What do our mothers pass onto us?

What do our mothers pass onto us?

My mum passed on the hatred of one's body to me.

Not intentionally, of course, she is none other than the best, most loving mum in the universe, but, nevertheless, through her own body dissatisfaction, I learnt what I should hate about mine. 

Without realising it, my mum was a vessel that forecasted what I was going to become. She was a living template for what my developed body would look like. So, when she expressed discontent with her body - that she hated her ‘wobbles’, that she had to get rid of her cellulite like it was a disease, that she ‘couldn’t wear shorts’ because of her thighs, a bikini because of her tummy, or a strappy top because of her arms…she was teaching me to critique my body with the same malice. I learnt that if I too, wore a size 12 and failed to have rock-solid thighs, I should be unhappy and ashamed.

 Of course it wasn’t my mother’s fault that she passed this onto me. She, too, was brought up in a rampant diet culture, that taught her to be ashamed of her body, and absorbed the messages that her mother passed onto her.

Body-shame is a disease passed down through generations of women like breast cancer, and pursuing thinness, is treated as the equivalent to checking one’s breasts for lumps; a necessary precaution to prevent the despair that inevitably comes with an ‘imperfect’ body. The strict rationing of sweets and chocolate, the judgements parents make about food, comments on weight and shape, and the modelling of restrictive diets and exercise regimes, all comes from a place of fear. Mothers are scared shitless that we are going to grow and grow, get bullied for our bodies, be forever alone and miserable (FATPHOBIA). They believe it will then be their fault for telling us where the Digestives were hidden when they were meant to be STRICTLY FOR FRIDAYS…and, to be honest, who can blame them? They’ve been taught, just as we have, that thinness = success, and that anything other than thinness is an embarrassment. It’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to bear the guilt of their child’s societal rejection. So they pass on this guilt to us.

The issue is, the restrictions imposed on children, in a disordered attempt to prevent a never-ending consumption of sugar, actually increases the likelihood of those said children trying to satisfy their cravings in secret, and in abundance (ie binge-like behaviours). This isn’t because we are inherently driven to consume as much chocolate and cake as we possibly can (which is what diet culture likes us to believe). It's because when our bodies’ cravings are shoved underwater with rules and restrictions, they will naturally want to push towards the surface and take huge gasps of air, or in this case, sugar, whenever they get the chance, in fear of it being the last time they will ever be listened to (Why Diets Don't Work). There’s a reason it's always the kids with strict parents going bat-shit crazy on the cake and biscuits at birthday parties. This phenomena is often taken as proof for the need to keep children on tight dietary leashes, but in actual fact, the reason the kids are driven to essentially binge, is due to the restrictions on those foods at home. Their bodies are screaming for sugar and fat, and consuming it in abundance while they can. Withholding certain foods not only induces these disordered binge-restrict cycles from a worryingly young age, but with the labels of “bad”, “naughty”, or “special treat”, kids learn from their mothers that the food they eat has moral value, which lays a perfect foundation for a fucked up relationship with food and their bodies. 

Guilt should never be modelled as an appropriate, or healthy emotion to attach to food. We have diet culture in the media telling us all that eating carbohydrates should come with a lorry-load of shame…the last thing we need is our closest role models sending us the same message.

My mum wasn’t quite as draconian around food in the house as some were, and maybe yours wasn’t either, but something everyone experienced, was the daily-diet-culture-orgy amongst the mothers whilst they dropped off, or picked up their cherubs in the school playground. It was toxic female competition at its finest, with the conversations going one of three ways:

The Deprivation Competition:

“Oh, you eat breakfast? I just can’t in the run up to Christmas”, “A coffee is tempting, but I know I will cave and get the croissant and I’m trying to be good at the moment”, “No carbs for me, this weight isn’t going to shift itself!”, “Oh it was no problem, Lily was a delight, I hope you don’t mind I just got the girls some oven pizza for supper… I stayed on the salad of course!”…

The Confession Session:

“I was a bit naughty and allowed myself a slither of birthday cake, but once a year won’t do too much damage.”, “God we were so bad last night, why did you let me order pudding! That’s the diet down the drain!”, “Keep me away from the bake sale, cupcakes are my weakness”…

The Exercise Comparison:

“I’m off for a run, got to burn off those Easter eggs!”, “You should come to Legs, Bums and Tums with me, Savanna, the instructor has worked wonders on my baby weight.”… (Why is exercise so hard?)

You never knew who the next weakest link was going to be, they all fell off and clambered back onto the ‘band wagon’ several times a week. What was plain to see, was that proving one’s starvation led to a reaction of envy and admiration, whilst confessing one’s indulgence, created pity, and a silent smugness from those who had managed to cling onto their punitive diets one day longer. This again, was passed onto the children listening in. We were all mindlessly absorbing this everyday. Through these daily conversations, we picked up the hyper-normalisation of restrictive behaviours, the need for “discipline" around portion sizes, and the fact that having a baby was a “death sentence” for your body.

The requirement of women/girls to suppress our instincts and appetites was modelled as part of growing up.

I don’t want to give you a vendetta against your own Mum by painting the picture that she was the root of all your deepest insecurities, because it really isn’t her fault. Even without social media, diet culture has been a driving force in their lives almost as much as ours. Dieting and staying small is practically a 20th century female survival instinct and they want to protect us. Anyway, diet culture would be sure to introduce itself into our lives no matter how our parents behaved around food. It is impossible to block it out.

However, we are a product of our surroundings, and growing up, seeing those you love and trust subscribing to a belief system that tells us all to hate ourselves unless we are ‘thin’, and using certain behaviours to adhere to that system, is going to rub off on you. (Can I not be a natural Kim Kardashian?) You are too, going to feel subconsciously attached to that belief system.

Hating ourselves is learned behaviour. We didn’t come out of the womb wishing our thighs were smaller. Just like sexist bigots didn’t come out telling the mid-wife to ‘smile more’. As I would tell boys not to refer to girls as if they were meat just because their Dad does, I will ask you not to be a cunt to your body, just because your mum was to hers. There was never anything wrong with her thighs, and there is nothing wrong with yours.