from Dear Mum, a collection of letters from Australian sporting stars, musicians, models, cooks and authors revealing what they would like to say to their mothers before it's too late, or would have said if only they'd had the chance.
All royalties go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Published by Random House and available now.
- Daily Life
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/8760102/When-your-mother-says-shes-fat
Here's the text of the article:
Dear Mum,
I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful - in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I'd pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I'd be big enough to wear it; when I'd be like you.
But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ''Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly and horrible.''
At first I didn't understand what you meant.
''You're not fat,'' I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ''Yes I am, darling. I've always been fat; even as a child.''
In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:
1. You must be fat because mothers don't lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I'll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.
Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself.
With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ''Oh-I-really-shouldn't'', I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty.
Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.
But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves.
Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at 79 years of age. She used to put on make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face.
I remember her ''compassionate'' response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ''I don't understand why he'd leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You're overweight - but not that much.''
Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.
''Jesus, Jan,'' I overheard him say to you. ''It's not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.''
That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad's ''Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less'' weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else's food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate.
As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth - as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own - paled into insignificance when compared with the centimetres you couldn't lose from your waist.
It broke my heart to witness your despair and I'm sorry that I didn't rush to your defence. I'd already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I'd even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ''simple'' process - yet one that you still couldn't come to grips with. The lesson: you didn't deserve any food and you certainly didn't deserve any sympathy.
But I was wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it's like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is crueller to us than we are to ourselves.
But this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and it stops now. We deserve better - better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.
And it's not just about you and me any more. It's also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only 3 and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential. I don't want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves.
The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends - and the people who love them - wouldn't give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body's thighs or the lines on its face wouldn't matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.
Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ''flaws'' is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back.
Let us honour and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.
Love, Kasey xx
This is an excerpt from Dear Mum, a collection of letters from Australian sporting stars, musicians, models, cooks and authors revealing what they would like to say to their mothers before it's too late, or would have said if only they'd had the chance.
All royalties go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Published by Random House and available now.
- Daily Life
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Replies
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Beautiful! Thank you for posting this.0
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bump0
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WOW! How emotionally moving is that, an eye opener too. Thanks for sharing that! X0
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BUMP! Because every woman in the world needs to know that she's beautiful.0
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Love this! I'm saving this as a reminder when I have my kids! xx0
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A good dose of reality and perspective!0
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Thank you for sharing.0 -
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bump0
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wow that is an awsome article0
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Yeah, this is pretty amazing. :flowerforyou:0
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Shared on Facebook in hopes my mom and sisters will read it. It used to upset me no end when my mom said she was fat.0
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Love this! I'm saving this as a reminder when I have my kids! xx
Why wait until then? Any child in your life would benefit from this now.0 -
Amazing reminder of how our children see us and the imprint we leave upon them.
Thank you for sharing.0 -
Shared on Facebook in hopes my mom and sisters will read it. It used to upset me no end when my mom said she was fat.
Having been told I was fat all the time growing up, I will never, ever tell my children (when/if I have any) they're fat.0 -
Thank you for sharing this. Such a moving article and it's nice to have a reminder that as parents, we are looked up to in many ways we forget about!0
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So glad you posted this. Pretty much sums up what I went through as a child. Every single day I've had to listen to my mum tell everyone how fat and ugly she is. She's obsessively tried diets, kept records of her weight and everything just makes her hate herself a little bit more. Even now she goes on about how jealous she is of my weight loss and constantly asks if I'm ill because I lost weight whilst still eating a lot. She got it from her mother who is now 93 and almost skeletal yet goes on about how fat she is and how thin everyone else is. My brother ended up with quite a serious disorder and I've struggled with my weight all my life. I copied my mum's behaviour and started to hate myself and think I was fat - until, guess what, it became a self fulfilling prophesy and I got fat.
I don't want to place the blame on my mum because she went through exactly the same thing with her mum. But I think it is so important to sort out your own issues with food before passing them onto your children because it is so destructive. Easier said than done of course! But I will do everything I can to sort out my own issues before having my own children one day.0 -
thanks for posting- powerful stuff 0
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So glad you posted this. Pretty much sums up what I went through as a child. Every single day I've had to listen to my mum tell everyone how fat and ugly she is. She's obsessively tried diets, kept records of her weight and everything just makes her hate herself a little bit more. Even now she goes on about how jealous she is of my weight loss and constantly asks if I'm ill because I lost weight whilst still eating a lot. She got it from her mother who is now 93 and almost skeletal yet goes on about how fat she is and how thin everyone else is. My brother ended up with quite a serious disorder and I've struggled with my weight all my life. I copied my mum's behaviour and started to hate myself and think I was fat - until, guess what, it became a self fulfilling prophesy and I got fat.
I don't want to place the blame on my mum because she went through exactly the same thing with her mum. But I think it is so important to sort out your own issues with food before passing them onto your children because it is so destructive. Easier said than done of course! But I will do everything I can to sort out my own issues before having my own children one day.
I'm not sure we'll ever sort out our own issues, but recognizing them and making the conscious effort to know impact our kids is something we should strive for.0 -
This is absolutely amazing.0
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Thanks for sharing. So sad how true it is
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Bump...great post. Sometimes its easy to forget...0
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Best thing ever0
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You must be a fellow kiwi deedel32, I read this on stuff too the other day.
Very true isn't it? I grew up with a mum who didn't like her body much. It is not something I want to pass onto my daughters.0 -
Beautiful words, thank you for sharing.0
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This is true for all sized girls and all kinds of body wounded mothers (even if the mom weighs 90 pounds).0
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Yes, that's very true. My mother never had a weight problem. She still is complemented when she goes out. She is beautiful. She is always made up, hair is always in place, clothes are always pressed to perfection. When i was a child I, too, was ALWAYS dressed perfect, hair perfect, clothes ironed,starched,pressed to perfection, no hair out of place EVER. My food was watched like a hawk. Halloween came - we could Trick or Treat down one street. Then the next morning, our candy would be gone. She was NOT going to have a fat child.This is true for all sized girls and all kinds of body wounded mothers (even if the mom weighs 90 pounds).
I soon became a closet eater. When I went away to college I came home 40 pounds heavier in one year. I didn't know how to handle the freedom. She immediately signed me up for a gym and drove me there every day. I lost the weight. But in the interim she treated me as if I had the plague - she was DISGUSTED! When I was back down to my 115 she could accept me.
I am 51 and nothing has changed. She is still disgusted by my size! I am still criticized. My weight has been an embarrassment to her. She is always telling me how I should be eating . . . Why don't I get more exercise? What is wrong with me? What are my problems?
I have 3 daughters. I am happy to say, my "abuse" stopped with me. All 3 are healthy, and have always had a beautiful relationship with their bodies. They are aware of my problems. I have been very open with them, explaining that I was determined to parent my children to grow up loving themselves no matter what their size. That is so UNIMPORTANT in the large scheme of things as long as they are HEALTHY AND HAPPY!
Unfortunately my little sister ended up bulimic. Of course it wasn't our mother's fault. She refused to go to family therapy. Therapists are quacks in my parents' books. Fortunately, later in life, my sister did get a therapist that specialized in EDs and she is very healthy now, majored in nutrition in college. So I am happy to say, we STOPPED the madness. Yes, I am scarred, yes, it still hurts, it hurts to the very core.
This afternoon she saw me on the computer, and asked me what i was doing. I told her I was chatting with some of the friends I had made on MFP. She rolled her eyes, turned and walked away....but that was ok, because the I stopped the madness!0 -
So sweet. Love this.0
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This is heartbreaking...0
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Beautiful.0
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