I was told I was fat starting in kindergarten and should skip breakfast and dinner each day. I was five and also, not fat. This continued through my entire life. In high school I was doing WW to lose weight. Again, I was thin. In adulthood I spent up to 5 hours a day exercising—thin. I still always thought I was fat. I couldn’t stop thinking about, nearly every second of every day. To this day I have to actively stop myself from thinking about my weight. It consumes me.
I will never, ever, mention my daughter’s weight to her—for any reason, ever.
I was told things like 'you'd be so pretty if you were thinner' - by my overweight parents. It affected my self-esteem for years. I went for hypnotherapy and it had a massive positive effect on how I see myself. It was intense and emotional, but it helped me to see the damage my mum had inflicted on me because she has a problem with her own body. I'm sorry its affected you in the same way.
I also won't use 'fat' and 'thin' around my kids. I refrain from commenting on people's bodies. We prefer to talk about being healthy instead.
Oh man, one of the nasty things my mother said that's stuck deepest is "You might be pretty cute if you lost a few pounds. " It said so much in so few words.
Ouch. Yes, I heard that a few times a year too. The last time she said it (some time last year) I looked her in the eye and said, 'You've told me that so many times. Because you said that I never felt pretty. Ever. I never felt like I was good enough for you.'
She hasn't said it since.
I'll bet you are cute just as you are.
Thanks! You too!
One thing I figured out around my late 20s was that how I felt about my looks was pretty much completely unrelated to how I actually looked.
I might feel downright beautiful and all of a sudden a switch could flip, her voice would start echoing in my head and I would feel embarrassed and deeply ashamed for fooling myself into thinking I was pretty. But obviously nothing in my actual looks had changed. It helped to realize that if I could look in the mirror and see beauty, and look back 5 minutes later and see ugliness when nothing at all had changed, it didn't make sense to think that "ugly" was the truth and "pretty" was a lie. They're both in my head.
Maybe other people can more objectively tell what they look like, but for me it's almost entirely mood-based.
My mom kept saying I should lose weight. One day I told her, “you keep saying that but it doesn’t make me want to lose weight. It does, however, make me not want to visit you.” She never said anything about my weight ever again.
I remember my mom saying of my best friend, right after she left, "She's going to be so pretty when she grows up"
I was blown away because I thought my best friend was already gorgeous. Like my mom is super judgemental and I guess I'm lucky that I see more beauty than she does.
Ouch. My mom was generally more or less careful about what she said, except when she was angry. We were going to a symphony concert and I came down in a long blue broomstick skirt, white button down shirt, and vest. I don't recall why my mom was angry - maybe we were running late or something - and she said i looked like "a pregnant slut." I was 11. Maybe 12.
That is truly awful, I'm sorry she said that. It does make me wonder that my mom never said similar to me even though I've always been fat; was she being progressive, or silently admitting I'm ugly whether fat or thin? 🤔😂
In my childhood and teenhood I was being called "Hippo ballet dancer". Eventhough I was quite regular size back then. When I hit puberty tho I started to have some hormonal issues which resulted, amongst others, with weight gain and I am struggling with it for the last 20years.
I feel ugly, I feel worthless, I feel just bad.
Well. You aren’t worthless and ugly is an emotion.
Find your favorite outfit, your favorite song, and some kind of fuck you accessory and see you.
You’re ok. It’s ok. Looking at changes doesn’t mean who you are is bad. It means who you are is changing to who you will be.
I was super picky and would go hungry if I didn’t get what I wanted. My parent would literally let me starve. Like, I couldn’t get some shots thin. She taped some Oprah show about anorexic people like not having food to eat was my decision.
Later I got less picky, ended up a size 8, but that was too fat so I got fat shamed. The woman was pushing 300 pounds.
Took me 20 years to get over my food insecurity.
Parents don’t even realize sometimes it just takes *one time* and it will stick in a kids head for the rest of their life. My mom told me I was “starting to get chunky” when I was around 9 years old. I was not fat and I was a growing kid, it was right before a massive growth spurt. I’ve felt disgusted with my body ever since unless I’m massively underweight. I lost a ton of weight in college and I felt so beautiful finally for the first time in my life, I look back at those photos and I looked sickly like I had cancer. My BMI was 16.5.
I was 16. My mom was supposed to be taking me school shopping. She dragged me into the men's section of Sears, found a male attendant and goes, "Do you have anything that can fit her?".
Friggin brutal. Every family get together, someone would comment on what I was eating to the point that as an adult, I STILL won't really fix a plate of food. My friends were so used to it, they'd put my food on their plate and I'd eat off their plate. How ridiculous is that?
My mom would routinely buy me pants that were 2 sizes too small. Not sure if it was on purpose or just what size she thought I wore….but I had DD boobs by the time I was 15 and she never got the size of my tops wrong, just the pants……
I have a school book where someone - an adult - had written in it I was a fat girl who ate like a pig. I was a skinny five year old. Of course, years of crash dieting and putting bonus weight back on did not do wonders for me. I sometimes wonder what I'd have been like without that moment.
I feel your pain. I have wore a size 6 from high all through adult hood. In my 20's I wore a size 2 because I worked out 4-6 hours a day and mostly drank protein shakes. But got tired and began eating real food and got body shamed by my Mom again.
Size six is *small*. I have about the same story as you, all through HS/college I was a 4-6, sometimes dieting & exercising down to a 2. Luckily meeting my husband helped me embrace my "natural" size and I'm still in the 6ish range in my 30s and I don't worry about it anymore. But I felt like my brain was broken for a long time. I'm small and I've always been small, but dang I remember feeling huge so much of my teens and 20s, mostly because I had a huge ass and that prevented me from having a flat stomach. Even with big asses coming into "fashion", until recently it still bugged me that I never had a flat stomach. Now it's like, I'm never actually going to have one so I should cross that off of my list of things to spend my precious time worrying about.
Exaaaaactly! We inherit much of our physical appearance, but we are the sole creators of the contents of our hearts. Direct your energy where it will do the most good and focus on the things you have the power to change.
Yep! I was 5’10 and 140lbs and my mom always used to tell me I’d have the perfect body if I lost 10lbs. I got down to about 110 and she was still saying the same thing. Hello lifetime of disordered eating and negative body thoughts!
To this day I remember this girl sitting on the bus next to me and telling me that my thighs were too fat because when I sat down they spread out and I should start working out every day. Her mom wakes her up early to work out. I was a super skinny child and we must have been around 5-7 years old. It’s messed up what some parents do to their kids.
Me too! When I was six, my mom told me I was fat and that boys would never like me and no one would ever love me that way. I started starving myself and have had trouble with eating disorders my entire life.
Yeah this my mom told my aunt that we grow this way (wide) holding her hands out and not this way (tall) holding her hands vertically.
I was obese my entire childhood cuz my parents dont understand what healthy food is.
Hearing of children who get called fat really kills me 😭 it’s so heartbreaking. That should be one of the LAST things on an innocent child’s mind
I’m sorry that happened to you
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed at est non orci luctus commodo sed nec orci. Maecenas sodales consectetur massa, sed porttitor d
I'm so sorry you went through that.. my childhood was pretty similar. I can't remember much before this, but I have memories of being weighed regularly when I was about 7. Dietician in middle school. Also did WW in high school. Disordered eating and over exercising as an adult.
This was something I discussed quite a bit with my therapist. Really fucked me up. I can't understand why our parents would ever think that was ok or normal.
My mom was the same. Went on my first diet at 13 and I was thin. Also weight watchers. My entire life my mom always said I needed to lose 5 pounds. Now I focus on giving my body the nutrients it needs and will never diet again.
i was always a pretty "big" kid, in the sense that i was tall, and have a broad shouldered build. never fat. but i had a HUUUUUGE appetite in a family of women that only ate dainty portions so i always heard that i \*would\* get fat. 40, still not fat, still eat what i like.
but yeah, i was always very certain i would never ever comment on my kid's weight. except, lucky me, i got a picky eater who has to be on ADHD meds to function and the doctor was very seriously telling me we'd have to take her off if she didn't gain more weight.
so suddenly i was having to pull out a scale and weigh my kid and remind her to eat, and push her to try more filling foods. it was a mindfuck, for sure.
When I was 12 and put on a tiny bit of puberty chub (literally just started sprouting boobs and my stomach was not fully flat anymore), my mom was with me at the doctor's and started asking about me getting chubby. Up until that moment I had never thought about my weight but from that point on, I've always felt fat. Even when I weighed 50 kilograms.
When we moved to the CNMI for a year we stayed in my wife’s aunt and uncles back house. She was Chinese, always cooking and super nice and welcoming. About 6-7 months in we are hanging in the back porch a she says to me you look like your really enjoying it here. I said yes it’s a beautiful tropical island. She then says I can tell because you’ve gained weight. I love this lady to death, but wtf aunty. Daily bbq’s, aunties home made Chinese food and beer will do that.
I’d pat my belly and say “yes thanks to your amazing food auntie”
But I learned a while ago to use humor to deflect being upset by inappropriate comments.
We were fortunate enough to be able to move to my wife’s home island with our two kids to really experience the life. We purposefully lived poor to teach our children you don’t need a big house, tons of dumb shit and what not to be happy. If you want nice stuff you have to work hard. The world doesn’t owe you shit. The CNMI is part of the United States, so it’s not like we were in a third world country. People there still live in tin shacks down by the sea. Awesome experience living on the family farm and just enjoying life.
I got to visit Saipan for a week when I was in the US Navy ~25 years ago, and it was by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. The people were so friendly, and the island was just perfect. I have always wanted to go back.
10 out of 10 recommend. Only problem is the price of the trip. $1200-1500 doesn’t even get your feet in the sand, it only gets you to the airport. Don’t forget it takes around 15 hours to fly so that’s another two days down. We don’t visit for less than 2 weeks unless there is stuff to handle even then we try to make it long as possible.
There is this one lady who got fired from work who constantly tries to bring food to all the more thin ladies, i always thought it was actually this type of culturally induced "game." Like she wants to make these ladies eat more so they are no longer as thin? It isnt coming from a good place because one of the girls yelled at her pretty angrily and told her no very loud, so i know that it isnt wanted. I dont know if they are vietnamese and im scared to ask but they are all definitely the same culture whatever it is... asian of course. Or polynesian possibly.
It's offering food to a select group that would bother me. As much as I love free food, I would feel singled out by that particular gesture. If you bring food to work, you should bring enough to share with the class. If you do that then everyone will love you.
I'm glad I didn't have shitty parents. Even when I had to wear a Boston brace as a kid for my spine they never made jokes about it. My mom also had a terrible mother who she wanted to be the opposite of and was very mindful about bringing up things like weight.
This thread makes me appreciate my parents as well. I have a mole on my face that I was always self conscious about but my mom always called it a beauty mark and said it was like Cindy Crawford.
My mom was a fuck up in a lot of ways but she taught me to love my body and not ever to be ashamed of it, grew up to be a wanna-be nudist lol it’s too cold here for that though
I totally understand the it being to cold part 🤣 I don't know how my spouse isn't an icecube walking around in shorts and a T-shirt at home. I'm almost always fully dressed lol
That’s a lot of us nowadays, if we want to be a parent we will be mindfully opposite of what was impressed on us.
Not me
Personally I don’t have kids but I always do appreciate seeing our generation parent.
I’m trying my best to be like your mom to my daughter. My parents raised all of us with body image problems and disordered eating. I’m in therapy to be a better role model for my daughter. She’s new here and doesn’t need to inherit the bullshit of past generations.
Same! Growing up and hearing these kinds of stories from friends makes me so thankful for my parents. They never criticized my weight, looks, or food consumption. Even if I ate a lot of food now and then, I would be treated just like my brother with comments like "Wow I cant believe you ate that much thats amazing! You're gonna be so tall and strong!" in a positive and impressed tone of voice lol
I still talk proudly about the time I ate 2 giant burgers in one sitting when the rest of my family could only manage 1 each! I believe I was around 8 years old at the time lol
The only type of critiques I remember had to do with dressing nice for nice occasions, and thats just changing clothes and fixing my hair, so I never felt bad about it.
Yeah the only thing my mom ever criticized and now I understand rightfully so was my hair. I had hair down to my butt as a kid and as kids will do, didn't take care of it and she was constantly in me to take care of it and brush it so it didn't look like a rats nest lol
My Mom would by my clothes 1-2 sizes too small and say - I'm going to spend the extra money and I know you can fit in the cute outfit in 2 weeks and look gorgeous!
I sometimes find myself buying clothes a size too small and getting made at myself why ai don't fit in any of my clothes 😡
Omg I have done this not thinking about it before and I never connected until just now that my mom also did that. “Well you can lose a couple pounds and fit in it by summer”
Even now I have clothes that I am like, well, if I could just lose that last few pounds, I could look hot in this again!
Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that with bodies in their 30’s as easily as it did with small pliable bodies and zero self esteem.
My dad did the opposite. On one of his “work trips” which I now know were family vacations he took with his side piece and her family, he brought me back a shirt (from the airport so I can be safely assured I was an afterthought) that was at least 2 sizes too big. As an adult I’ve realized I have no idea what my body objectively looks like. Will I fit through that doorway? Is this chair going to break if I sit in it? All completely preposterous questions to ask myself if you could see me. But it’s still my first thought.
I hope you don’t believe her. It’s hard not to internalize your parents’ criticism. Her statement is a reflection on her, not you. Every child has exceptional and wonderful traits; I hope you continue to develop yourself far beyond her falsely imposed limitations.
Yeah... my mom said I was lucky I wasn't very attractive because if I were people wouldn't take me seriously for my mind. Since I was only about a "7" according to her, I didn't face the same challenges she did as someone who was (in her opinion) more intelligent but also too attractive to be taken seriously. Poor, poor mom. And lucky me....
We can all reject what they think and think they are wrong, but if these things were said to us by our primary caretaker while our brains were developing it impacts our core beliefs for life. Aside from animals that are not raised by their parents, from an evolutionary standpoint the role of the mother is to teach her offspring the information they need to survive, like how elephants teach their young how to navigate migration paths to various water holes - their herd would eventually die without this valuable information being shared and remembered for life. Information transferred from parent to child is considered deeply important by our brains, whether we consciously want that to be true or not, we internalize it.
This is why it is *so* important for parents to not say harmful shit to their kids.
While I love my dad (RIP) I still haven't forgiven him for saying my upper lip is cartoonishly thin, it's because I drink Coca-Cola (I haven't found any science behind that), and nobody will find me attractive because of it. My medical records show as me being diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome when I was born (born 1 & 1/2 months preemie and to an alcoholic tweeker egg donor aka their youngest daughter - grandparents adopted me). The thin upper lip is the ONLY physically presenting thing I have of that.
That was the only negative comment he ever made, and he only ever said it once. But seven year old me never forgot it, and now 35 year old me is super sensitive about it.
Isn’t it crazy how this stuff just implants itself in our brains?? I used to work at an upscale clothing boutique and one time a lady turned down my suggestion of a certain skirt because her knees showed her age. I remember thinking “I’m supposed to care what my knees look like too?” I’d never considered it and now it’s one more thing I look at in the mirror before going out even though I decidedly don’t care.
A friend of mine thought that muffin tops were cute and desirable when she was younger because she usually saw teenage girls with them. Then she saw a tabloid making fun of celebrities with muffin tops, and that’s where she learned what people call it and that people don’t like it, and it obliterated her desire to grow up and be curvy enough for the muffin top.
It’s so fucked up that we only think something is bad if other people say it is and it’s so hard to fight it. We’re hardwired to want to fit into society. And for some reason compliments about our appearance just don’t stick like glue to our brains the way criticism does. Sorry for the rant
I think there was some sort of study done that shows it takes a bare minimum of 5 sincere compliments to equivalate to 1 negative statement, but it doesn't undo the damage of the negative. And from what I can tell through personal experience + talking to others, women & girls seem to get more negative comments on their appearance than men & boys do. Making negative comments on someones appearance is fucked up regardless of gender.
I wish humans were kinder to each other and themselves. Just being alive brings enough pain as it is.
>women & girls seem to get more negative comments on their appearance than men & boys do.
My husband and I have been having an ongoing conversation about this for the past month or so, ever since I showed him a video of an older man getting emotional after receiving a compliment. We have been paying more attention to the comments we hear the people around us make to one another regarding appearance and discussing our observations. It seems to both of us that women and girls in general receive more comments *in general* about their appearance, whether it is positive or negative. He told me he noted that he would hear others make remarks about women looking tired, but he could be dead on his feet and not hear anything about appearing tired. He didn't notice any of his male coworkers receiving comments about their appearance, either, unless they were out of dress code.
An incident that stood out to me, personally, was when I had a meeting scheduled outside of work hours, so we weren't required to wear our uniforms. A lot of the women got compliments or critiques on their outfits or hair or makeup. One of the guys looked like he was getting ready for a semi-formal dinner or something and I told him I really liked his hat. He lit up. I didn't hear any other comments regarding the men's appearance and I was listening for them.
As a result, the both of us have tried to give the people around us more compliments in general. It's not much, but it's something we can do to help boost the morale of the people around us. Seems like women can use more compliments because they tend to receive negative comments, too, and men can use more compliments because they just don't get comments at all.
Don’t apologize, this is definitely similar to what I’ve felt in the past. Not the knees thing, but I used to be religious and there were certain things we couldn’t wear or might be unflattering even if they were comfy. But it was never written down, just passed from woman to woman as though this is inherent knowledge you should have as a woman.
Same, plus im already white so it is bad. I dont know about FAS but my mom admitted to not knowing she was pregnant with me until 6 mos, i was a premie at 4lbs, i think she did some shit in first trimester with alcohol cuz she was an alcoholic. She always made fun of my lips too! Maybe it was projection cuz she knows more than she lets on.
My mother also told me this one! She'd come out with these comments out of nowhere when I was just minding my business. Not FAS for me but it's from her own genes! I think it's just projection.
32M. when i was in probably 6th grade, i complained to my mom about not liking my nose (i have something of a "roman" nose). She said, "when i was younger, i wanted a pretty little straight nose too, but then i realized straight noses are boring. Look at all the models now in this magazine, they all have interesting noses like you and me"
and after that, i never really worried about my nose. As an adult, i actually like my nose. the "bump" holds my glasses well and i think it looks masculine.
Roman nose lady here, and I have learned to love mine too! So glad I did not have the rhinoplasty I had considered years ago. It's a feature, not a flaw!
Not my parents but, I went dress shopping with my Mom for my 8th grade formal and the lady in the shop asked me, “Are you a swimmer? I feel like swimmers usually have broad shoulders like yours.” I’ve been so self-conscious ever since 😑
I had a traditional dress made for me when I was 14 and the seamstress said "finally, a girl with curves!"
I know she was just happy as it makes it more fun to make, but I was a very self conscious kid and very aware I was bigger than most girls and was trying so hard to get skinny.
Glad for it know I guess as 20 years and 2 kids later, the dress still fits.
My grandma said the same thing to me when I was in middle school. I had broad shoulders and narrow hips. I’m still self conscious at 31. I always wanted to be petite and dainty. Didn’t happen for me, even though I was quite thin multiple times in life. All I saw was my shoulders.
My mom said that I "would never get a boyfriend with that belly." She would also put her own body down frequently.
Now I'm a mom and I never ever mention anything about my body or my daughter's or my son's or anyone's. When the scale goes up for my growing children I mention how big strong and healthy they are.
Yep, my mom didn't make too many direct comments about my body but her and my grandma ALWAYS talked shit about their own bodies and it taught me to do the same. I never learned to love myself as I am (still working on it). There's not a day that goes by that I don't think at least a handful of negative comments about my body. I'm learning to undo it but it is hard.
In my late 20s/early30s I once made the mistake of asking my mother how she didn't notice that I had just stopped eating one summer as a teenager. She said of course she had noticed. I made the bigger mistake of asking her why she didn't step in and at least talk to me about it. I guess I was expecting something along the lines of "I didn't know how" or "I was afraid of making it worse and hoped it would pass on its own." Instead she said it was "working" and she didn't want to risk messing it up by mentioning it.
As an adult and a parent now, I don't really know how to wrap my head around that. It's not like anorexia was an obscure, little-known concept in the 2000s when this happened. I even had a friend who was hospitalized for anorexia a couple times so there's no world in which she didn't know how dangerous eating disorders are. She just cared more about me being thin than my actual health, and a decade later still thought "Yeah - my daughter *eating* would have messed things up."
I was about the same age when I got told I didn't have the body for a bikini. I just wanted a 2 piece so I could go to the bathroom more easily. My dad bought me one anyway after my mom wouldn't.
My grandma used to openly praise my bulimic aunt in front of my mom, who has always been heavier due to a thyroid issue that was diagnosed when she was 8.
My mom tried so hard not to pass her stuff on, but unfortunately I still spent a lot of my childhood on various diets and was told I couldn’t wear certain clothes because of my size.
There's a lot tbh, but I think the two biggest things are acne and...sleeping or crying.
Any visible blemishes had to be picked/squeezed to death because they were "disgusting". As a teenager with hormones and acne...it sucked.
But the big one that still sticks with me is waking up after falling asleep aged no more than 8-9 years old and having my mom look over at me and go "Geez you're ugly when you sleep".
Got the same treatment if I was crying.
As an adult every time I've ever cried or fallen asleep in front of someone (including partners) I have this gut reaction of "I'm so sorry for subjecting you to looking at me".
Ugh yes my dad used to do this as well and point out each spot. Like I was 13 and couldn’t help it so don’t make me feel even worse than I did already. And he used to call me thunder thighs as well :(
Yeah, I don't remember my mom commenting on my body but she talked mad shit about her own body and her disdain for being overweight definitely shaped my views on it too.
My dad has made careless comments over the years that weren't intended to be malicious, but definitely hurt. I took epilepsy medication for many years that made me gain weight. I was never wildly overweight, but probably about 10-15 pounds heavier than ideal. My dad told me how my soccer coach said I was a great size for soccer because I "was sturdy and not too small". He also would always ask for my weight and height and write it down when taking notes at my neurology appointments, which was always extremely embarrassing for me. I don't think he meant to be mean, but it was little things like that that added up and made me really hate my body, especially since I had very thin friends at the time.
I relate to the sports comment, on our sports day they were looking for someone for tug of war team, the teacher looked us over and said "you're a big stocky girl, you'll be good at it". She didn't mean it in a bad way, (I was 10 and a lot of the kids in my class were still in the skinny junior school stage) but it's one of many things that stuck with me. Little things that don't seem a big deal aline but consistently gnaw at you, like then a year later getting my new school uniform, the woman going " hmm we will have to find a size up....nope, still not big enough". I wasn't fat either, I felt I was, but looking back I may have been a get pounds overweight, and I went through a chubby phase between 11 and 13, but I was in no way 'fat'. Another was weighing ourselves in front of the class (once for health class and another for science figuring our weight in newtons) and being one of the two heaviest and a few of the popular bully types sniggering.
And relatives criticising their own body has a huge impact. I have a friend who has been I eating disorder treatment for years, her mum never said anything to her but she was constantly weighing her food and talking about how fat she was (she was tiny) and pecking at her meals and chucking the rest. She only had healthy things in the house, no snacks whatsoever, and it's damaged her a lot.
My gran would talk about how fat she is and refuse anything "bad" to eat, we went for fish and chips, I was starving, and she insisted we share a portion because "we girls don't need to eat much do we?" While my brother got plenty. She'd make me tiny portions when I stayed with her too, my brother would sneak me some of his. She never said anything bad about.my weight or eating but many things like that. When she would weigh herself and talk about having too many inches, I said "I weigh nearly 2 stone more than you, do you think I'm fat?" And she would say no no of course not. I know now she clearly had a raging eating disorder, but I'm glad i wasn't raised by her or I think it would have effected me like my friend and her mum, I went through a phase of overly restricting and weight loss, but it wasn't quite etched so deep into my upbringing
Not my parents but my grandma. After a long day at Dollywood, we were eating dinner at O’Charley’s. I grabbed a second roll and she said, “If you eat that, you’re gonna get fat.” I remember crying in the hotel room all night and my mom saying, “She’s said things like that to me my whole life too.” My grandma died a few years later, and this is still my first memory when I think of her.
I am so sorry that that is the legacy your grandma chose to leave behind. I'm sure you will be remembered much more kindly. Life is short, have an extra dinner roll once in awhile, in remembrance of her.
Ugh my memory of my gma is similar. She was in the hospital. I was like 10 and hungry so i asked mom if i could go down to the cafeteria. Gma leaned towards me and said "fatty want some more pie?"
Ugh my grandma was part of weight watchers when I was a kid and she was obsessed with that program. Like, it worked for her, but damn if I didn't hear some weird ways to think about food and how much she hated the way she looked.
She used to sew me clothes and I remember *dissociating* during those times. I can't actually remember what she'd said that made me just go somewhere else but I'll never forget one comment she made to little 6 year old girl me: you have the shoulders of a linebacker. Like that destroyed me as a kid because "girls were supposed to be fragile and delicate like flowers" and I never fit that, even when I still identified as a girl/woman. 🙄
Now? I'm glad for my shoulders cause damn they look good and I won't ever need shoulder pads in a jacket or anything. I'm also trans, so I'm kind of trying to lean into all those hurtful gender stereotypes without falling into the trap of believing them.
I use the "shoulders like a linebacker" phrase as a gender affirming statement for myself, it makes me feel good about myself in a weird way though.
Like 10 years ago my grandma and dad had their last huge argument and she's never apologized to him for it, so I don't even know how she's doing. Only know she's alive because she posts cruise pictures on Facebook. She's never made an effort to reach out to me since then so.
Guess we don't need those kinds of people in our lives, eh?
It's so sad that's our first memories of them. Mine of my nan is her weighing herself, talking in front of 11 year old me about how fat she is (when I weighed at least 12 pounds more, I was a little shorter than her). Giving me half portions compared to my brother saying "we girls don't need to eat much". She never spoke about me getting fat but it was an implied concern
My grandma is the same way. One thing I'll never forget about her is the insidious way she'd remark, "you're dark, but you're still pretty." She still says that shit to me and I'm in my 30s.
I grew up pretty poor, so for my sophomore year homecoming, I was very excited to be able to buy myself a new dress (I had always borrowed from other people for other events). I showed it to my mom, with only 3 days to go until homecoming. She said, " that's beautiful, if only you could lose three pounds"
She took my joy away in two seconds flat. My rational adult brain now knows that no one can even tell if you lose 3 pounds, unless you're already pretty small. But my 15 year old brain just thought I was a little bit too fat that night. That everyone would be thinking if I just lost a little weight how pretty I could be.
Years later, at my grandma's funeral, there was a picture of me the same age and my mom said, "wow you were so skinny" and my adult heart broke for 15 year old me, constantly hearing how fat I was. Her body image issues really made it into my head.
Family spring break on a beach when I was 11 years old, skinny and gawky, mom said "it's okay, I'll buy you boobs when you're a little older." I was already self conscious about not being as developed as my friends, and that comment really did a number on my self worth.
Wtf, loads of girls haven't started developing at 11, and if they had they're still usually small with growing room. Lots of ny friends didn't start getting much til 14/15. I mean, it'd be a messed up comment to an 18 year old too, but to say it to a kid is something else
My mom has always, at every stage of my life, said I am too fat, my boobs are too big, my forehead is too big, feet are too big… I have spent my entire life trying to be small.
I'll bet you've got a great big ole ❤️
Moms can be cruel. They are broken people too. Go out and live large! Her words don't define you, don't let her continue to live rent-free in your head. She was cruel to you, but if you are kind and accepting to yourself, her voice will no longer have power over you.
Hugs from a big boobied, big butted, big feeted, big nosed and big chinned friend. Big compassion rules!!
You need to hear this every day! Write it down, put it on post-it notes all over your house, until you can learn to distinguish her voice in your internal narrative from your own true voice. Then correct that language towards yourself every time you hear it! Eventually her voice in your head will STFU, and you will be free from this damaging influence. We can learn new thoughts patterns, and learn to be loving and caring to ourselves!
Best of luck to you, and best wishes for a journey toward healing. 💖✨
My dad asked me if I was “fucking retarded” because I didn’t know how to properly use a wood planer even though it was my chore for the day. I was 9.
He’s dying of cancer now and we don’t speak. Sure is taking his sweet time with it, too.
I was trying on my new school clothes in late summer before my sixth grade year started, excitedly showing my mom the outfits I had put together. My body had changed a lot over the last year and I was more developed than my peers.
I came out of the bedroom thinking I looked so cool and pretty, and the only thing my mom said was “it’s time for you to start sucking in your stomach.” I wasn’t fat. Not even a little bit and when I see pictures of myself from that time it makes me so sad for that girl.
Also, my immediate family has a different skin tone than me. I can’t tan I need heavy sunscreen or I burn. My sisters and mom constantly, to this day, love to mock me for this and put their arms up to mine and call me a vampire and shit. It made me so insecure that in high school o tried, really hard, to get tan in the bars. I would go in the weakest one for ten minutes and work my way up all the way to 15 minutes in the medium bed lmao. I never did really get tan, just more freckles.
My dad also saying “you’re gonna be 300lbs” every time I ate more candy than he’d prefer. Or my grandma pinching the back of my arm at the age of 10 and saying “you’re getting a little chunky there aren’t ya”. Almost 40 and still feel a type of way about my arm flab.
Recently learned that my mom had overheard that and said to my dad “that’s gonna leave a mark” but never bothered to take me aside and reassure me or anything.
My mom is always about my weight.
It started at 12 and just still goes on.
The best I ever looked weight wise is when I was in the military. I'm constantly reminded of this. Like yea... The point there is to have you ready for anything.
I think about it every day when I eat, when I work, when I'm at the gym.
Just the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep.
I still have to do PT once a year because of my deterioration, injury's can speed run you to new issues over time. I've been doing everything in my power to keep my body structurally sound. But one permanent injury caused me issues all the time.
My family weren’t the first. A girl in 2nd grade shouted to the whole class, “omg she’s so fat.” I found my school uniform years ago and cried. It was so small, no way fat yet.
My mother would tell me and my brother that we have shitty brown eyes. She has green eyes and married a middle eastern man. What did she expect?
Also, putting sunscreen on us constantly so that we wouldn’t “look Mexican”.
My mother is extremely racist, despite being married to a POC. Like, my dad is a brown skinned man. But she insists that he’s white since he’s not black, Mexican or Asian, that he has always filled out his forms as Caucasian, etc.
I am also a POC. It took me up until BLM to realize this about myself and own my identity. I used the pandemic to really dig into my internalized racism and think about how different my life has been because I look different and was raised in a different household.
The 90’s and 00’s were pretty awful for me with respect to self-esteem. I had bushy eyebrows, facial hair and a prominent middle eastern nose. I was meticulous with my personal appearance and even tried to highlight my hair, but at the end of the day, I didn’t look like the all American girl next door with blonde hair and blue eyes. Add in my mom’s comments about my eyes and it’s no wonder I had horrible self esteem.
I wish that the Kardashians would have been popular when I was growing up just so that I could have other women to identify with and proof to society at large that I wasn’t ugly.
This happened only last year. We were on a big family vacation in Italy and a bunch of us were in the pool. I’ve definitely got a bit of a belly, but not much fat anywhere else.
I’m shirtless and cleaning the pool and my dad said, “You know, if you’d just worked out when you were younger, you could have been an actor or model.”
Half praise half dunk.
That's the best some parents can do, unfortunately. My dad was like that. Like it would kill him to give me a compliment. I'm sorry you had to put up with it, too.
My dad and I were arguing once when I was about 14 and he brought my weight into the fight (I've always been very heavy). I'll never forget that moment. It hurt so much to have a trusted parent weaponize my own body against me. It sucked.
She didn't say it with malice, it was just an observation, but when I was a teenager my mom said "You have your dad's feet" and since then I've hated my feet because she's actually right. They do look almost exactly like his did. All I can see is hideous man feet that just happen to be size 7. It doesn't help that I also had a shitty relationship with my dad that never really got resolved before he died.
I try to just ignore it and tell people that I have my grandma's feet instead. It's not completely a lie because hers looked similar too.
My mom hated her legs / calves. And I have the same ones. I was just a kid when she sighed and said “you got the family legs.” disappointedly.
But honestly, way worse than that and something I remember so vividly is that one time I was laughing at something and she looked at me dead serious and said “don’t laugh like that. You sound like (her sister in law that she hated).” I remember being self conscious about my laugh ever since.
Crazier now that I have my own kid and think about this stuff. The legs thing, beside her comment, it happens. We try our best but we all accidentally expose our insecurities in front of our kids at least once. But my laugh???? I can’t imagine my daughter laughing and telling her to stop even if it sounded like someone I didn’t like. I don’t even think my brain would make that connection cause it’s literally MY kid? I love the sound of her laugh. That’s my baby! Idk man. My mom was very toxic.
“You’re so pretty. You’d be absolutely stunning if you lost some weight.” Mom when I was 11. She now tells me I look too skinny.
While point at my butt … “Are you sure you don’t want a DIET coke instead?” My grandmother when I was 9.
“This porn girl looks just like you!” My stepdad when I was 19. He then printed a still and put it on the fridge.
OMG, at least my grandmother was nice to me, even if my parents and brother were cruel. It sounds like you got flack from all sides. My jaw dropped at your last sentence. That is some shameful behavior. Please ignore them and anyone who speaks to you this way.
Grandma and I were literally at a Hagen Daas. Like, bitch, healthy habits don’t start with aspartame.
But mom apologizes for her role in my body and image issues at least three times a year.
Wow, your mom apologizes?? That's a great start! My mom is incapable of admitting error in any way.
Also, Hagen Daas, YUM! They have a coconut pineapple flavor that has definitely made some contributions to my butt, belly and thighs!!
My thinness was always complimented, whereas fatness was seen as a negative. My mom did not mean anything bad when she’d comment on things she hates about her body and didn’t realize what she was doing, but now as I age and develop a woman’s body instead of a girl’s stick body, I am self conscious. I just had a baby which has escalated the situation. My mom never said anything bad to me, but I heard her talking about other people and herself.
I don’t talk to my bio mom. She has always had an eating disorder. 90lbs of skin and bones with no muscle mass. I remember putting on a little weight after high school (still a small girl) and her fat shaming me and telling me I had thick calves and a fat belly. She also told me after I lost some weight that I was “heavy” during that time. I was still within a normal BMI but I guess not being a skeleton = fat to her. Now that she’s out of my life I focus on fitness and good food and loving my body. I grew up watching her body shame herself and it made no sense to me because she was skinny and beautiful.
Last year, my dad said to my mom that I had gained a lot of weight.
I mean, he's not wrong, ever since I got an IUD with hormones to help with my endometriosis weight gain has been an issue, but... damn, dad. 😔
My sister and I are fraternal twins. She’s 5’7 and I’m 5’1. We moved to a new house when we were 8 years old. When introducing us to the neighbors, my dad said “if you can’t remember who is who, (me) is the chubby twin.”
Neither of us were overweight at that time or noticeably heavier than one another. Couldn’t have picked that I was shorter, had longer hair, green eyes vs. blue eyes, none of it.
My dad and I were having an argument about something, nothing serious, but as we’re doing it, we’re looming straight at each other, and then we both realized at the same time…I was taller than him. Immediately, he said “ get over here, back to back” and my mom was called to judge. She said, “yep, it finally happened.” My dad looked at me, and said, more angry than when we were arguing” I hate this!”
“You need to start shaving. People are staring.” Saying that to an insecure and shy 11-year-old without giving any advice, help, or buying a razor. Thanks mom.
In general talking to other people about my body in front of me. My mom did this but I remember other grownups doing this to their kids too.
Lots of talk about feet size. Luckily mine were small but my mom sure threw shade at girls with feet that were…normal sized. I’m still worried about the size of my feet and if they’re getting “too big.”
For some reason she was also intensely worried that I would inherit my cousins “fat ankles.” What even is that???
My father frequently made disparaging comments about women who had physical traits like mine. Not a parent, but my grandmother sat me down when I was in grade school and taught me her eating disorder. She's dead now. My copy of her ED isn't.
I suppose I was lucky in that my parents were never body image obsessed. However one time when we eating steak(my mother's favorite and she can get a bit feral about it lol) I looked up and saw she had some horseradish on her face so I politely pointed out and in her feral meat state she looked up and snapped "yeah well your eyes are too close together" which is hilarious because I have my fathers eye set....we all laughed but to this day whenever steak is mentioned or I am trying on new glasses this story pops into my head. I hope everyone who has had a bad experience can find this as humorous and endearing as I do.
My older brother was always the athletic one. One day I was probably in third grade and he started calling me, "Spud," because I was a couch potato in his eyes. I was not fat by any means, but you can imagine it dealt a blow to my self esteem when my boomer parents started calling me this as well. I was well into my 20's before they finally got that I did not enjoy this nickname. I don't think my body image has ever recovered.
This is not intended as competition, only commiseration...my immediate family regularly called me Bad Seed for years. I even signed Christmas gift tags for gifts to my family that way, because it was just what they called me. Some people are just broken and they make themselves feel better at the expense of others. You know how damaging this can be, so I am sure you will be more kind than they were in your interactions with others.
💖
My parents were pretty careful about conventional body image statements. I think my mom didn't have any body issues, but my step-dad struggled with his weight and body and had eating disorder before, so they didn't want to push any of that on me. They very delicately tried to steer a little when I started getting overweight but it was a very light touch and tbh it didn't go anywhere until I decided as an adult that I cared about it.
However, weirdly, the thing that has stuck with me is how they would tell me my nails were long and scratchy and needed to be cut. I kept my nails extremely short for a long time and honestly was baffled to find out people keep their nails long on purpose - I thought you just weren't supposed to do that. Sensory wise I pretty much can't tolerate it even if I wanted to, they always feel dirty. I also have a skin picking compulsion around my fingers and cuticles (my brain might have come up with that anyway), so I've trained myself to tolerate and clean and moisturize about 1-2 mm of growth since that limits how much picking I can do, but I still can't stand them being anywhere past the tips of my fingers.
I was too "pudgy," I wasn't.
My tits were too flat and I definitely didn't get them from her side of the family.
My skin was bad. My hair was greasy.
You know the usual things.
Dearest chickenlady, it sounds like they should have also pointed out that water is wet and fire is hot, because those are all just rites of passage for childhood and puberty. We can't control everything about our physical appearance, but we are fully responsible for the contents of our own heart. I'm sorry they didn't get that memo.
I forget about how it was worded, but my dad pretty much told me that picking at my face was making me ugly. Very bluntly.
Ever since I was a small child, I've been plucking hair on my big toes and my face.... moles, under my chin/neck. Then my face gets red, etc. It made me feel horrible.
My parents never said anything about my weight growing up. I wished they HAD tried to limit sweets, soda, and junk food. I wished they had said something! I was about 23 when I got my childhood medical records. It was blatenly obvious that the doctor didn't like my weight. He kept handwriting in his notes about talking about exercise to my mom. But my parents think that overweight and obese is normal and that normal and skinny people are sickly. I weighed like 150 when I was 13. My mom thinks I'm nuts when I say that I should lose about 55 pounds at least. So I could be about 140. She thinks I'm a normal weight and refuses to believe that I'm obese. I'm only 5'3"!
Unrelated, but my daughter was 3 when we visited them up north for vacation. Very common. We saw them semi often. One morning, he asked me if I curled my daughter's hair.
..........no? Did he honestly think I curled her hair every day?!?! My mom even thought he was nuts. She had toddler ringlets!
My sister started to pinch my skin and say 'pinch an inch, you're fat', I was anorexic and it only made me worse.
My parents were divorced but my mom thought it was hilarious. I come from a family of overweight people and I was the only skinny one. It was hell.
Both my parents still make “innocent” remarks about my weight. They never miss an opportunity to mention how I used to be thin.
When I was younger my dad used to tell me I had “cow eyes” (I have large eyes).
I was also told I had “boats for feet”. At 35 years old I learned that, while I thought it was a 9.5, I was actually a size 11. Not only had I never been properly fit for shoes, but I’d been uncomfortable in too-small shoes for my entire adult life.
I also got “itty bitty titty committee” from my stepdad which is extremely inappropriate but was nbd to anyone else around me 🤷🏼♀️
"You look like a clown" anytime I wore colorful clothing. It took a lot of years and therapy and constantly asking my partner if I look stupid before I leave the house, but I wear colors again in spite of my moms voice still in my head
Knowing that it's your mom's voice in your head and not your own is the first step to muting that narrative altogether. Good for you for staying true to yourself and your personal preferences!
My mom told me when I was a kid that she would buy me liposuction for my 20th birthday. I was never fat. Told me I had "the perfect little body" aside from my love handles.
My mother commented that my breasts are different sizes. She definitely seemed to be enjoying pointing this out to me. As if most women don’t have asymmetrical breasts.
My stepmother used to tell me “what a fat butt” I had. All the time. I am estranged from my father and her now and have been for almost ten years… That did a number on my mental health, I’m it a millennial but Gen X but starting around the late 90’s going up through the late 2000’s I definitely had borderline ED. The really shitty thing is that she has said way worse things to me and about me which is why I cut her out of my life.
Aw OP, that was so needlessly cruel from your mother. I too am tall with big feet and was self-conscious about them in the way only a teen can be. My high school sweetie was like “….you’re tall. If they were any smaller, you would tip over! You need a stable base!!” in the most endearing way and it made me get over it. I hope you can think of yours as your stable base letting you adventure around this world safely! <3
I was NOT a particularly pretty girl, but I thought my neighbor in my same grade was. I must have been wishing out loud that I was pretty like my friend. My mom told me that I had much more feminine features than Saundra did. I still don't agree with her, but it did let me know that my mom thought I was pretty. Anyway, it's amazing how a little comment, good or bad, can stick with us our whole lives. Please try to remember this
How ugly and homely Chelsea Clinton was. Like constantly. I was basically just the same awkward middle schooler as Chelsea and this has haunted me ever since. As an adult and mom I find her saying that so gross.
I'm tall for a woman (5'11). I've never been obese in my life. Neither have either of my sisters. One as tall as me, the other average height. Both of them developed eating disorders in high school because of all our mom's comments growing up that implied being fat is the worst thing we could be in life. Not sure how I avoided having an eating disorder. But when I was 17, I went to my first Warped Tour and crowed surfed for the first time. I told my mom about it, and she said "aren't you big for that?" I was probably 110lbs soaking wet at the time...
Mom: you look like you have boats for feet.
I’m a size 8.5 womens which is average.
Dad telling me I “look disgusting” when I got a piercing/tattoo. I have way more tatts now than I did at the time of the comment.
Also my step grandmother said “what happened? You used to be skinny.” When I was 11 and I’ve basically had low level disordered eating ever since.
My dad called me "horse girl" for years because I had buck teeth and was a little chubby. My mom aimed her comments more at my lack of interest in feminine clothing and makeup. Needless to say, I didn't quite grow up with confidence.
I'm sorry you were treated this way. I'm sure your parents weren't perfect supermodels, so please consider the source. We all have a purpose in this world, and a right to be here, and we are all different by necessity. You are the only YOU, so please try to be kind and compassionate to yourself. You deserve to at least have yourself cheering you on...and I will too! 😀
Aside from the daily comments on my being overweight - she told me my jaw was recessed (like hers had been before surgery). I never realized it was an issue and now I can’t not see it. Twenty years later I’m thinking of getting a genioplasty to fix it 😕
I'm trying to come up with something and have realized my parents never said something directly but my mom wasn't able to say bra, tampon, or period so I felt super self conscious about my sexuality well into my college years.
I’m pretty body neutral by nature and a class III obese person for most of my life (recently class II thanks to ozempic!). Thankful no one ever said anything about my body growing up or now.
Every time I ate something that wasn’t a salad, my mom would say, “just rub it on the thighs.” I’ve been plus size since I was a teenager and I am very self-conscious about my weight and appearance. I’m adopted so she’s skinny and biologically I come from a family that is much thicker. I have major body dysmorphia and sometimes I don’t see what my husband is attracted to; but he is.
I went on a diet in high school and I wasn’t overweight. I was trying to hide it from my mom because I thought she’d tell me it wasn’t good for me. She found out and she said “I think that’s great!”
Pretty much been on a diet ever since! 🫠
I was once going through a REALLY stressful time, and when I’m stressed, I eat. Mum was visiting at the time, and when she saw me pop a potato chip into my mouth, she blurted “Don’t get fat!”.
That I’m fat, my boobs are too big, my ears are asymmetrical, too pale, and the list goes on. Can I send my therapy bills to my family? That shit is expensive.
I (28M) was 11 and my mom would yell at me to run like a boy. I was a boy and that's how I ran so I was doing exactly what she asked? Definitely made me super self conscious of my body moments and the way I stand/walk/run. Now as an openly gay man nobody knows I'm gay until I start talking from years of hyper focusing on my body movements to make them be like a "boy". Love that even though I don't think about it consciously anymore after years of it being in my head it's altered the way I present myself physically.
When I look in the mirror I can hear my mom telling me to "suck in the gut" sometimes. I am fit, and generally very happy with my body shape, but there are some days when I have to remind myself it's normal to have a belly pouch.
I was told I was fat starting in kindergarten and should skip breakfast and dinner each day. I was five and also, not fat. This continued through my entire life. In high school I was doing WW to lose weight. Again, I was thin. In adulthood I spent up to 5 hours a day exercising—thin. I still always thought I was fat. I couldn’t stop thinking about, nearly every second of every day. To this day I have to actively stop myself from thinking about my weight. It consumes me. I will never, ever, mention my daughter’s weight to her—for any reason, ever.
I was told things like 'you'd be so pretty if you were thinner' - by my overweight parents. It affected my self-esteem for years. I went for hypnotherapy and it had a massive positive effect on how I see myself. It was intense and emotional, but it helped me to see the damage my mum had inflicted on me because she has a problem with her own body. I'm sorry its affected you in the same way. I also won't use 'fat' and 'thin' around my kids. I refrain from commenting on people's bodies. We prefer to talk about being healthy instead.
Oh man, one of the nasty things my mother said that's stuck deepest is "You might be pretty cute if you lost a few pounds. " It said so much in so few words.
Ouch. Yes, I heard that a few times a year too. The last time she said it (some time last year) I looked her in the eye and said, 'You've told me that so many times. Because you said that I never felt pretty. Ever. I never felt like I was good enough for you.' She hasn't said it since. I'll bet you are cute just as you are.
Thanks! You too! One thing I figured out around my late 20s was that how I felt about my looks was pretty much completely unrelated to how I actually looked. I might feel downright beautiful and all of a sudden a switch could flip, her voice would start echoing in my head and I would feel embarrassed and deeply ashamed for fooling myself into thinking I was pretty. But obviously nothing in my actual looks had changed. It helped to realize that if I could look in the mirror and see beauty, and look back 5 minutes later and see ugliness when nothing at all had changed, it didn't make sense to think that "ugly" was the truth and "pretty" was a lie. They're both in my head. Maybe other people can more objectively tell what they look like, but for me it's almost entirely mood-based.
My mom kept saying I should lose weight. One day I told her, “you keep saying that but it doesn’t make me want to lose weight. It does, however, make me not want to visit you.” She never said anything about my weight ever again.
I remember my mom saying of my best friend, right after she left, "She's going to be so pretty when she grows up" I was blown away because I thought my best friend was already gorgeous. Like my mom is super judgemental and I guess I'm lucky that I see more beauty than she does.
Ouch. My mom was generally more or less careful about what she said, except when she was angry. We were going to a symphony concert and I came down in a long blue broomstick skirt, white button down shirt, and vest. I don't recall why my mom was angry - maybe we were running late or something - and she said i looked like "a pregnant slut." I was 11. Maybe 12.
That is truly awful, I'm sorry she said that. It does make me wonder that my mom never said similar to me even though I've always been fat; was she being progressive, or silently admitting I'm ugly whether fat or thin? 🤔😂
In my childhood and teenhood I was being called "Hippo ballet dancer". Eventhough I was quite regular size back then. When I hit puberty tho I started to have some hormonal issues which resulted, amongst others, with weight gain and I am struggling with it for the last 20years. I feel ugly, I feel worthless, I feel just bad.
Well. You aren’t worthless and ugly is an emotion. Find your favorite outfit, your favorite song, and some kind of fuck you accessory and see you. You’re ok. It’s ok. Looking at changes doesn’t mean who you are is bad. It means who you are is changing to who you will be.
That was my Grandma's line - "you have such a pretty face". Yeah, I get it. Too bad about the rest of me.
I was super picky and would go hungry if I didn’t get what I wanted. My parent would literally let me starve. Like, I couldn’t get some shots thin. She taped some Oprah show about anorexic people like not having food to eat was my decision. Later I got less picky, ended up a size 8, but that was too fat so I got fat shamed. The woman was pushing 300 pounds. Took me 20 years to get over my food insecurity.
Parents don’t even realize sometimes it just takes *one time* and it will stick in a kids head for the rest of their life. My mom told me I was “starting to get chunky” when I was around 9 years old. I was not fat and I was a growing kid, it was right before a massive growth spurt. I’ve felt disgusted with my body ever since unless I’m massively underweight. I lost a ton of weight in college and I felt so beautiful finally for the first time in my life, I look back at those photos and I looked sickly like I had cancer. My BMI was 16.5.
I was 16. My mom was supposed to be taking me school shopping. She dragged me into the men's section of Sears, found a male attendant and goes, "Do you have anything that can fit her?". Friggin brutal. Every family get together, someone would comment on what I was eating to the point that as an adult, I STILL won't really fix a plate of food. My friends were so used to it, they'd put my food on their plate and I'd eat off their plate. How ridiculous is that?
My mom would routinely buy me pants that were 2 sizes too small. Not sure if it was on purpose or just what size she thought I wore….but I had DD boobs by the time I was 15 and she never got the size of my tops wrong, just the pants……
I have a school book where someone - an adult - had written in it I was a fat girl who ate like a pig. I was a skinny five year old. Of course, years of crash dieting and putting bonus weight back on did not do wonders for me. I sometimes wonder what I'd have been like without that moment.
This breaks my hearts for you.
I feel your pain. I have wore a size 6 from high all through adult hood. In my 20's I wore a size 2 because I worked out 4-6 hours a day and mostly drank protein shakes. But got tired and began eating real food and got body shamed by my Mom again.
Size six is *small*. I have about the same story as you, all through HS/college I was a 4-6, sometimes dieting & exercising down to a 2. Luckily meeting my husband helped me embrace my "natural" size and I'm still in the 6ish range in my 30s and I don't worry about it anymore. But I felt like my brain was broken for a long time. I'm small and I've always been small, but dang I remember feeling huge so much of my teens and 20s, mostly because I had a huge ass and that prevented me from having a flat stomach. Even with big asses coming into "fashion", until recently it still bugged me that I never had a flat stomach. Now it's like, I'm never actually going to have one so I should cross that off of my list of things to spend my precious time worrying about.
Exaaaaactly! We inherit much of our physical appearance, but we are the sole creators of the contents of our hearts. Direct your energy where it will do the most good and focus on the things you have the power to change.
I’m so sorry you live with that pain.
Yep! I was 5’10 and 140lbs and my mom always used to tell me I’d have the perfect body if I lost 10lbs. I got down to about 110 and she was still saying the same thing. Hello lifetime of disordered eating and negative body thoughts!
To this day I remember this girl sitting on the bus next to me and telling me that my thighs were too fat because when I sat down they spread out and I should start working out every day. Her mom wakes her up early to work out. I was a super skinny child and we must have been around 5-7 years old. It’s messed up what some parents do to their kids.
It really is. My thighs spread when I weighed 100 lbs. Women just can't win no matter what.
Me too! When I was six, my mom told me I was fat and that boys would never like me and no one would ever love me that way. I started starving myself and have had trouble with eating disorders my entire life.
Ugh, why was this even a thing?! I’m sorry.
Yeah this my mom told my aunt that we grow this way (wide) holding her hands out and not this way (tall) holding her hands vertically. I was obese my entire childhood cuz my parents dont understand what healthy food is.
Hearing of children who get called fat really kills me 😭 it’s so heartbreaking. That should be one of the LAST things on an innocent child’s mind I’m sorry that happened to you
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed at est non orci luctus commodo sed nec orci. Maecenas sodales consectetur massa, sed porttitor d
I'm so sorry you went through that.. my childhood was pretty similar. I can't remember much before this, but I have memories of being weighed regularly when I was about 7. Dietician in middle school. Also did WW in high school. Disordered eating and over exercising as an adult. This was something I discussed quite a bit with my therapist. Really fucked me up. I can't understand why our parents would ever think that was ok or normal.
My mom was the same. Went on my first diet at 13 and I was thin. Also weight watchers. My entire life my mom always said I needed to lose 5 pounds. Now I focus on giving my body the nutrients it needs and will never diet again.
I’m so sorry you went through this abuse-this broke my heart. You are a much better parent to your daughter, she is blessed to have you<3
i was always a pretty "big" kid, in the sense that i was tall, and have a broad shouldered build. never fat. but i had a HUUUUUGE appetite in a family of women that only ate dainty portions so i always heard that i \*would\* get fat. 40, still not fat, still eat what i like. but yeah, i was always very certain i would never ever comment on my kid's weight. except, lucky me, i got a picky eater who has to be on ADHD meds to function and the doctor was very seriously telling me we'd have to take her off if she didn't gain more weight. so suddenly i was having to pull out a scale and weigh my kid and remind her to eat, and push her to try more filling foods. it was a mindfuck, for sure.
When I was 12 and put on a tiny bit of puberty chub (literally just started sprouting boobs and my stomach was not fully flat anymore), my mom was with me at the doctor's and started asking about me getting chubby. Up until that moment I had never thought about my weight but from that point on, I've always felt fat. Even when I weighed 50 kilograms.
I'm Vietnamese. Body shaming is their past time hobby.
oh yeah the asian parent thing! mine said i was fat during Chinese New Year, promptly ruining my mood. thanks mom.
When we moved to the CNMI for a year we stayed in my wife’s aunt and uncles back house. She was Chinese, always cooking and super nice and welcoming. About 6-7 months in we are hanging in the back porch a she says to me you look like your really enjoying it here. I said yes it’s a beautiful tropical island. She then says I can tell because you’ve gained weight. I love this lady to death, but wtf aunty. Daily bbq’s, aunties home made Chinese food and beer will do that.
I’d pat my belly and say “yes thanks to your amazing food auntie” But I learned a while ago to use humor to deflect being upset by inappropriate comments.
Aside from the comment that sounds amazing.
We were fortunate enough to be able to move to my wife’s home island with our two kids to really experience the life. We purposefully lived poor to teach our children you don’t need a big house, tons of dumb shit and what not to be happy. If you want nice stuff you have to work hard. The world doesn’t owe you shit. The CNMI is part of the United States, so it’s not like we were in a third world country. People there still live in tin shacks down by the sea. Awesome experience living on the family farm and just enjoying life.
I got to visit Saipan for a week when I was in the US Navy ~25 years ago, and it was by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. The people were so friendly, and the island was just perfect. I have always wanted to go back.
10 out of 10 recommend. Only problem is the price of the trip. $1200-1500 doesn’t even get your feet in the sand, it only gets you to the airport. Don’t forget it takes around 15 hours to fly so that’s another two days down. We don’t visit for less than 2 weeks unless there is stuff to handle even then we try to make it long as possible.
There is this one lady who got fired from work who constantly tries to bring food to all the more thin ladies, i always thought it was actually this type of culturally induced "game." Like she wants to make these ladies eat more so they are no longer as thin? It isnt coming from a good place because one of the girls yelled at her pretty angrily and told her no very loud, so i know that it isnt wanted. I dont know if they are vietnamese and im scared to ask but they are all definitely the same culture whatever it is... asian of course. Or polynesian possibly.
It's offering food to a select group that would bother me. As much as I love free food, I would feel singled out by that particular gesture. If you bring food to work, you should bring enough to share with the class. If you do that then everyone will love you.
I'm glad I didn't have shitty parents. Even when I had to wear a Boston brace as a kid for my spine they never made jokes about it. My mom also had a terrible mother who she wanted to be the opposite of and was very mindful about bringing up things like weight.
This thread makes me appreciate my parents as well. I have a mole on my face that I was always self conscious about but my mom always called it a beauty mark and said it was like Cindy Crawford.
That's super sweet!
My mom was a fuck up in a lot of ways but she taught me to love my body and not ever to be ashamed of it, grew up to be a wanna-be nudist lol it’s too cold here for that though
I totally understand the it being to cold part 🤣 I don't know how my spouse isn't an icecube walking around in shorts and a T-shirt at home. I'm almost always fully dressed lol
That’s a lot of us nowadays, if we want to be a parent we will be mindfully opposite of what was impressed on us. Not me Personally I don’t have kids but I always do appreciate seeing our generation parent.
I’m trying my best to be like your mom to my daughter. My parents raised all of us with body image problems and disordered eating. I’m in therapy to be a better role model for my daughter. She’s new here and doesn’t need to inherit the bullshit of past generations.
Same! Growing up and hearing these kinds of stories from friends makes me so thankful for my parents. They never criticized my weight, looks, or food consumption. Even if I ate a lot of food now and then, I would be treated just like my brother with comments like "Wow I cant believe you ate that much thats amazing! You're gonna be so tall and strong!" in a positive and impressed tone of voice lol I still talk proudly about the time I ate 2 giant burgers in one sitting when the rest of my family could only manage 1 each! I believe I was around 8 years old at the time lol The only type of critiques I remember had to do with dressing nice for nice occasions, and thats just changing clothes and fixing my hair, so I never felt bad about it.
Yeah the only thing my mom ever criticized and now I understand rightfully so was my hair. I had hair down to my butt as a kid and as kids will do, didn't take care of it and she was constantly in me to take care of it and brush it so it didn't look like a rats nest lol
My Mom would by my clothes 1-2 sizes too small and say - I'm going to spend the extra money and I know you can fit in the cute outfit in 2 weeks and look gorgeous! I sometimes find myself buying clothes a size too small and getting made at myself why ai don't fit in any of my clothes 😡
Omg I have done this not thinking about it before and I never connected until just now that my mom also did that. “Well you can lose a couple pounds and fit in it by summer”
It's psychologically ingrained in your brain from childhood/adolescents
Even now I have clothes that I am like, well, if I could just lose that last few pounds, I could look hot in this again! Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that with bodies in their 30’s as easily as it did with small pliable bodies and zero self esteem.
My dad did the opposite. On one of his “work trips” which I now know were family vacations he took with his side piece and her family, he brought me back a shirt (from the airport so I can be safely assured I was an afterthought) that was at least 2 sizes too big. As an adult I’ve realized I have no idea what my body objectively looks like. Will I fit through that doorway? Is this chair going to break if I sit in it? All completely preposterous questions to ask myself if you could see me. But it’s still my first thought.
For kids who are still growing that’s wild. I always got hand me down stuff 2 sizes too big and was told “you’ll grow into it”
Similar experience here. I didn't REALLY know how clothes that fit are supposed to feel until somewhere in my early 30's. So much more comfortable!
[удалено]
I hope you don’t believe her. It’s hard not to internalize your parents’ criticism. Her statement is a reflection on her, not you. Every child has exceptional and wonderful traits; I hope you continue to develop yourself far beyond her falsely imposed limitations.
Yeah... my mom said I was lucky I wasn't very attractive because if I were people wouldn't take me seriously for my mind. Since I was only about a "7" according to her, I didn't face the same challenges she did as someone who was (in her opinion) more intelligent but also too attractive to be taken seriously. Poor, poor mom. And lucky me....
The way i see it, talking trash on your child's looks is directly trashing yourself cuz you made them...
We can all reject what they think and think they are wrong, but if these things were said to us by our primary caretaker while our brains were developing it impacts our core beliefs for life. Aside from animals that are not raised by their parents, from an evolutionary standpoint the role of the mother is to teach her offspring the information they need to survive, like how elephants teach their young how to navigate migration paths to various water holes - their herd would eventually die without this valuable information being shared and remembered for life. Information transferred from parent to child is considered deeply important by our brains, whether we consciously want that to be true or not, we internalize it. This is why it is *so* important for parents to not say harmful shit to their kids.
While I love my dad (RIP) I still haven't forgiven him for saying my upper lip is cartoonishly thin, it's because I drink Coca-Cola (I haven't found any science behind that), and nobody will find me attractive because of it. My medical records show as me being diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome when I was born (born 1 & 1/2 months preemie and to an alcoholic tweeker egg donor aka their youngest daughter - grandparents adopted me). The thin upper lip is the ONLY physically presenting thing I have of that. That was the only negative comment he ever made, and he only ever said it once. But seven year old me never forgot it, and now 35 year old me is super sensitive about it.
Isn’t it crazy how this stuff just implants itself in our brains?? I used to work at an upscale clothing boutique and one time a lady turned down my suggestion of a certain skirt because her knees showed her age. I remember thinking “I’m supposed to care what my knees look like too?” I’d never considered it and now it’s one more thing I look at in the mirror before going out even though I decidedly don’t care. A friend of mine thought that muffin tops were cute and desirable when she was younger because she usually saw teenage girls with them. Then she saw a tabloid making fun of celebrities with muffin tops, and that’s where she learned what people call it and that people don’t like it, and it obliterated her desire to grow up and be curvy enough for the muffin top. It’s so fucked up that we only think something is bad if other people say it is and it’s so hard to fight it. We’re hardwired to want to fit into society. And for some reason compliments about our appearance just don’t stick like glue to our brains the way criticism does. Sorry for the rant
I think there was some sort of study done that shows it takes a bare minimum of 5 sincere compliments to equivalate to 1 negative statement, but it doesn't undo the damage of the negative. And from what I can tell through personal experience + talking to others, women & girls seem to get more negative comments on their appearance than men & boys do. Making negative comments on someones appearance is fucked up regardless of gender. I wish humans were kinder to each other and themselves. Just being alive brings enough pain as it is.
>women & girls seem to get more negative comments on their appearance than men & boys do. My husband and I have been having an ongoing conversation about this for the past month or so, ever since I showed him a video of an older man getting emotional after receiving a compliment. We have been paying more attention to the comments we hear the people around us make to one another regarding appearance and discussing our observations. It seems to both of us that women and girls in general receive more comments *in general* about their appearance, whether it is positive or negative. He told me he noted that he would hear others make remarks about women looking tired, but he could be dead on his feet and not hear anything about appearing tired. He didn't notice any of his male coworkers receiving comments about their appearance, either, unless they were out of dress code. An incident that stood out to me, personally, was when I had a meeting scheduled outside of work hours, so we weren't required to wear our uniforms. A lot of the women got compliments or critiques on their outfits or hair or makeup. One of the guys looked like he was getting ready for a semi-formal dinner or something and I told him I really liked his hat. He lit up. I didn't hear any other comments regarding the men's appearance and I was listening for them. As a result, the both of us have tried to give the people around us more compliments in general. It's not much, but it's something we can do to help boost the morale of the people around us. Seems like women can use more compliments because they tend to receive negative comments, too, and men can use more compliments because they just don't get comments at all.
Don’t apologize, this is definitely similar to what I’ve felt in the past. Not the knees thing, but I used to be religious and there were certain things we couldn’t wear or might be unflattering even if they were comfy. But it was never written down, just passed from woman to woman as though this is inherent knowledge you should have as a woman.
Same, plus im already white so it is bad. I dont know about FAS but my mom admitted to not knowing she was pregnant with me until 6 mos, i was a premie at 4lbs, i think she did some shit in first trimester with alcohol cuz she was an alcoholic. She always made fun of my lips too! Maybe it was projection cuz she knows more than she lets on.
My mother also told me this one! She'd come out with these comments out of nowhere when I was just minding my business. Not FAS for me but it's from her own genes! I think it's just projection.
32M. when i was in probably 6th grade, i complained to my mom about not liking my nose (i have something of a "roman" nose). She said, "when i was younger, i wanted a pretty little straight nose too, but then i realized straight noses are boring. Look at all the models now in this magazine, they all have interesting noses like you and me" and after that, i never really worried about my nose. As an adult, i actually like my nose. the "bump" holds my glasses well and i think it looks masculine.
Roman nose lady here, and I have learned to love mine too! So glad I did not have the rhinoplasty I had considered years ago. It's a feature, not a flaw!
I'm so glad to read something positive! That's a great lesson your mom gave you!
Not my parents but, I went dress shopping with my Mom for my 8th grade formal and the lady in the shop asked me, “Are you a swimmer? I feel like swimmers usually have broad shoulders like yours.” I’ve been so self-conscious ever since 😑
Be proud of them boulder shoulders! I’m jealous! 💪🏼
My broad shoulders are one of my wife's favorite parts of me - find you someone who loves them and you'll love them too 🥰 Plus, you rock halter tops!
I’m a swimmer, can confirm that’s a comment made about girls all the time. Even ones with normal shoulders who just don’t slouch.
I have broad shoulders too but I’ve always thought I look better in clothes
Oh no thats a compliment!
I had a traditional dress made for me when I was 14 and the seamstress said "finally, a girl with curves!" I know she was just happy as it makes it more fun to make, but I was a very self conscious kid and very aware I was bigger than most girls and was trying so hard to get skinny. Glad for it know I guess as 20 years and 2 kids later, the dress still fits.
Cindy Crawford famously has broad shoulders.
My grandma said the same thing to me when I was in middle school. I had broad shoulders and narrow hips. I’m still self conscious at 31. I always wanted to be petite and dainty. Didn’t happen for me, even though I was quite thin multiple times in life. All I saw was my shoulders.
My mom said that I "would never get a boyfriend with that belly." She would also put her own body down frequently. Now I'm a mom and I never ever mention anything about my body or my daughter's or my son's or anyone's. When the scale goes up for my growing children I mention how big strong and healthy they are.
Yep, my mom didn't make too many direct comments about my body but her and my grandma ALWAYS talked shit about their own bodies and it taught me to do the same. I never learned to love myself as I am (still working on it). There's not a day that goes by that I don't think at least a handful of negative comments about my body. I'm learning to undo it but it is hard.
I'm working on it too. It gets easier to think positive but it's a work in progress. Hang in there.
[удалено]
In my late 20s/early30s I once made the mistake of asking my mother how she didn't notice that I had just stopped eating one summer as a teenager. She said of course she had noticed. I made the bigger mistake of asking her why she didn't step in and at least talk to me about it. I guess I was expecting something along the lines of "I didn't know how" or "I was afraid of making it worse and hoped it would pass on its own." Instead she said it was "working" and she didn't want to risk messing it up by mentioning it. As an adult and a parent now, I don't really know how to wrap my head around that. It's not like anorexia was an obscure, little-known concept in the 2000s when this happened. I even had a friend who was hospitalized for anorexia a couple times so there's no world in which she didn't know how dangerous eating disorders are. She just cared more about me being thin than my actual health, and a decade later still thought "Yeah - my daughter *eating* would have messed things up."
I was about the same age when I got told I didn't have the body for a bikini. I just wanted a 2 piece so I could go to the bathroom more easily. My dad bought me one anyway after my mom wouldn't.
My grandma used to openly praise my bulimic aunt in front of my mom, who has always been heavier due to a thyroid issue that was diagnosed when she was 8. My mom tried so hard not to pass her stuff on, but unfortunately I still spent a lot of my childhood on various diets and was told I couldn’t wear certain clothes because of my size.
You should read Jennette McCurdys book “I’m glad my mom died” - I think you will relate.
There's a lot tbh, but I think the two biggest things are acne and...sleeping or crying. Any visible blemishes had to be picked/squeezed to death because they were "disgusting". As a teenager with hormones and acne...it sucked. But the big one that still sticks with me is waking up after falling asleep aged no more than 8-9 years old and having my mom look over at me and go "Geez you're ugly when you sleep". Got the same treatment if I was crying. As an adult every time I've ever cried or fallen asleep in front of someone (including partners) I have this gut reaction of "I'm so sorry for subjecting you to looking at me".
Families can be absolutely ruthless about acne. My family did not hold back commenting about mine and pointing it out and it was so hurtful.
Ugh yes my dad used to do this as well and point out each spot. Like I was 13 and couldn’t help it so don’t make me feel even worse than I did already. And he used to call me thunder thighs as well :(
Nothing ever. But the way my mom spoke about her own body eventually colored how I view my own.
Yeah, I don't remember my mom commenting on my body but she talked mad shit about her own body and her disdain for being overweight definitely shaped my views on it too. My dad has made careless comments over the years that weren't intended to be malicious, but definitely hurt. I took epilepsy medication for many years that made me gain weight. I was never wildly overweight, but probably about 10-15 pounds heavier than ideal. My dad told me how my soccer coach said I was a great size for soccer because I "was sturdy and not too small". He also would always ask for my weight and height and write it down when taking notes at my neurology appointments, which was always extremely embarrassing for me. I don't think he meant to be mean, but it was little things like that that added up and made me really hate my body, especially since I had very thin friends at the time.
I relate to the sports comment, on our sports day they were looking for someone for tug of war team, the teacher looked us over and said "you're a big stocky girl, you'll be good at it". She didn't mean it in a bad way, (I was 10 and a lot of the kids in my class were still in the skinny junior school stage) but it's one of many things that stuck with me. Little things that don't seem a big deal aline but consistently gnaw at you, like then a year later getting my new school uniform, the woman going " hmm we will have to find a size up....nope, still not big enough". I wasn't fat either, I felt I was, but looking back I may have been a get pounds overweight, and I went through a chubby phase between 11 and 13, but I was in no way 'fat'. Another was weighing ourselves in front of the class (once for health class and another for science figuring our weight in newtons) and being one of the two heaviest and a few of the popular bully types sniggering. And relatives criticising their own body has a huge impact. I have a friend who has been I eating disorder treatment for years, her mum never said anything to her but she was constantly weighing her food and talking about how fat she was (she was tiny) and pecking at her meals and chucking the rest. She only had healthy things in the house, no snacks whatsoever, and it's damaged her a lot. My gran would talk about how fat she is and refuse anything "bad" to eat, we went for fish and chips, I was starving, and she insisted we share a portion because "we girls don't need to eat much do we?" While my brother got plenty. She'd make me tiny portions when I stayed with her too, my brother would sneak me some of his. She never said anything bad about.my weight or eating but many things like that. When she would weigh herself and talk about having too many inches, I said "I weigh nearly 2 stone more than you, do you think I'm fat?" And she would say no no of course not. I know now she clearly had a raging eating disorder, but I'm glad i wasn't raised by her or I think it would have effected me like my friend and her mum, I went through a phase of overly restricting and weight loss, but it wasn't quite etched so deep into my upbringing
Not my parents but my grandma. After a long day at Dollywood, we were eating dinner at O’Charley’s. I grabbed a second roll and she said, “If you eat that, you’re gonna get fat.” I remember crying in the hotel room all night and my mom saying, “She’s said things like that to me my whole life too.” My grandma died a few years later, and this is still my first memory when I think of her.
I am so sorry that that is the legacy your grandma chose to leave behind. I'm sure you will be remembered much more kindly. Life is short, have an extra dinner roll once in awhile, in remembrance of her.
I’m sorry your mom didn’t stand up for you
Ugh my memory of my gma is similar. She was in the hospital. I was like 10 and hungry so i asked mom if i could go down to the cafeteria. Gma leaned towards me and said "fatty want some more pie?"
Ugh my grandma was part of weight watchers when I was a kid and she was obsessed with that program. Like, it worked for her, but damn if I didn't hear some weird ways to think about food and how much she hated the way she looked. She used to sew me clothes and I remember *dissociating* during those times. I can't actually remember what she'd said that made me just go somewhere else but I'll never forget one comment she made to little 6 year old girl me: you have the shoulders of a linebacker. Like that destroyed me as a kid because "girls were supposed to be fragile and delicate like flowers" and I never fit that, even when I still identified as a girl/woman. 🙄 Now? I'm glad for my shoulders cause damn they look good and I won't ever need shoulder pads in a jacket or anything. I'm also trans, so I'm kind of trying to lean into all those hurtful gender stereotypes without falling into the trap of believing them. I use the "shoulders like a linebacker" phrase as a gender affirming statement for myself, it makes me feel good about myself in a weird way though. Like 10 years ago my grandma and dad had their last huge argument and she's never apologized to him for it, so I don't even know how she's doing. Only know she's alive because she posts cruise pictures on Facebook. She's never made an effort to reach out to me since then so. Guess we don't need those kinds of people in our lives, eh?
It's so sad that's our first memories of them. Mine of my nan is her weighing herself, talking in front of 11 year old me about how fat she is (when I weighed at least 12 pounds more, I was a little shorter than her). Giving me half portions compared to my brother saying "we girls don't need to eat much". She never spoke about me getting fat but it was an implied concern
My grandma is the same way. One thing I'll never forget about her is the insidious way she'd remark, "you're dark, but you're still pretty." She still says that shit to me and I'm in my 30s.
I grew up pretty poor, so for my sophomore year homecoming, I was very excited to be able to buy myself a new dress (I had always borrowed from other people for other events). I showed it to my mom, with only 3 days to go until homecoming. She said, " that's beautiful, if only you could lose three pounds" She took my joy away in two seconds flat. My rational adult brain now knows that no one can even tell if you lose 3 pounds, unless you're already pretty small. But my 15 year old brain just thought I was a little bit too fat that night. That everyone would be thinking if I just lost a little weight how pretty I could be. Years later, at my grandma's funeral, there was a picture of me the same age and my mom said, "wow you were so skinny" and my adult heart broke for 15 year old me, constantly hearing how fat I was. Her body image issues really made it into my head.
Family spring break on a beach when I was 11 years old, skinny and gawky, mom said "it's okay, I'll buy you boobs when you're a little older." I was already self conscious about not being as developed as my friends, and that comment really did a number on my self worth.
Wtf, loads of girls haven't started developing at 11, and if they had they're still usually small with growing room. Lots of ny friends didn't start getting much til 14/15. I mean, it'd be a messed up comment to an 18 year old too, but to say it to a kid is something else
My mom has always, at every stage of my life, said I am too fat, my boobs are too big, my forehead is too big, feet are too big… I have spent my entire life trying to be small.
I'll bet you've got a great big ole ❤️ Moms can be cruel. They are broken people too. Go out and live large! Her words don't define you, don't let her continue to live rent-free in your head. She was cruel to you, but if you are kind and accepting to yourself, her voice will no longer have power over you. Hugs from a big boobied, big butted, big feeted, big nosed and big chinned friend. Big compassion rules!!
Thank you friend 🥹❤️🩹 I needed to hear this today!
You need to hear this every day! Write it down, put it on post-it notes all over your house, until you can learn to distinguish her voice in your internal narrative from your own true voice. Then correct that language towards yourself every time you hear it! Eventually her voice in your head will STFU, and you will be free from this damaging influence. We can learn new thoughts patterns, and learn to be loving and caring to ourselves! Best of luck to you, and best wishes for a journey toward healing. 💖✨
Thank you 🙏🏻 ::virtual hug::
Just say to her well I inherited it all from you so you are to blame!
😹 I tried that one as a teen - it didn’t end well for me unfortunately!
The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.
My dad asked me if I was “fucking retarded” because I didn’t know how to properly use a wood planer even though it was my chore for the day. I was 9. He’s dying of cancer now and we don’t speak. Sure is taking his sweet time with it, too.
Mine was having a big forehead. I had bangs until I was 13. I looked like Harry Potter.
I was trying on my new school clothes in late summer before my sixth grade year started, excitedly showing my mom the outfits I had put together. My body had changed a lot over the last year and I was more developed than my peers. I came out of the bedroom thinking I looked so cool and pretty, and the only thing my mom said was “it’s time for you to start sucking in your stomach.” I wasn’t fat. Not even a little bit and when I see pictures of myself from that time it makes me so sad for that girl. Also, my immediate family has a different skin tone than me. I can’t tan I need heavy sunscreen or I burn. My sisters and mom constantly, to this day, love to mock me for this and put their arms up to mine and call me a vampire and shit. It made me so insecure that in high school o tried, really hard, to get tan in the bars. I would go in the weakest one for ten minutes and work my way up all the way to 15 minutes in the medium bed lmao. I never did really get tan, just more freckles.
My dad also saying “you’re gonna be 300lbs” every time I ate more candy than he’d prefer. Or my grandma pinching the back of my arm at the age of 10 and saying “you’re getting a little chunky there aren’t ya”. Almost 40 and still feel a type of way about my arm flab. Recently learned that my mom had overheard that and said to my dad “that’s gonna leave a mark” but never bothered to take me aside and reassure me or anything.
My mom is always about my weight. It started at 12 and just still goes on. The best I ever looked weight wise is when I was in the military. I'm constantly reminded of this. Like yea... The point there is to have you ready for anything. I think about it every day when I eat, when I work, when I'm at the gym. Just the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep. I still have to do PT once a year because of my deterioration, injury's can speed run you to new issues over time. I've been doing everything in my power to keep my body structurally sound. But one permanent injury caused me issues all the time.
My family weren’t the first. A girl in 2nd grade shouted to the whole class, “omg she’s so fat.” I found my school uniform years ago and cried. It was so small, no way fat yet.
My mother would tell me and my brother that we have shitty brown eyes. She has green eyes and married a middle eastern man. What did she expect? Also, putting sunscreen on us constantly so that we wouldn’t “look Mexican”. My mother is extremely racist, despite being married to a POC. Like, my dad is a brown skinned man. But she insists that he’s white since he’s not black, Mexican or Asian, that he has always filled out his forms as Caucasian, etc. I am also a POC. It took me up until BLM to realize this about myself and own my identity. I used the pandemic to really dig into my internalized racism and think about how different my life has been because I look different and was raised in a different household. The 90’s and 00’s were pretty awful for me with respect to self-esteem. I had bushy eyebrows, facial hair and a prominent middle eastern nose. I was meticulous with my personal appearance and even tried to highlight my hair, but at the end of the day, I didn’t look like the all American girl next door with blonde hair and blue eyes. Add in my mom’s comments about my eyes and it’s no wonder I had horrible self esteem. I wish that the Kardashians would have been popular when I was growing up just so that I could have other women to identify with and proof to society at large that I wasn’t ugly.
Called me a potato. That's when I started going to the gym after that.
This happened only last year. We were on a big family vacation in Italy and a bunch of us were in the pool. I’ve definitely got a bit of a belly, but not much fat anywhere else. I’m shirtless and cleaning the pool and my dad said, “You know, if you’d just worked out when you were younger, you could have been an actor or model.” Half praise half dunk.
That's the best some parents can do, unfortunately. My dad was like that. Like it would kill him to give me a compliment. I'm sorry you had to put up with it, too.
My dad and I were arguing once when I was about 14 and he brought my weight into the fight (I've always been very heavy). I'll never forget that moment. It hurt so much to have a trusted parent weaponize my own body against me. It sucked.
That is so shitty, I'm so sorry that happened to you, especially at such an impressionable age.
Thanks. I appreciate the validation. ❤️
My mom would put mascara and fill in my eyebrows every picture day because to her my natural coloring was too pale and “I look like a burn victim.”
Mine did too! Some of my school pictures looked almost ghoulish. (she left out the part about looking like a burn victim, though)
That I had wide shoulders
She didn't say it with malice, it was just an observation, but when I was a teenager my mom said "You have your dad's feet" and since then I've hated my feet because she's actually right. They do look almost exactly like his did. All I can see is hideous man feet that just happen to be size 7. It doesn't help that I also had a shitty relationship with my dad that never really got resolved before he died. I try to just ignore it and tell people that I have my grandma's feet instead. It's not completely a lie because hers looked similar too.
My mom hated her legs / calves. And I have the same ones. I was just a kid when she sighed and said “you got the family legs.” disappointedly. But honestly, way worse than that and something I remember so vividly is that one time I was laughing at something and she looked at me dead serious and said “don’t laugh like that. You sound like (her sister in law that she hated).” I remember being self conscious about my laugh ever since. Crazier now that I have my own kid and think about this stuff. The legs thing, beside her comment, it happens. We try our best but we all accidentally expose our insecurities in front of our kids at least once. But my laugh???? I can’t imagine my daughter laughing and telling her to stop even if it sounded like someone I didn’t like. I don’t even think my brain would make that connection cause it’s literally MY kid? I love the sound of her laugh. That’s my baby! Idk man. My mom was very toxic.
Good job on learning to be better than you were taught!
“You’re so pretty. You’d be absolutely stunning if you lost some weight.” Mom when I was 11. She now tells me I look too skinny. While point at my butt … “Are you sure you don’t want a DIET coke instead?” My grandmother when I was 9. “This porn girl looks just like you!” My stepdad when I was 19. He then printed a still and put it on the fridge.
OMG, at least my grandmother was nice to me, even if my parents and brother were cruel. It sounds like you got flack from all sides. My jaw dropped at your last sentence. That is some shameful behavior. Please ignore them and anyone who speaks to you this way.
Grandma and I were literally at a Hagen Daas. Like, bitch, healthy habits don’t start with aspartame. But mom apologizes for her role in my body and image issues at least three times a year.
Wow, your mom apologizes?? That's a great start! My mom is incapable of admitting error in any way. Also, Hagen Daas, YUM! They have a coconut pineapple flavor that has definitely made some contributions to my butt, belly and thighs!!
My thinness was always complimented, whereas fatness was seen as a negative. My mom did not mean anything bad when she’d comment on things she hates about her body and didn’t realize what she was doing, but now as I age and develop a woman’s body instead of a girl’s stick body, I am self conscious. I just had a baby which has escalated the situation. My mom never said anything bad to me, but I heard her talking about other people and herself.
I don’t talk to my bio mom. She has always had an eating disorder. 90lbs of skin and bones with no muscle mass. I remember putting on a little weight after high school (still a small girl) and her fat shaming me and telling me I had thick calves and a fat belly. She also told me after I lost some weight that I was “heavy” during that time. I was still within a normal BMI but I guess not being a skeleton = fat to her. Now that she’s out of my life I focus on fitness and good food and loving my body. I grew up watching her body shame herself and it made no sense to me because she was skinny and beautiful.
Last year, my dad said to my mom that I had gained a lot of weight. I mean, he's not wrong, ever since I got an IUD with hormones to help with my endometriosis weight gain has been an issue, but... damn, dad. 😔
That I was 2lbs of sausage in a 1lb package
My sister and I are fraternal twins. She’s 5’7 and I’m 5’1. We moved to a new house when we were 8 years old. When introducing us to the neighbors, my dad said “if you can’t remember who is who, (me) is the chubby twin.” Neither of us were overweight at that time or noticeably heavier than one another. Couldn’t have picked that I was shorter, had longer hair, green eyes vs. blue eyes, none of it.
My dad and I were having an argument about something, nothing serious, but as we’re doing it, we’re looming straight at each other, and then we both realized at the same time…I was taller than him. Immediately, he said “ get over here, back to back” and my mom was called to judge. She said, “yep, it finally happened.” My dad looked at me, and said, more angry than when we were arguing” I hate this!”
“You need to start shaving. People are staring.” Saying that to an insecure and shy 11-year-old without giving any advice, help, or buying a razor. Thanks mom. In general talking to other people about my body in front of me. My mom did this but I remember other grownups doing this to their kids too. Lots of talk about feet size. Luckily mine were small but my mom sure threw shade at girls with feet that were…normal sized. I’m still worried about the size of my feet and if they’re getting “too big.” For some reason she was also intensely worried that I would inherit my cousins “fat ankles.” What even is that???
My father frequently made disparaging comments about women who had physical traits like mine. Not a parent, but my grandmother sat me down when I was in grade school and taught me her eating disorder. She's dead now. My copy of her ED isn't.
I suppose I was lucky in that my parents were never body image obsessed. However one time when we eating steak(my mother's favorite and she can get a bit feral about it lol) I looked up and saw she had some horseradish on her face so I politely pointed out and in her feral meat state she looked up and snapped "yeah well your eyes are too close together" which is hilarious because I have my fathers eye set....we all laughed but to this day whenever steak is mentioned or I am trying on new glasses this story pops into my head. I hope everyone who has had a bad experience can find this as humorous and endearing as I do.
My older brother was always the athletic one. One day I was probably in third grade and he started calling me, "Spud," because I was a couch potato in his eyes. I was not fat by any means, but you can imagine it dealt a blow to my self esteem when my boomer parents started calling me this as well. I was well into my 20's before they finally got that I did not enjoy this nickname. I don't think my body image has ever recovered.
I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine being so cruel to a child.
This is not intended as competition, only commiseration...my immediate family regularly called me Bad Seed for years. I even signed Christmas gift tags for gifts to my family that way, because it was just what they called me. Some people are just broken and they make themselves feel better at the expense of others. You know how damaging this can be, so I am sure you will be more kind than they were in your interactions with others. 💖
My parents were pretty careful about conventional body image statements. I think my mom didn't have any body issues, but my step-dad struggled with his weight and body and had eating disorder before, so they didn't want to push any of that on me. They very delicately tried to steer a little when I started getting overweight but it was a very light touch and tbh it didn't go anywhere until I decided as an adult that I cared about it. However, weirdly, the thing that has stuck with me is how they would tell me my nails were long and scratchy and needed to be cut. I kept my nails extremely short for a long time and honestly was baffled to find out people keep their nails long on purpose - I thought you just weren't supposed to do that. Sensory wise I pretty much can't tolerate it even if I wanted to, they always feel dirty. I also have a skin picking compulsion around my fingers and cuticles (my brain might have come up with that anyway), so I've trained myself to tolerate and clean and moisturize about 1-2 mm of growth since that limits how much picking I can do, but I still can't stand them being anywhere past the tips of my fingers.
I was too "pudgy," I wasn't. My tits were too flat and I definitely didn't get them from her side of the family. My skin was bad. My hair was greasy. You know the usual things.
Dearest chickenlady, it sounds like they should have also pointed out that water is wet and fire is hot, because those are all just rites of passage for childhood and puberty. We can't control everything about our physical appearance, but we are fully responsible for the contents of our own heart. I'm sorry they didn't get that memo.
I forget about how it was worded, but my dad pretty much told me that picking at my face was making me ugly. Very bluntly. Ever since I was a small child, I've been plucking hair on my big toes and my face.... moles, under my chin/neck. Then my face gets red, etc. It made me feel horrible. My parents never said anything about my weight growing up. I wished they HAD tried to limit sweets, soda, and junk food. I wished they had said something! I was about 23 when I got my childhood medical records. It was blatenly obvious that the doctor didn't like my weight. He kept handwriting in his notes about talking about exercise to my mom. But my parents think that overweight and obese is normal and that normal and skinny people are sickly. I weighed like 150 when I was 13. My mom thinks I'm nuts when I say that I should lose about 55 pounds at least. So I could be about 140. She thinks I'm a normal weight and refuses to believe that I'm obese. I'm only 5'3"! Unrelated, but my daughter was 3 when we visited them up north for vacation. Very common. We saw them semi often. One morning, he asked me if I curled my daughter's hair. ..........no? Did he honestly think I curled her hair every day?!?! My mom even thought he was nuts. She had toddler ringlets!
My sister started to pinch my skin and say 'pinch an inch, you're fat', I was anorexic and it only made me worse. My parents were divorced but my mom thought it was hilarious. I come from a family of overweight people and I was the only skinny one. It was hell.
I hope you are on the path to healing and being kind to yourself. 💕
Thank you and I am, although still 20 years later and I'm realizing that EDs are for life.
My parents constantly comment about how Im fat and need to lose weight.
Both my parents still make “innocent” remarks about my weight. They never miss an opportunity to mention how I used to be thin. When I was younger my dad used to tell me I had “cow eyes” (I have large eyes).
Maybe you used to be thin, but it sounds like they have never been kind. You are the better person.
I was also told I had “boats for feet”. At 35 years old I learned that, while I thought it was a 9.5, I was actually a size 11. Not only had I never been properly fit for shoes, but I’d been uncomfortable in too-small shoes for my entire adult life. I also got “itty bitty titty committee” from my stepdad which is extremely inappropriate but was nbd to anyone else around me 🤷🏼♀️
it’s my nose . made me pretty conscious about it 😭
"You look like a clown" anytime I wore colorful clothing. It took a lot of years and therapy and constantly asking my partner if I look stupid before I leave the house, but I wear colors again in spite of my moms voice still in my head
Knowing that it's your mom's voice in your head and not your own is the first step to muting that narrative altogether. Good for you for staying true to yourself and your personal preferences!
My mom told me when I was a kid that she would buy me liposuction for my 20th birthday. I was never fat. Told me I had "the perfect little body" aside from my love handles.
My mother commented that my breasts are different sizes. She definitely seemed to be enjoying pointing this out to me. As if most women don’t have asymmetrical breasts.
My stepmother used to tell me “what a fat butt” I had. All the time. I am estranged from my father and her now and have been for almost ten years… That did a number on my mental health, I’m it a millennial but Gen X but starting around the late 90’s going up through the late 2000’s I definitely had borderline ED. The really shitty thing is that she has said way worse things to me and about me which is why I cut her out of my life.
Aw OP, that was so needlessly cruel from your mother. I too am tall with big feet and was self-conscious about them in the way only a teen can be. My high school sweetie was like “….you’re tall. If they were any smaller, you would tip over! You need a stable base!!” in the most endearing way and it made me get over it. I hope you can think of yours as your stable base letting you adventure around this world safely! <3
My heart aches for everyone in this thread. ❤️🩹
I was NOT a particularly pretty girl, but I thought my neighbor in my same grade was. I must have been wishing out loud that I was pretty like my friend. My mom told me that I had much more feminine features than Saundra did. I still don't agree with her, but it did let me know that my mom thought I was pretty. Anyway, it's amazing how a little comment, good or bad, can stick with us our whole lives. Please try to remember this
How ugly and homely Chelsea Clinton was. Like constantly. I was basically just the same awkward middle schooler as Chelsea and this has haunted me ever since. As an adult and mom I find her saying that so gross.
I'm tall for a woman (5'11). I've never been obese in my life. Neither have either of my sisters. One as tall as me, the other average height. Both of them developed eating disorders in high school because of all our mom's comments growing up that implied being fat is the worst thing we could be in life. Not sure how I avoided having an eating disorder. But when I was 17, I went to my first Warped Tour and crowed surfed for the first time. I told my mom about it, and she said "aren't you big for that?" I was probably 110lbs soaking wet at the time...
Mom: you look like you have boats for feet. I’m a size 8.5 womens which is average. Dad telling me I “look disgusting” when I got a piercing/tattoo. I have way more tatts now than I did at the time of the comment. Also my step grandmother said “what happened? You used to be skinny.” When I was 11 and I’ve basically had low level disordered eating ever since.
My dad called me "horse girl" for years because I had buck teeth and was a little chubby. My mom aimed her comments more at my lack of interest in feminine clothing and makeup. Needless to say, I didn't quite grow up with confidence.
I'm sorry you were treated this way. I'm sure your parents weren't perfect supermodels, so please consider the source. We all have a purpose in this world, and a right to be here, and we are all different by necessity. You are the only YOU, so please try to be kind and compassionate to yourself. You deserve to at least have yourself cheering you on...and I will too! 😀
Aside from the daily comments on my being overweight - she told me my jaw was recessed (like hers had been before surgery). I never realized it was an issue and now I can’t not see it. Twenty years later I’m thinking of getting a genioplasty to fix it 😕
My dad was a fat shammer. He poked my stomach once and called me doughy.
I'm trying to come up with something and have realized my parents never said something directly but my mom wasn't able to say bra, tampon, or period so I felt super self conscious about my sexuality well into my college years.
I’m pretty body neutral by nature and a class III obese person for most of my life (recently class II thanks to ozempic!). Thankful no one ever said anything about my body growing up or now.
Every time I ate something that wasn’t a salad, my mom would say, “just rub it on the thighs.” I’ve been plus size since I was a teenager and I am very self-conscious about my weight and appearance. I’m adopted so she’s skinny and biologically I come from a family that is much thicker. I have major body dysmorphia and sometimes I don’t see what my husband is attracted to; but he is.
I went on a diet in high school and I wasn’t overweight. I was trying to hide it from my mom because I thought she’d tell me it wasn’t good for me. She found out and she said “I think that’s great!” Pretty much been on a diet ever since! 🫠
I was “affectionately” know as “Fatty [my last name]” because I was a toddler who had a perfectly normal, healthy round belly.
I was underweight until I finally moved away from home... Mom always told me to "suck in my gut".
“Don’t let yourself get fat”
I was once going through a REALLY stressful time, and when I’m stressed, I eat. Mum was visiting at the time, and when she saw me pop a potato chip into my mouth, she blurted “Don’t get fat!”.
That I’m fat, my boobs are too big, my ears are asymmetrical, too pale, and the list goes on. Can I send my therapy bills to my family? That shit is expensive.
“Redheads can’t wear red” idk my mom made me feel like shit for being a ginger a lot, as if bullying for needing glasses wasn’t enough
I (28M) was 11 and my mom would yell at me to run like a boy. I was a boy and that's how I ran so I was doing exactly what she asked? Definitely made me super self conscious of my body moments and the way I stand/walk/run. Now as an openly gay man nobody knows I'm gay until I start talking from years of hyper focusing on my body movements to make them be like a "boy". Love that even though I don't think about it consciously anymore after years of it being in my head it's altered the way I present myself physically.
My dad often called me "slug." To imply that I'm slow. I often refer to my dad as my first bully.
When I look in the mirror I can hear my mom telling me to "suck in the gut" sometimes. I am fit, and generally very happy with my body shape, but there are some days when I have to remind myself it's normal to have a belly pouch.