no boys allowed in the room!!!!

When my dad felt qualified to pass judgment on a Hollywood star who has been kinda famously thin, in a movie that was, what, like 20 years old?? from the comfort of his spacious living room couch in front of a big-screen tv (which had the aspect ratio off, btw, which is probably why she seemed "wide" if at all), I just wanted to hit him with bricks until he was sorry enough for me to feel like stopping.

It's often about parents' own fears.

Whoa, yeah, that is super true. I wrote some examples but it felt like therapy but this has been OTM in my experience with my mom.

Anyway, for all of her issues that she tried hard to foist on me during my childhood, my mom is a pretty reasonable person and she loves me a lot so the last time I regained all the weight I lost on a diet and she started in with the concern-trolling, I just told her that I am never going on another diet again, and that my weight was not now nor would it ever be an appropriate topic for discussion. And to her credit, she dropped it.

Ongoing training includes me telling her that it's not okay to use "fat" as an insult against someone that she is angry at (Actual conversation: "The problem isn't that he is fat, Mom. The problem is that he is an asshole." "He's a fat asshole!"), that she needs to stop calling herself fat because she used to wear a size 4 and now, at 63, wears a six or sometimes *gasp* an 8, or at least stop doing that around me.

Haha I just realized that my mom concern-trolls the ENTIRE WORLD about their weight. "It's so sad that she's freakishly successful and happy and yet larger than a size 10."

Laurel, yeah that is just straight up ridiculous. What happens when you say something, because I know you do?

Your parents are really awesome and industrious people, but they don't seem to have a real appreciation for diversity of lifestyle, yknow? I've been fortunate that my parents accepted a long time ago to expect me to do my own thing instead of what they or other people think I should be doing and that this will NEVER CHANGE so they have to either love me anyway, or stop talking to me. Fortunately, they continue to choose to put up with me.

Carl, your patience is an inspiration.

yeah my mom is a big lady and her mom was a really tiny lady. i know she essentially had an eating disorder in high school ("before it was called that"). she once criticized beyonce's thighs when she popped up on TV. i was in hell

My strategy for when my parents ask about my weight is to act like it's not something I've ever heard of before. "Oh what? Weight? I'm not sure. Who knows? I don't really think about it." Though they're pretty nice about it and I think they both think it's one of those small talk topics like the weather.

They're not so much into diversity at all! I went to the beach w my mom and a group of young people was next to us and some of them were not white and some of them were not thin and my mom said, "Those must be camp counselors from Local Fine Arts Camp. They're not from here." And I realized on layover in Cleveland that one way you know you're out of West Michigan is that there are non-white people in public again.

Which is not to erase the lives of non-white people in W MI. Just feeling cynical.

xp A lot of my mom's anxiety about my appearance (and personality) came from a place of "SHE WILL NEVER FIND A MAN" anxiety, and since Jeff hasn't divorced my fat ass, I think she's mellowed on the topic some anyway. Also: therapy forever

"Oh what? Weight? I'm not sure. Who knows? I don't really think about it."

In my case, this isn't a lie. I threw out my bathroom scales (which were notoriously off - they used to make my bandmates cry. And most fucked up of all, these were given to my by my then-boyfriend's mother in a really bizarre OOC bit of meanness, but she probably didn't mean it as meanness) 3 years ago and I have not known my weight since then. I go on the scales at my doctor backwards. I've just found weight concern-trolling so damaging, I just literally do not want to know.

i feel like my sis and i get the most guff from my mom (in general, not about weight) and we are the two without kids.

x-post oh god don't even get me going on "she will never find a man" anxiety.

I am overweight. I am single and planning on staying that way. I am a complete failure of humanity. It's so hard to decouple these thoughts.

I worry way more about getting old (and therefore less desirable) than fat. My body aging makes me pretty sad, actually, because there's no one who remembers me when I was young and had no stretch marks or cellulite and was fresh and blushy and whatever young people are. Anyone I meet from now on can only know me as I am now, which is less lovely and more used-up than I was then. They can love me for my mind instead, but my body will always be a compromise. This actually had me falling apart a little on Saturday.

Welcome to my therapy!

In my experience a thing that's just as bad as the negative comments about weight is the amount of praise that people (parents and otherwise) give to other people who have lost weight. From the reactions of people the two times that I lost significant amounts of weight in my life you would have thought I'd won a freaking noble prize or something.

Yeah for real!

It just serves to reinforce the whole skinny is good/fat is bad, diets are good and being successful at one makes you a disciplined and worth person stuff which in turn has made me have an extremely fucked up atttitude towards food which are all either "good" or "bad" in my mind. Not in taste, mind you, but in value. I hate this shit and the sheer about of time it takes up in my thoughts/life etc. Bah.

It's fraught for everyone, that much I know for sure.

it = this issue of bodies/eating/foods/other people

I know I have said it before but the amount of praise my mom gets for having a weird, mysterious degenerative disease that's cause her to slowly drop more and more weight makes me absolutely vitriolic. She's done nothing in her life but help others and it's those same recipients of that help who aren't praising her for her selfless volunteerism, but for losing weight. Which comes with it a lost ability to carry things or stand for long periods of time.

body policing is so fucking awful. i'm thankful that my family isn't that bad (or that direct) with weight issues, anyway. what hell.

my mom was going on vacation in alaska and was commenting on her 'blubber' and how she'd fit right in with the whales they'd be watching and...wtf. she's become a size 10 these days and is 70 yrs old. i should have pointed out to her that she wears the same size as me, but i'm always just so boggled at such comments that i don't respond.

many xps "more used-up than I was then." oh god i hate this term.

hey can i share something that is not related just as a small intermission?

i have been sorting this huge box of photos and found a bunch of pics of political people and volunteers and parties and meetings from the late 70s/early 80s so i have been posting the pics here http://campaigners70sand80s.tumblr.com/

peruse if you like to look at unprofessional snapshots of natural 70s people engaging with each other

x-post to Abbott - Yeah, you have. It's so completely fucked up and infuriating. It makes me really sad for you/your mom. Sometimes I think I could seriously write a book detailing the differences in the way people treat you and the things they think it's OK to do/say when you're skinny v. chubby (The fact that I'm 5'10" (well nearly) and the largest I ever was was a 16 is a whole other fucking issue that def says something fucked up about our expectations of women and weight).

LL that's a great tumblr! I love old pics and I love your love for old pics. When I worked at a newspaper at age 18 my favorite thing was raiding the box of ancient, unclaimed photos. They're not at my house but when I get them back I should post some of them.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6adhjEt5u1rzge1ho1_500.jpg

nice arms, eh?

Yeah, I love that shit. Otherwise discarded photos of real people. Thanks for looking!

xps shit, abbott. that's awful about your mom.

(i went thru a size 2 phase thanks to my health ish and SO many ppl said i looked great. ugh. i looked absolutely skeletal, and i knew it, but it fucked with my head.)

One of my very first jobs was scanning fingerprints for the NY DCJS. It was an awful job, but the mug shots from old arrest records almost made up for it. We did a box from the 30s/40s that was just incredible.

Woah, that's awesome.

In my experience a thing that's just as bad as the negative comments about weight is the amount of praise that people (parents and otherwise) give to other people who have lost weight.

O! T! M!

So like five years ago I took myself out of the game and quit dieting and also decided that I wasn't going to participate in diet talk (or I'm so fat conversations, or I was so bad I ate a brownie conversations). And it is SO CONFUSING to people! It's kind of hilarious, actually, although refusing to engage in these conversations and letting the other people be confused by it goes against all of my training and inclination as a person who makes social situations work.

xp that dude looks like jjjusten a little bit.

lol I was thinking he looks like Jason Lee but Jjjusten looks like Jason Lee so that makes sense.

Ha, yes.

Whoa WCC mugshots? that kind of thing totally makes me drool.

my personal favorite

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6ad0snN2X1rzge1ho1_500.jpg

Well YEAH! He's cute even by contemporary standards.

That guy is cute.

lol x-post

he has a nice smile

Lots of those campaigners are cute!

Maybe I just like the '70s Kurt Vonnegut look

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6adk2Pw0H1rzge1ho1_r1_500.jpg

some more mugshots for you, LL, here: http://thehairpin.com/2012/06/are-you-allowed-to-smile

I do too -- my love for Donald Sutherland in the 70s is well documented, I'm afraid.

Another topic: I went on vacation by myself recently for the first time ever in my life and it was so incredibly fun. Even though on the plane I kept thinking of crazy Lise's encounter with a macrobiotics flame in The Driver's Seat. Staying in a hotel by myself, flying by myself, doing what I wanted when I liked – all a blast. I think if I ever get in a relationship again I'll still take vacations by myself. I like the feeling of being a woman just having fun by myself and deciding shit!

OMG there are few things I love in life as much as taking vacations by myself. BIG FAN, lifelong devotee!

Nice work.

My aunt in Germany does that all the time! A couple of years ago she went to Egypt and London by herself both for a week. She's married but I guess just likes alone time and I'd guess my uncle probably appreciates it too. I think it's pretty awesome.

I love flying by myself! I've never GONE anywhere by myself, though; I'm always meeting people where I'm going. I tell myself that's one of the reasons I haven't traveled more widely: because I'd be going alone and it makes me sad/uncomfortable--well, that and the expense.

I'm at the point where I literally could no longer imagine having to travel with someone when I go on holiday.

I love solo vacations! I have and will continue to take them even though I am coupled. I kind of treat business travel as solo vacation, even though it is for work. Still get to fly alone, hotel alone, choose what to do on off hours, etc.

I went to Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa for over a year by myself when I was 19-20. Made lifelong friends. Beat going to college.

I've traveled alone but never gone on actual vacation alone. I don't know if I would. Not because I wouldn't want to (I like doing things alone, generally) but because of time/resources. Plus, we haven't gone on that many vacations together thanks to finances and then law school and then introductory levels of vacation time.

Meaning that going on vacation together is still enough of a novelty that I don't want to not do that.

I like the idea of vacationing alone, however. Maybe some day.

ugh, i am so so sorry about your body-policing moms - it's bad enough that too many acquaintances and random strangers do it, but your own mother? I feel embarrassedly fortunate in this regard in that my mom always thinks i look nice when i put nominal effort into my appearance.