First of all, it’s wonderful to read such supportive discussion about the multitude of issues around weight! We can thank Jenny for that. So many topics have come up, and I want to put in my two cents on the ones that resonated for me.
1. Re: the lasting negative residue of comments about fat from mothers. It took me thirty years to extricate from my mind my mother’s obsession with my weight. She learned to shut up about it when I became an independent adult, but I can tell she still watches my intake at holiday dinners, for example, even though I am 43 and a mother of two. It’s a habit that she is unable and unwilling to break. I had to forcibly break her fixation’s hold on me by confronting her about it, which I did as part of the process of dealing with my body image issues for Thin Is the New Happy. In confronting Mom, I realized a few important things.
(1) I couldn’t have done it until I’d reached my current level of maturity. Her obsession with my weight started when I was eleven. When my older daughter reached that age, I realized how young and vulnerable I was when the harassment began. I was simply unable to defend myself emotionally until I’d been tested and humbled by life. I gained perspective, and strength, and I could face her only now. You have to be ready to do it.
(2) Mom made her obsession my problem, which was unfair and wrong. I couldn’t change her attitude (nor is she inclined to do it herself). Nor could I completely forgive her. But I could pity her for her limitations. That sounds harsh, but it worked. By seeing her as pathetic (in her fatphobia), I regained a lot of my own power.
(3) At the end of the day, my body image is my responsibility. Mom got her claws in pretty deep, but it was up to me to pry them out. If I didn’t, no one else would. The way to do that, unfortunately, was to replay the ugly memories, write them down, purge them from the mind, and to tell others about them. My husband, even after four years of marriage, didn’t know what my mother had done. I was ashamed to tell him. Until I did, and then I felt better.
2. Re: being upset about the number on the scale. One woman commented that she felt fine about her body, until she weighed herself. As part of my body image project, I got rid of my scale. Scales are hateful and destructive. The number means nothing. We all have different bodies. Two women of the same height and weight could look completely different depending on their frame, muscle mass, genetic body shape. I have size ten feet, man hands and very thick wrists. I am, yes, BIG BONED. A small framed woman would look HUGE at my weight, whatever it is, I have no bloody idea. The numbers on dresses and pants also messes with the head. As my friend Stacy London of What Not to Wear told me when she cleaned out my closet, “forget about size.” Use it only as a baseline for shopping. A size 10 dress at one place is a 6 at another. The number is meaningless—unless you use it to define your self-worth. The only number worth paying attention to is the total of negative body image thoughts we have each day. I recommend buying a clicker at a sports supply store, and counting each time you have a self-critical thought about your weight, size, shape in a day. When I did this, I have over 200! A negative through every 3.5 minutes! Once I had a tally, I worked to redirect my thoughts, and lower my number. The affect on my mindset was pretty dramatic. After a few weeks, my outlook got brighter, lighter-yet-deeper. I became less obsessive and self-absorbed, and therefore a nicer person, better mother, wife and friend.
3. Re: not complaining about your weight in front of your daughters. This was my motivation for writing Thin Is the New Happy. I wanted to be a better role model about comfort in my skin for my two daughters. Study after study proves that mothers who diet teach their kids that self-loathing is an acceptable way of life. Some of you said you were careful around your kids, but the girls still thought of themselves as fat. Well, it takes a lot of hammering to drive home the point. I tell my daughters EVERY DAY, several times a day, that they are beautiful and that fitness is next to happiness. We take long walks every weekend, often over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan to have adventures at the South Street Seaport or Chinatown. They understand that dim sum means a walk over the bridge first. Culture, peer pressure and the media will try, but they won’t undo the repeated messages parents give their kids. As we all know, our mothers voices are deep inside our heads. We can install positive attitudes in our kids’ heads, too, through repetition and consistent role modeling over the course of years.
4. Re: the negative voice that says “you’re fat,” even when you’re not. One woman talked about how she saw photos of herself during a time she thought she was fat, but now realizes she was thin then. I am often shocked when looking at old pictures, especially of my teen years when I was harassed by my mom, and then tormented by sadistic boys in junior high about being fat, only to see that I just wasn’t that heavy. It’s heartbreaking, how much time I wasted believing I was fat, when I wasn’t. To address this problem, I recommend doing what I did in Thin Is the New Happy—posing nude for a professional photographer. Seeing my body through the artist’s eye helped me expand my definition of beauty. After all, so many artists see beauty in voluptuous women. Why shouldn’t I see that beauty in myself, as an object of art? Well, I did. And now I have gorgeous photos of myself—nekkid—to use as rebuttal evidence whenever my mind slips and I think “you’re fat.”
5. Re: weight is a convenient distraction from life’s real problems. This revelation was a real eye-opener for me. To the woman who said her life was stable, but she still obsessed about weight, you might not be using weight as a distraction from problems. But, as another woman commented, you are thinking about weight instead of writing a novel or running a marathon, or whatever. A weight obsession, if it’s not a distraction, is a way to fill a void. I’d say, fill it with something else, something positive. “Your life’s work” was the wonderful phrase someone used. I totally agree.
6. Re: how to get rid of the “mother message.” See above. I think you have to have a confrontation with mommy dearest, honestly. Even if your mother is dead (sorry to be blunt), you can still have the confrontation as you imagine it would have been. The resolution is irrelevant. It’s important to state your case, to express yourself, even if you’re talking to a brick wall (which is my mother’s middle name).
7. Re: appearance-related first impressions and society’s unfair judgment over overweight people. My book is about the biased impressions we have of ourselves, the internal judgments we make of ourselves. We are our own unfair discriminators, our own critical observers. It’s entirely possible to be an average weight, and just as hard on yourself about your size as cruel people are to the obese. Body image is a personal problem, spurred on by societal standards, true. But at the end of the day, it’s all about you and how you feel about yourself, not what strangers might think.
8. Re: magazines. Since I earn a healthy percentage of my income writing for magazines, I have to defend them. Or, at least one. Self magazine, every month, serves up a positive, healthy and inspiring editorial message. Self published my nude photos, BTW, and that goes a long way to proving it is not presenting only super slim women on their pages. I’ve written at least a dozen articles for Self in the last few years, and all of them were about taking charge of one’s emotional life, sex life and body image. The models in Self are young, but not skinny. The how-to’s are about fitness, wellness and happiness. Okay, plug for Self over.
Whew, that’s a long blog post. I’d be happy to discuss further. Thanks again, Jenny, for giving me/my book so much love! Right back at you.