Here are some memories from my growing up years in relation to beauty and body image:
1) I was very young, maybe 6, and eating some peanut butter crackers (the little packaged kind), and my mom tried to stop me from eating them but I ignored it because I was hungry, and they tasted good so why not. My mom, becoming irritated, said, "If you want to be fat, keep eating them." I remember it froze me. I could tell she was threatening me with some ominous mother wisdom, and it scared me. I put down the crackers.
2) I was a little older (still a child), and my mom and I were in her bedroom talking about how we were too fat and how flawed each of our body parts looked. My brother, Dave, was sitting there too, bored and unable to change the conversation. He left, and when we came out I saw he had put a sign on the door that said, "Women complaining about their bodies. Enter at your own risk." Ha! I always appreciated his snark. I think it also points out how the boy in the family was not as concerned about his body and was not made to feel as concerned.
3) Some of the more disturbing memories: I was in junior high, and my dad took me out and bought me an expensive sexy dress that he told me not to tell my mom about. He said, "My buying this for you is a promise from you that you will make sure that you always stay a size 3." I stayed silent because it was all so weird, and it was clear a response was not wanted, that a strange directive was being issued. What a horrible thing he did! It stayed with me.
4) I remember my mom and I dressed up going out for dinner with my dad and my brother when I was in high school. My mom and I appeared at the same time in our dresses, and my dad looked only at me telling me how beautiful and thin I looked. My mom said sadly, like a small child, "What about me?" He just ignored it, as if she hadn't spoken. That panicky feeling that I always felt in my home growing up came on full force.
5) When I was high school age, my mom approached me on a weekend and told me angrily that one of her friends, H., saw me at the shopping center and could tell I wasn't wearing a bra. Oh, that burned me (bra burning pun intended). This same friend of my mom's at one point, when I was about 8 years old, saw me eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and let me know that I should never ever eat peanut butter because it is too high in fat. What is it with everyone torturing me about my love for peanut butter before I was even ten-years-old!
6) Teen years: My father always telling me I look like a slut; a night on the street a drunk man yelling out that I looked like a whore and my father yelling back that he agreed instead of protecting me. This instead became a funny story in our family.
7) In college I was borderline anorexic. I loved the care in my mother's voice when she'd say, "I'm worried about you. You're too thin." My father would yell at her for saying that, stating instead that I could never be too thin.
8) Then there was my mid-twenties when I moved to NYC, when my father left my mother for another woman and I was in the middle of an ugly divorce battle, when I suffered a brutal sexual assault, when I joined FLAB (Fat Lesbian Action Brigade), all while at the same time focusing on completing my master's degree and working as a social worker. That's when I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, as much comfort food as I wanted, and became fat. My family backed away in shock, horrified. It was kind of satisfying. Since then I've gone up and down over the years and can't stand when people comment about it. I always feel, "My body, my business!"
9) For awhile all my mom could talk to me about was how fat I was and how awful that was. Finally, I confronted her about it in a real way, about feeling like all that mattered to her was my "flawed" body and not me. Our relationship had improved tons since she and my dad were no longer together, and she was able to hear it. To show me she heard me, she mailed me a very caring letter with a necklace with my birthstone. She wrote (paraphrasing), "This necklace is a symbol of a new beginning of accepting you as you are." Does she stick to that entirely? No, things are too ingrained, but the necklace and the care behind it means the world to me.
Nice to end on a positive note
