Why Do The Women In My Family Insist On Talking About Weight?
Breaking Free From Focusing On ‘Fat’
I’ve had an up and down relationship with my weight since childhood. I developed an eating disorder in my teens that plagued me until my early twenties when I was, with the help of counselling, able to get a grip on it. Since then, it’s reared its ugly head from time to time, but overall, I consider it to be in the past.
Which is why it is so frustrating to me that the women in my family continue to focus on weight. Women’s weight, in particular.
I must have been around nine or ten when I first became aware of my weight, my size. I developed early. I grew breasts and started my periods at age eleven. Both of my sisters were skinny children and slim, petite young women. We had totally different body types and I always knew that mine was considered less desirable.
Awful phrases from my childhood and teenage years have stuck in my head and refused to shift. Female relatives talking about my shape in front of me, comparing me to my sisters. I remember my Nan, who I adored, describing my sister with, ‘nice things come in small packages’ and me with, ‘it’s just puppy fat.’ Ugh. Puppy fat. I used to hear that so often. Big, was the other one. ‘You’re just big, or big-boned’. In a weird way, it was like the…
