Inherited Insecurities

I was seated at the dining room table, having breakfast alone when my nine-year-old walked in the room. She was still wearing her nightgown, but of course, she had nothing on her feet. It was chilly in the dining room and she wanted to stay and chat with me, so I said to her, "Go upstairs and put something on your feet and your chicken legs." She feigned hurt feelings, drama queen that she is, as she sauntered up the steps to comply with my request.

While I sat there, alone again, I realized that though I didn't actually hurt her feelings, I may have made her self-conscious about having skinny legs. I may have thought of it as a harmless joke, but maybe it wasn't so harmless.

When I was a little girl, I was teased about my thin frame all the time. Chicken Legs, Olive Oyl, Skinny Minnie, I heard it all. And those were just the names my friends called me. If I put my hands on my hips, my mother would say, "Girl, get your hands off your imagination." You see, in my neighborhood, being "thick" was something to which one should aspire. Men and boys alike would drop their jaws at the sight of a woman with thick thighs, big hips, and a rotund backside. I didn't have any of those things, so while my feelings weren't exactly hurt by the skinny jokes, I didn't think I had the right kind of body. I wanted to have all the boys looking at me when I walked down the street. I wanted to be thick. (As an aside, I later received all that attention from boys when my boobs came in. I didn't like it. I still don't like it.)

Can you imagine wanting to gain weight? I spent years of my life eating excessively so I'd gain weight, and now I spend a large chunk of my time trying to stop eating excessively so I'll lose weight. Somewhere in the midst of all those skinny jokes, I received a message that my body wasn't good enough. How does a woman reprogram herself? When all the information you receive tells you that your "ideal" weight is 130 pounds and you are not even close to that, how do you feel good about the body you have?

When you find the answer to that one, let me know, will you?

I put forth a lot of effort trying to prevent my weight issues from becoming my daughter's. I've stopped calling myself fat. I threw away my scale. I try to make it seem as if weight and body size are no big deal. That's the way I want to feel. That's the way I want her to feel. Then I hear myself teasing her about her size and I realize that I'm doing the same thing to her that was done to me. I may not have the quick-fix for me, but I have a good idea of how to fix it for my daughter: stop it before it starts.

When she returned to the dining room, now clad in super skinny (yes, that's a cut of pants now) jeans and flip flops, I apologized to her. I explained to her how I was once her size and people teased me, which caused me to be obsessed with my weight. Now 30 years later, I'm obsessed with the opposite spectrum of my weight. I told her there is nothing wrong with being thin and that she is perfect just as she is.

Now if we could only get her mother to learn that lesson...