Content Warning: discussion of body shaming, food consumption shaming.
Dear Stu,
I have lived on my own for almost 20 years now. My town is about 7 hours away from my mother’s house (which I grew up in) and with an income in the range of just getting by, it is hard for me to make trips home as regularly as my family, especially my mother, would like. Other siblings live closer so it’s not an issue for them.
Visiting home can be a real challenge for me. I put in a lot of effort between money and time just to get there, and when I do, it is only a matter of seconds before my mother comments on my appearance. Nine times out of ten it is to say I have put on some weight…”but my scarf looks nice.” Another time I guess I had lost a few pounds and she told me right away how great I look. Then I’d go back to how I was and that too would get a comment and/or suggestion of what I might do to get better.
I know a lot of people deal with unwelcome comments from family but this routine every time I visit home really hurts me, even after all these years. You’d think I’d get used to it by now, or just brush it off. But I’m at a point where it is frustrating enough that I didn’t do my usual visit this summer. I made up some excuse about work. One of my siblings knows the real reason but his he just mom is the way she is and she isn’t going to change. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel silly about being stuck on this, other times it just really, really upsets me. I appreciate any thoughts you might have.
- Erin D.
Dear Erin,
I am so sorry to hear about this. You don’t deserve those types of comments, and you certainly don’t deserve to feel bad about yourself because of a parent who should love and support you unconditionally.
The situation you describe with your mother is very similar to what others, especially women, in my life have experienced. Sometimes it’s a mother-in-law, or a boss, or a co-worker, the list goes on. But there can be something uniquely painful about hearing judgmental comments about your body from a parent.
These types of comments can come from different motivations. I will note two categories in particular that I have noticed within families or close friends. One is the health motivation. “I’m only saying this because I’m concerned about your health!” The other motivation I will call the sullied image of the family brand. That one may be less explicitly vocalized.
I’m Just Concerned for Your Health
First, to the health motivation. I acknowledge that some people who raise concerns about our weight do so out of genuine concern for our health and mental-emotional wellbeing. I appreciate that every relationship is unique, and in some contexts this may be a welcome conversation, viewing a sudden or drastic weight gain as a potential symptom of something else. But in these situations of genuine concern, I would argue that a doctor should be pretty much the only person to initiate direct conversations about someone’s weight.
If the concern of another is truly is about something deeper going on in someone’s life, then just (gently and respectfully) check in on that, no? How have you been? Hey, could be nothing but I noticed you’ve been a little down, how are you? Man, sleep has been tough for me lately, how are you doing with that these days?
There are other ways to check in on someone’s wellbeing, but with those few sample questions I want to emphasize the absence of moral judgement or the insinuation that someone is “doing life wrong” to the extent that you personally are embarrassed or uncomfortable because of their appearance or comportment.
When someone comments about my body or weight (I fall into the medical category of obese, unhelpful as that is), I feel pain on the same wound caused by someone observing I look depressed, without any follow-up. Thank you for flippantly pointing out these things that I have struggled with my entire life, I thought I was thin and smiling.
There are deeply personal reasons why my weight is what it is, including a medication regimen that helps me manage depressive episodes. Likewise there are deeply personal reasons I get depressed. As a complete and whole person with agency over my story, my body, and the changes I do or do not make in my life, I am well within my rights to close off comments or conversations that begin with an observation about what I look like, even when they come from well-intentioned places. That is true for me, you, and everyone.
The thing about comments like your mother’s, Erin, is that the timing and delivery nullify any goodwill that may underlie them. I don’t know if your mother has ever justified her comments with a health concern, but the way she talks to you takes away her right or suitability to have that kind of conversation with you anyway, in my opinion. If someone really cares, they should show that care in word and in deed. If I am not feeling loved by your words, you are probably not loving me well. Indeed, you might be hurting me.
Finally, it is imperative to remind ourselves (and others) that weight is not, in itself, a marker of good or bad health. I recently had a nutritionist who was kind enough to remind of this, doing away with BMI measurements and that system’s problematic roots in racism and eugenics.
Dear Stu is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Sullying the Family Brand
Behind some snidely, rude, or ignorantly flippant comments about our weight offered by friends and family I fear is a sense of that embarrassment I mentioned earlier. In my years working with college students there were so many destructive remnants of that phenomenon reactivating in the midst of new pressures and means of comparison with peers on social media.
I have been naive in the past about the prevalence of young people being critiqued by their families about their appearance in active and passive ways. Maybe I’m too used to those things coming from bullies—the ones that got to school with you rather than the ones who live with you.
The passive messaging comes in unspoken behaviours that are no less painful than hearing “you are too fat.” A teenager starts receiving plates of food considerably smaller than what they been, or the plate is suddenly devoid of carbs of fats (both of which the body needs). A mother intentionally buys her son a new outfit for his spring concert that is at least a size too small, perhaps reassuring him that he can lose the necessary weight in no time.
The messaging that our weight is bad and embarrassing to the people who love us is so difficult to shake when imprinted in those formative years. It broke my heart to experience how true that was for the young adults sitting in my office, already with enough heaviness of life and its transitions on their plate.
The physical weight is never the problem. It’s the weight of perpetual anxiety over how a shirt fits today vs. last week; whether if the only thing available after studying is junk food, if I should eat at all; and the inevitable climactic anxiety: when I visit home this weekend how I will look compared to last time?
All of this sucks and is not right.
The Return to Self
Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley developed a concept called the “looking-glass self” to refer to the ways that our identity is shaped less by our own ideas and perceptions and more by the ideas and perceptions of others towards us. I am not who I think I am. I am who I think you think I am.
What a frightening confusing phrase on first hearing. I am who I think you think I am. Maybe some are agnostic to the thought. I am more wary, and I certainly don’t perceive it as an inevitably.
We can free ourselves from the reliance of our identity on the perceptions and value judgments of someone else. I really believe that, Erin. I am not there yet, but I am there enough to remind myself at key moments that it is possible, and within my power.
It is important, to the degree of your comfortability, to communicate to your mother how much her comments pain you, even if she thinks they are harmless. If your mother complains that you don’t visit enough, you are on more than firm ground to tell her why, even if other times or aspects of your visits are pleasant enough. If you talk to me like a bully, I’m not just going to overlook it because there are cookies in the oven and you mean well. These are more than reasonable boundaries for you to set.
But in the event that your mother refuses to hear you, and refuses to see a problem where there is one, I hope it is helpful to remember that “I am who I think you think I am” refers also to the people that brought us into this world. Whether your sense of how your mother thinks of you and your appearance are correct (ie. health concern motivated or concerned about the brand), you should not have to live so weighed down by the way she actually communicates and behaves.
Everybody and every body is good and beautiful in its own right. Fatphobia will likely remain so long as individuals and societies narrowly restrict what deserves those descriptors. Whatever happens, I hope to remind myself and all in similar circumstances that it is these attitudes that negatively impact society that need to change—not the size and shape of my body.
Yours in the letting go and loving ourselves,
Stu
Dear Stu is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Thanks for reading Dear Stu! Feel free to share this letter anywhere you like.
