Help! I Have A Fatphobic Mom
Can you love your fatness the way you wish she could? The Advice Column.
Welcome back to Come Home: The Advice Column, where you have the answers.
This week’s submission:
CW: eating disorder, fatphobia, body dysmorphia
I’m fat and I have a fatphobic mom. Seeing the way she despises fatness is super hurtful because, in a way, I feel like she despises me. How do I navigate a relationship with her?
She doesn’t hate you. She hates herself. She hates having to show up for thinness - what she believes will grant her access to privilege and love and support in this life - even if it means sacrificing delicious meals with friends, wearing clothes she loves, and even her relationship with you. And now she hates how she “failed” you based on that skewed perception. She doesn’t know a world without fatphobia. She doesn’t know who she is when she looks in the mirror through any lens but fatphobia; none of us do. There is a chance you may have to learn to love yourself the way you wished she loved you, fatness and all, before you can build the kind of grace required to have a good relationship with her. You are teaching love to both of you now.
I mourn the childhoods of all people born to women who endured Denise Austin and Billy Blanks home workouts, Slim Fast and Bowflex ads, diet pill and appetite suppressant frenzies, and the glory days of literal cottage cheese. Most of our mothers’ first bullies were their mothers, compounded by the first “lose weight fast” infomercial they ever saw. Then they raised daughters whom they hoped would redeem their thwarted journey to skinny legendom. They have spent twice as much time as we’ve been alive hating themselves even in covert ways, and at some point, we have to relinquish control over changing their opinions of us and providing ourselves what they couldn’t.
My own mom fed me diet pills that made me dizzy all day in class and encouraged only eating one meal a day. When I was 14, she took me to Mexico to have a weight loss procedure performed which was illegal in the US. That’s somehow just the tip of the iceberg of the fuckery that occurred in my household in pursuit of thinness, and yet what hurts me most now are the moments when I cried out for reassurance I wouldn’t be disposed of like trash for being fat and my mother remained silent. The tests I presented wanting her to admit that my weight wasn’t a hinderance to her support, love, and pride which she failed every time.
I didn’t go to senior prom, instead attending a Weight Watchers meeting in a room full of 50 year olds because I couldn’t find a dress my size and I was the only one of my friends who wasn’t asked by a date. I didn’t get graduation pictures from my high school or university graduations because I hadn’t dieted prior. When I told my mom I wasn’t sure I wanted memories of my fatness, she agreed and I was crushed. I didn’t want her to understand. I wanted her to be outraged and tell me I better show up to life’s celebrations as I am, but she couldn’t even extend that grace to herself.
No matter how much of an overachiever I was, how responsible and polite I was, how much I forged a path of my own - I would never be granted access in a way she could understand or desire and I made it her problem. She was with me when I sobbed in department stores after the 15th prospective homecoming dress didn’t fit. She was with me when I was disappointed for not being hit on my boys. She was with me when those challenges never went away in adulthood. Every time I chose my hunger over the chance to fit in more clothes or have the thin experience, I saw the disdain in her eyes because in her mind - we both suffered.
I suspected she did hate me then. In the way she hated herself for not being able to fit in a size 2 dress for her annual holiday party, or never being in just the right shape in her mind to go on vacation, and simply letting every moment to celebrate her life’s accomplishments and the bliss of being alive pass her by until celebration simply stopped coming. She did hate me, in the way that hate is not necessarily lashing out violently, but watching someone you love poison themselves so you’re not sick alone. That hate is harder to pin, harder to hold accountable, harder to not feel is about you when it is absolutely not.
Here’s the thing - a lot of what our moms encouraged or did in pursuit of access for us was certainly neglect and could be classified as abuse. I feel that the experience of being neglected and abused by our own parents because of internalized fatphobia is so pervasive that we expect each other to just let it go and laugh about it. We forget healing and boundaries are required to stop neglecting ourselves, and perhaps preventing doing it to our own kids or the families we choose. In practicality, it would be helpful to state really clear boundaries about what you do and do not tolerate with your mother (warning: it is not easy and there will be adult tantrums.)
Statements To Set Boundaries With Your Fatphobic Mom:
“Hey, I love you and I don’t like when you talk about someone I love that way.” (In response to negative self-talk)
“I am no longer accepting comments on my body of any kind, and if you can’t respect that, we will have to re-evaluate the amount of time we spend together.”
“If you can’t withhold judgments on what I eat, then we will no longer be sharing meals or talking about food with each other.”
“There are some environments/trigger words/behaviors that send me back to a place where I don’t feel worthy/good in my body and I’d like to share those with you now - do you have the space to receive these without defensiveness?”
“I see your hurt too, and I’d really like to work on healing this wound with you. Is that something you’re interested in?”
“I choose to see myself differently than you might and I need you to respect this.”
“I don’t allow ugly comments about other people’s bodies around me. Thank you for honoring that.”
You’re Not Just Healing You By Healing You
I’m restoring the memories of my early life, the possibilities of my present and future, and performing necromancy on the lost joy of the women before me by abandoning my mother’s fatphobia.
My maternal grandmother was a frail woman who wore size large so nobody saw her actual silhouette. I would find out months before she passed away that she struggled with at least one eating disorder for decades, sneaking away to the bathroom after meals and watching others eat what she cooked most of the time. My mother, a thin white woman, followed in these footsteps. As much as she was my greatest champion as loving mothers are, she was my fiercest enemy. Nobody in this world made me feel less beautiful than the very woman who called me beautiful every day with an invisible and silent “and soon to be thin.”
Today, we’re on a few steps forward, couple steps back basis. Sometimes, she texts me to let me know she wore something she didn’t feel great in because she heard my voice. But mostly, she watches me create an entire life dismantling diet culture, internalized fatphobia, and negative self-perception, and even though she’s proud of me, she digs her heels in to her comfort zone when I contest the way she talks about me, herself, and others.
It occurs to me, after several months of not talking to my mother for many reasons including her internalized fatphobia and the subsequent neglect we’re still working through, that my mom - like most women - does not know who she is without fatphobia. Challenging her connection to white supremacy, fatphobia, and the male gaze is a challenge to everything which her self-esteem rests. It is a tall order to ask anyone, even our mothers, to relinquish the superiority complex they’ve built in defense of systems which harm and consume all of us. Even more than that, we’re asking them to define themselves outside of the parameters of worthiness their mothers established - which we know actively and viscerally is very painful and isolating because we’re doing it right now. You don’t just heal yourself in challenging your mother’s fatphobia - even in protest she is being healed, and so is her mother, and so is her mother whether they are alive or not.
Each phase of my youth is characterized by one fad diet and desperate weight loss attempt after the other, entirely encouraged and facilitated by my mother and I am so fucking angry at her for it. Young Kendra never rode bikes with friends, played games, or ran around with reckless abandon. Fear that the other kids would see my belly bulge and shake as I chuckled, or my legs jiggle when I ran and kicked, never allowed me the freedom. Dedicated to make up for lost laughs, I have spent the last couple of years trying to forgive myself for the countless moments of adolescent bliss I denied Young Kendra and have experienced an epiphany.
The hurt I have carried, manifesting as hate for the vessel which carries me through life, was never my own. I inherited it. Children pick up a million cues a day about who they are and who they should be, from their friends, teachers, siblings, the media (of course), and fundamentally their parents. I only have one parent, and she is everything I am not. The juxtaposition between us and our lived experiences made me resent so much of what I am, but especially - and above all else - fat. And all of this, because I was a child, is actually not my fault. It’s the fault of all of the adults around me, including my mom, and I’m both holding them accountable and setting myself free from that guilt and shame.
I wish someone would’ve told me honestly that I would be fat my whole life. I wish someone would’ve told me that I could be fat my whole life and I would still be deserving and receive all of life’s wonders. I wish someone would’ve told me I would need to imagine a life where absolutely nothing about my appearance changed. I would need to imagine what love looked like for fat Kendra, not theoretically skinny Kendra. Nobody told me this, so now I’m telling myself. I’m telling myself for me, so I don’t live in daily torment, at war with the healing powers of food and movement, and in conflict with divine purpose, and so I don’t need it from my mom anymore. So I can teach her how to love me again by example, and maybe love her a bit better too.
In this current stage of evolution into harmony with the vessel I was born in, I am met with an image of a younger self my heart weeps for, who wanted nothing more than to be told by a girl’s original archetype of beauty and grace - her mom - that she was enough. The woman who was everything I wasn’t, who shared this particular demon, could have never done that for me - and so I am choosing to end the pattern. I was born to love this body, to revel in its softness and strength, its capacity to both hold and be held gingerly. That may be in conflict with my relationship with my mother right now but it is worth it and I’m more willing to be in conflict with her than I am to be in conflict with myself.
And finally, in a long and deep exhale, I can release the tight contempt I’ve held in my arms, hips, and thighs - for they deserve to hang lax and fluid from my mother’s trauma. For it was just that - my mother’s - and never intended for me. Turns out the only excess baggage I was carrying were my mother’s insecurities and expectations for me to rectify them, and I had the power to set them down any time. For me, it’s time.
For you - it could be time too.
Journal Prompts
How am I still walking in my mother’s not-enoughness?
What inherited fatphobia am I perpetuating daily?
What are some points of progress I’ve made in releasing myself from inherited fatphobia?
Can I imagine a relationship with my mother as a happily fat person? What does that look like?
How do I still perceive myself as limited by my size?