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Old 11-03-2014, 10:00 PM   #9
candy_coated_bitch
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This very subject has been on my mind recently. I had an EXTREMELY fucked up childhood when it came to body image and body shaming. It's interesting because tonight I was texting with my mom and when I asked her how she was doing and one of her responses was "I'm feeling fat." Which I haven't heard her say in a long time and it kind of just sucker punched me in the gut. "Feeling fat" in our family, from her, is pretty much code for covering up any actual feeling. Instead of feeling sad, or depressed, or angry, or whatever--you just "felt fat." We didn't talk about actual feelings. Here are some choice bits from my childhood:

1) My mom struggled with her weight and was constantly dieting throughout my childhood. I remember her doing weight watchers when I was very little and she lost a bunch of weight. I'm pretty sure she did this partially by starving herself, and we had lots of diet food in the house. Everything was diet. Food was "bad". Eating was "bad". My mom also struggled with mental illness and frequently we didn't even have meals. I used to steal food from the cabinets and eat in secret when I was little, and sometimes hoard food in my room. Eating was shameful to me, something to be done in secret.

2) I grew up in a neighborhood with lots of kids. For some crazy reason, all the girls in the neighborhood were obsessed with weight (probably because of their mothers) and it was a regular occurrence for someone to drag a scale out of their house and demand that we all weight ourselves. I was a good head taller than other kids my age, and also just built differently--so I was always the heaviest and severely shamed for this. I was told I was disgusting and was often called fat by the kids in my neighborhood. I remember specifically one time I was walking down the street and everyone was throwing rocks at me and calling me a fat cow.

3) I started developing at a young age. I needed a bra when I was in fourth grade, and had an ass and hips and thighs at a time when all the other girls in my class were still flat as boards. I got made fun of for needing a bra. I began to obsess even more about how much I weighed and what size I wore. I remember being SO ashamed that I wore an adult women's size 8 in fourth grade. I no longer fit into kids clothes, and I was still living in this neighborhood with these girls harping on about how fat they were, when they were far tinier than me. I tried to hide my body, hide what size I wore, I stopped stepping on their scale.

4) When I was in fourth grade there was a boy who was particularly mean to me. One day I wore a new outfit to school that I loved and felt really good in, which was unusual. It was a purple plaid button down shirt that had a bow at the neck and lavender corduroy overalls that went over it. Yeah, in the 80's that was the shit LOL. Anyway, this boy was totally harassing me on my way home from school and he was calling me fat and making fun of my outfit. He picked me up and threw me into the bushes, in some mud. It ruined my outfit and I also got scratches everywhere from the bushes.

5) In fifth grade, I broke my leg and had to wear a cast up to my hip. I was at my friend's house and her big cousin was there. He said he wanted to sign the back of my cast, so I was laying on my friend's bed on my stomach. He started bouncing up and down on the bed and laughed at how the back of my thighs and my butt jiggled. I cried and yelled at him to stop, and I couldn't get away from him because of my broken leg. My friend laughed with him and I remember feeling incredibly betrayed.

6) My mom's weight went up and down throughout my childhood, and she always "felt fat", or was criticizing her body in some way. I don't remember her or my dad ever saying much about my weight when I was fat, but I was always praised when I lost weight, which was always from starving myself. I just learned to criticize my body from my mother, but it was other kids who were the most cruel. I also remember doctors constantly saying I needed to lose weight when I was a kid.

7) When I was in junior high most of my friends, with the exception of one, were a size zero. I wore a size 10-12. I weighed 135 pounds. I constantly felt enormous and disgusting and hated even standing near them because I was so big in comparison. I hated clothes shopping with them. I was constantly aware of my size and weight. I stopped eating lunch at school--I didn't want anyone to know I actually ate. I didn't deserve food because everyone else was so small and I was huge and disgusting.

8) When I was in high school I went dress shopping with my mom and grandmother. I was going to a Christmas dance. I found this beautiful short sleeved, dark green velvet dress. It was a size 14 and fit me like a glove. It showed off every curve and I was INCREDIBLY self-conscious. Most girls I knew did not have curves like that. My mom and grandmother were actually very encouraging. My grandmother told me I had a beautiful shape, and my mom kept telling how great the dress looked and how I had a lovely body and some boy was going to like those curves. I couldn't see it. All I could see was that the dress was a size 14 and I was not supposed to be that big. I bought that dress and went to that dance but I did not feel pretty. When I look at pictures from that night I basically had Marilyn Monroe's body LOL. Too bad I couldn't enjoy that.

9) I never dated in high school. I think partially because there was a dearth of people I'd actually be interested in (namely butches)--but I was also terrified of anyone touching me. I was afraid some boy would feel me up and figure out my breasts were really lopsided and tell everyone. And how could I ever have sex with a boy smaller than me? (To me--EVERYONE was smaller than me.) I thought about my thighs and my hips and about how no one would ever want to see that. I failed gym because I refused to go swimming. All the girls wore long t-shirts to swim, even the skinny ones. But I just couldn't make myself do it.

10) In college I lost a LOT of weight by not eating. And also because I got really sick for a long time. I got ton of compliments about how I looked, even though my weight loss was incredibly unhealthy. I went home to get surgery at one point and my parents noticed how much weight I lost and told me how great I looked. Even though I was home so sick I needed surgery.

The saddest part of all this is I probably have like 100 more horrible examples of how I have been body shamed in my formative years. How I was called fat or had different parts of my body picked apart, had to listened to my mom talk about how much she hated her own body. And that's not even to talk about the myriad of ways my body was violently and sexually violated. I don't even know how to begin to love my body, honestly.

How are you doing tonight, mom? "I'm feeling fat."
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