Story # 8564721 in fat shaming.

[KentuckyWoman]

I have a minor acquaintance that comes to the community center and found out I can make Bengals cookies. I dropped them off and just as I got to the lady's house her daughter came to pick her up.

In under 5 min I counted 9 snotty comments about the daughter's weight. She looks to be in her 50s/60s and I'm guessing in the 300 pound range. Daughter did not even flinch. I'd guess she's used to it. As I was leaving I heard behind me

Daughter "Yeah, I got it cut this morning. I don't like it."
Mom "Well the hair is fine, it's your fat face that's the problem."

Involuntarily I turned around and the pain on that daughters face was so heart breaking - back turned to her mother. She saw the look on my face and maybe it helped. I doubt it.

I don't care if kids are 6 months or 60 years. A hateful parent can still cause pain.

Later I'll probably talk to the Mom. I doubt it will make any difference but I'm a firm believer of see something say something.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. God, what a rude mother. My heart goes out to the daughter. NT

[TygrBright]

2. So many parents instinctively believed that fat-shaming could make their kids get thin, I guess.

Never works, in my experience.

In fact, makes things worse, in my experience.

The parents who love their kids for themselves can learn better.

The parents who regard their kids as ego-extensions of themselves never will learn better.

sadly,
Bright

[KentuckyWoman]

4. Doctors aren't much better sometimes.

I got pretty big in my 30s/40's. Then came uterine cancer and they had to take out everything. My eating and activity habits did not change at all, but within 3 years after I was down to within "normal" range. I cannot overstate the difference of the experience with medical professionals before and after.

I don't know why people think cruelty would ever make anyone feel better about their appearance.

[Ms. Toad]

9. Yup.

My weight, unfortunatey, varies considerably. So when I am "normal" weight I get a peek into how "normal" weight people are treated - not just by medical professionals, but everywhere. The world is a very different place.

Even when I am at my heaviest, my cholesterol and blood pressure are normal and there is no calcification of my heart arteries. I can control my diabetes at any weight by spreading a modest amount of carbs out over the day (My A1C ranges from 5.7-6.3, even when I'm "obese," without any significant medication (a single 500 gram Metformin once a day (the normal starting does is 500 mg x 2/day - usually escalating to 1000 mg x 2 per day)). And with a BMI of 32, I rode my bike 150 miles, over two days for my 65th birthday in September.

So, literally, the only thing that changes is my weight - which, alone, in the eyes of far too many medical professionals = unhealthy when I am at my peak weight, despite all markers to the contrary.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

28. I found this tobe true also

When I was fat all kinds of bigotry.

I lost the weight got diabeties and they act like I have redeemed myself from fatness.

Its disgusting.

I found doctors that treat me with respect. Dont settle for the fat shaming assholes.

[Dorian Gray]

12. Almost always makes it worse.

[MLAA]

3. You go for it Kentucky Woman!

What a terrible person it takes to be cruel to her own daughter.

[Deep State Witch]

5. My Mother Would Do This To Me, Too

Every time I would go home to visit, the first thing out of her mouth would be "You've gained weight".

[Dorian Gray]

13. Had a similar relationship

It’s tough to maintain boundaries and a relationship.

What’s funny is i when I lost weight she started telling me I was too thin. criticism like that is a control thing.

But parents should give us the tools to thrive, not defeat us. I’m sorry that you experienced that. That I have. And that the daughter in this OP did.

[Hekate]

21. My mother hated her own body, probably from childhood. She could not stop commenting abt weight

Last edited Sun Feb 13, 2022, 07:21 PM - Edit history (1)

She’d been described as a “big girl,” which I guess was a euphemism for fat, and it hurt. Well, she wasn’t. She’d just managed to have the misfortune to hit her full growth (5’8”) at age 10, and it came with a set of breasts that in adulthood were quite large, and at age 10 put a stop to her jump-roping because the bouncy-bouncy was really noticeable. She didn’t become seriously overweight until midlife.

Somewhere in there was the woman who taught me not to judge others, to be kind to others, and gave me the grounding and the security every child needs to thrive. She was so many wonderful things as a mother (and now that she’s been gone over 10 years, I am able to start remembering why I loved her so much).

Then there was the woman who came back from a visit with a cousin and told me she’d become as broad as the side of a barn. Who couldn’t take it that one of my best friends at my new community college weighed in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. Who couldn’t stop telling me how lucky I was to be flat-chested, but that my hips were “um, very womanly.” (Our body types were totally different: I grew slowly and topped out at 5’4”, I matured slowly and always looked younger than my age) Who walked behind me when I was 9 months pregnant and said my butt looked like two cats fighting in a croker-sack. Who always made sure to remind me how much I gained when I reached midlife.

It went from cognitive dissonance to real pain to a realization that — she hated her own body. It still hurt.

Her obsession — and it was an obsession — caused me to think about weight a lot more than I might ever have otherwise. Her early teachings as a mother colored those later observations, in that I always looked past the exterior that when choosing friends — intelligence, wit, humor, kindness, and a certain sparkle in the eyes, are always what I see first in those dear to me. Weight gain is not a moral failing, and weight loss is not a moral virtue.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

30. My mom

Was always commenting on my weight.

Before the weight when I was 13,I heard it all the time about my gorgeous figure I looked like raquel welch ect.ect.

Men would ogle whistle,yell lookit those titties and I just wanted to kill myself.

I was fucking 13 and men the age of my father would gaze and tell me how sexy I was.

The most painful thing is I identified as male. The only way out my body got fat. Psych meds helped the pounds grow.

When I was 21 the weight was coming off I was in a psych housing place. Some guys there attempted to rape me.
I wasent in control of how much I ate there.I had the same amount of food as when I was thin.

You got a plate and that was it.

But I went up 3 pants sizes in less than a month.

[Ocelot II]

6. Fat-shaming never made anyone lose weight.

And fat people already know they're fat; they don't need others to remind them. People can be awfully mean sometimes.

[ForgedCrank]

7. Now don't get the wrong

idea about what I am about to say here because there is no real excuse for this sort of behavior, just getting that out of the way.
However, some (maybe most? I don't know) of these people think they are actually helping by trying to apply pressure to people who are overweight. We all know it's extremely unhealthy, and we all want our friends and family to be healthy, and we want them to be happy.
I do believe that in most, or at least a lot of these cases, people feel like it is some sort of "tough love" operation that they are working on. I've been the target of it myself in past years.
Again, no, it's wrong. I used to be overweight. When you are overweight, you already know it, you know it every minute of every day. People don't need to be reminded, the internal pressure is bad enough. There are more moving pieces involved here than some people realize. In my case, food was incorrectly used as a stress coping mechanism. It took me a long time to overcome that. And not unlike being a drug addict or alcoholic, I don' think the urge to eat when stressed will ever leave me. I have to wage that war every single day of my life, and having people shame me or make comments only added to the stresses.
If you are one of these people, your intentions may be good, but they are also misguided. Please don't do it.

[Ms. Toad]

10. Same here -

So all of the tricks based on hunger (keto, eat slowly and only until you're full) don't work for me - since I don't even experience hunger.

My eating was (unconsciously) a way to make myself invisible to men inclined to sexual harassment. (I was raped in an encounter which started as street harassment.) It took me two decades before I recognized why I kept myself fat.)

By then I'd developed eating habits more suited to keeping me fat than not. Now that I know the source, I can counter the habits intellectually. But when I'm stressed - like say, a boss firing me out of the blue for no reason that he or anyone else can explain - it takes more effort than I can muster to overcome the habits I've developed over the years.

The good news is that I converted a termination into a retirement, and in 47 days the stress of living with a boss who disparages me for not doing enough will be gone. The process of replacing him was an enormous boost - I'm high enough that I was in on some very blunt conversations with his potential replacements. It's very clear that everyone hated his management style. I just have to get through the next 47 days of watching the destruction his choice to dump me is causing in the lives of those who count on me. Once that is done my life will be relatively stress free.

[Croney]

8. So the mother could be around 80 years old.

They've been playing these same parts for decades. She's lucky her daughter still comes around at all.

[llmart]

14. I have an 83 year old female neighbor.

She has two daughters and she is absolutely obsessed with overweight people. She's always telling me about how she thinks this one or that one is putting on weight. This woman has told me several things over the years I've known her. She went on a diet when she was 79 and at a very normal, healthy looking weight. She said she would only have a slim fast for lunch and a hotdog for dinner. She kept a notebook with every morsel she ate in it. She's also obsessed about her makeup, her hair, her clothes, etc. One year I took her to a very nice restaurant for her birthday which was in the winter. I picked her up and she had on fashion boots with 3 inch heels and the sidewalks were icy. This was about 6 months after she'd had a heart attack. I thought she looked ridiculous in those boots. She had to cling to my arm to get to the door. I always felt sorry for her daughters. One of them said to me once, "welcome to what it was like growing up with her".

I have a daughter and am a lifelong feminist, and I made it a point to never criticize anything about her appearance. She's never been overweight and never been obsessed with dieting or exercise and has had no eating disorders. Mothers especially have to be very aware of what they say to their daughter and what kind of behavior they model for their daughters. Never once in my life did I utter the words out loud, "I need to go on a diet." I've had a time or two when I needed to lose a few pounds, but I didn't act like it was a big deal or announce it in front of my children.

[Dorian Gray]

11. You're a good woman

Please show love to the daughter if she comes in again. And if you can say something to the mom, maybe hearing it from an outsider will land.

We say many things casually that can cause damage to others. I’ve come around to holding people accountable for their words.

[bullwinkle428]

15. I have an elderly Mom who has always been hyper-critical of overweight

people, and this attitude goes back as long as I can recall. Now, thanks primarily to "genetic luck of the draw", I've remained tall and lean throughout my life. Because of that, I've never been a target of her words, at least in that regard.

Here's the ironic part - she totally views food as love, and is constantly pushing food on me. If it was up to her, I would be eating way more than I do when I'm on my own. But I'm forced to politely decline on a regular basis. Her dog does NOT have that ability, and as a result, he ended up getting seriously overweight. It wasn't until he began having mobility issues related to joints last year that she got a clue about the situation, and following her vet's advice, altered his diet to the point where I was happily shocked by his weight loss when I made my most recent visit. We live 700 miles apart, which limits the frequency of our visits.

[AZLD4Candidate]

16. My grandmother told me I was the worst writer she ever read. I was nine at the time

My father made me believe I'd never amount to anything and took delight in tearing me down when I could never reach his insane expectation. He was also physically abusive too.

You live with it your entire life.

[niyad]

17. A very dear friend has had weight issues all her life (now 71). Her father actually

told her when she was about 6 that he abhorred fat people. She was put on a diet BY HER DOCTOR at 9 of 500 calories per day. She had nephritis before she was seven. To this day, she is not comfortable around food, has weight and health issues, not to mention self-esteem issues that years of therapy have not resolved. It is a wonder to me that she has made it this far. Yet, with all of this, she is one of the kindest, most generous, most caring people I know, and very smart and talented, though she gives herself NO credit.

To all who do this to your children: SHAME ON YOU. May you receive everything you deserve.

[KentuckyWoman]

32. Abused children

don't generally grow up to hate their abuser. They grow up to hate themselves.

[soldierant]

18. As with every form of child abuse,

people tend to do to their children what was done to them. Breaking that chain can be done, but it is extremely difficult - and it really ca't be done if one doesn't grasp that there is a chain that needs to be broken.

That diesn't excuse fat shaming. It does tend to explain it, however.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

31. I broke the chain

By not having kids. Never wanted to bring an innocent into this sick sad world full of too many monsters. I never was going to put myself in the position of raising kids. The stress would have done me in.

[soldierant]

34. My Mom broke the chain.

She - and her mother before here - had their eard "boxed." By the time each reached the age i am now, each had been nearly deaf for years. Mom lived to 93 and the last time her hearing was evaluatied, it was 90% loss, and that was with hearing aids. I used to worry about losing my hearing ... but it turned out it wasn't the hearing loss that was hereditary, it was the abuse.

But Mom never laid a hand on me. Granted some of the sessions of reasoning with me I wished I could just be spanked, but it was what it was.

And I never had kids. (There were a number of reasons, but one was I didn't think I could live up to her as a parent.) My husband says he never really realized what love is until he met my Mom.

[Farmer-Rick]

19. Geez, that is so sad

My mother has always been critical of overweight people. Which is kind of strange because she was usually around 300 pounds at 5 feet 5 inches. She had a serious issue with fat women but knew the hurt from rude comments made to her. Yet she made the same comments to other people without a second thought. I once heard her call Marilyn Monroe fat.

I quit smoking years ago. But when I first quit, I gained about 60 pounds that I lost over the following 2 years. I was not in the 200s pound range but was getting close. I did get a belly from not smoking anymore. Well, when my Mom saw me she made some rude comments about my weight, over and over again. She knew I was quitting but that never stopped her. Luckily I didn't care. I knew what caused it and I knew it would come off.

When my daughter was about 10, she gained some weight, as do most young girls before puberty. For the first and only time in her life she was overweight. My daughter is a perfectionist and I knew she would not be able to take my mother's comments on her weight. I was afraid of an eating disorder.

So, before my mom saw my daughter during a visit, I sat my mother down and told her not to say a word about my daughter's weight. Come to find out my mother thought rude comments about others' weight would help them work harder on losing the weight. So I asked her if it had ever worked on her. That shut her up and she never made any comments to my beautiful daughter.

And my daughter developed into a very lovely woman with no weight or eating issues.

[Aussie105]

20. Moms can be so nasty . . .

They can rip into their offspring like nothing on Earth - something they would not think of doing to a stranger or more distant relative.

Sometimes though, the criticism has a hidden message, like 'You are ignoring me too much' or 'You have become too independent'.

It's meant to reaffirm that childhood dependance and mother-child bond, but it just has the opposite effect.
That's my guess anyway.

As a father myself though, I've cut loose from any criticism of offspring. I just want them to be healthy, stable people and cope well with an adult world.
And being independent of your parents is very much part of that.

My wife is extremely critical of her side of the family - second marriage for both of us - and she doesn't seem to be able to cut away from the idea she cannot dictate their lives for them.

Yes, they make decisions sometimes that neither of us approve of, like some thinking Covid is just a beat-up and vaccinations aren't necessary, but it's their choice, their consequences if things go wrong.

Fingers crossed things don't go wrong there.

[Moebym]

22. I've been the target of countless fat-shaming comments in my lifetime

Some were microaggressions, some not.

Most were from my parents.

They have eroded my self-esteem to almost nothing, and I doubt I'll ever get back what I've lost.

[70sEraVet]

23. Being overweight is not necessarily a big problem

My wife is in a range they call 'obese'. It's a little absurd to use that term; she runs 3 miles every other day for exercise, and has been doing that for several years. Fortunately, our family doctor is blessed with common sense, and he tells her that he isn't overly concerned about her weight. He also told her that she is one of his patients that he expects to live into her hundreds. He never said that about me!

[Hekate]

24. Okay, what are Bengals cookies?

[KentuckyWoman]

33. Cincinnati Bengals

They were in the superbowl. The city was insane over it. I have a B cookie cutter and used it to make cookies with the Bengals' B logo. The B on my cutter is a little different but hey, free cookies.

?w=1200

[Bettie]

25. Wow, a thread about fat people with no one bashing them!

My mother, grandmothers, etc. were all horrible about my weight.

None of them knew, noticed, or cared that my father was sexually abusing me from the age of 3 until I could leave the house at 18.

There was no one to tell, no one to save me, because no one talked about it at that time. I used to wish he'd just beat me because then someone would care.

So, yeah, I'm fat, and I've got a good life now, a great husband who loves me the way I am, three boys who are kind to everyone, and a good life. I'll take being fat over abuse any day of the week.

I wish more people realized that weight is not an indicator of value, but too many people think a thin body equals personal virtue.

I bet you showing that you didn't approve of what her mother said did help.

[Meowmee]

26. So sad

I hope you talking to them will help. I would talk to the daughter too.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

27. Tear that mom down for her looks

Until it gets under that exterior pose..then go in for the kill when she cracks tell her this is how her daughter feels after you fat shame her.


Or shes just another narcissistic waste of skin.

[nini]

29. The mom is abusive

I can’t imagine how bad it was growing up with her as a parent.

[Maru Kitteh]

35. Toxic parenting. I'll bet that "mother" doesn't have the guts to humiliate

or attempt to humiliate anyone else she didn't groom for a lifetime to accept that abuse.

I'm so incredibly lucky not to have had the mother I did. I can't even imagine that kind of deep scarring and pain.