The Weight Debate
I thought a little more about what I wrote last night about my mother and my weight.
My point to her is I don’t think she has any right to continuously call me fat. I don’t care if I’m 90lbs or 400lbs, it’s just wrong. If she was genuinely concerned about my health and was discussing that with me it’s one thing, but to constantly walk through stores with me looking at clothes telling me I’m fat isn’t.
She wonders why I hate shopping with her. She wonders why I never wear the clothes she buys. No matter how many times I tell her what size I wear she still insists on buying me something 2 sizes bigger because I’ll “grow into it”. I ask her not to even buy me clothes, she still does it. I donate them all to Goodwill with tags still on them. There’s someone out there less fortunate than me who will be greatful to have the clothes, and they’re not hanging in my closet as a constant reminder of what my mother thinks about me.
To me people like that are what drive so many young girls to eating disorders. I think the only reason it didn’t happen to me was because I was the young acne prone skinny girl who struggled to gain weight, not lose it. I wore baggy clothes year round because I wanted to hide the fact that I had this stick thin body that I felt uncomfortable with. I was happy when I started filling out.
I think what pisses me off the most about my sister and her weight gain isn’t the fact that she’s gained weight. It’s the fact that my mom doesn’t say one word to her even though she badgers me constantly. My sister was the bigger girl as a teenager, but she was never fat. Honestly she was about the size I am now.
Then when she went on her thyroid medication her weight dropped drastically. She became too skinny. Now that she’s overweight my mom won’t even help her stick with her diabetic diet. What bothers me is the double standard. I don’t want anyone calling my sister fat, and I don’t tell her she’s fat. I just think if my mom is so worried about my weight she needs to be trying to help my sister be healthy instead of having this double standard.
I don’t think she has a right to constantly torment either one of us about our weight. Honestly, it makes me ashamed that I have to call someone like that my mother. I have to wonder why she does this, though. Is it because she struggled with her own weight for so many years? She was also that stick thin girl in her younger years. She didn’t gain much weight with me, and she lost it all shortly after her pregnancy. She kept her body until she got pregnant with my sister, then she gained a lot of weight that she struggled with until my sister and I were almost adults. No one ever heckled her though.
