I Refuse to Fat Shame My Daughters

I agree to teach them to love themselves and to be body positive

At the recommendation of a colleague, I watched Shrill.

The show is about Annie, “a full-figured woman who wants to change her life-not her body” and is an adaptation of the book, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West, which is now on my reading bucket list.

Shrill got a lot of attention and positive reviews, as it should. It so beautifully depicts the balance of fighting societal judgment and norms in order to love ourselves as we are, not as we are expected to be.

As beautiful and hopeful as the show is, I had to pause it several times throughout each episode. It’s that funny-not-funny kind of comedy that is as painful as it is funny. I found it hard to watch during many scenes because it is so relatable.

Except, it’s not Annie that I relate to, or at least not entirely.

I am on a quest to love myself despite what society tells me or what I have told myself for the last 40 plus years. I may feel every day that I’m not good enough, and that my body isn’t perfect enough, I know that I’m not seen as a fat person.

I’ve only been fat-shamed twice in my life- by a midwife when I gained 60 pounds when pregnant and once by a family member shortly after my daughter was born. While it stung me, I was able to rationalize it because it was short-term. I wasn’t pregnant forever nor I wasn’t postpartum forever.

I am skinny. People describe me as skinny, even now, after having kids and struggling with perimenopausal weight gain. I do not relate to Annie. I was not a fat kid.

I am Annie’s mother and this scares the hell out of me.

Annie’s mother, who wants Annie to go on walks with her, try out new diets, and have a smaller body to increase her chances to “play the field”, also worries about her child’s health, and worries about what other people think about her daughter.

I am the mother of two overweight daughters. I just wrote that down, and will share it publicly, and you are thinking, what are your daughters going to think if and when they read this?

Me, too.

Medical providers have advice.

On our fridge sits a magnetic folder loaded with papers: healthy snack ideas for kids, and doctors’ periodic summaries of my kids’ health with their high BMI, food journal sheets, and a colorful HEALTHY BODY ACTION PLAN with my children listed in the “yellow zone/take action” and “red zone/do more & don’t ignore”.

Every time I open the fridge, I look at those colorful sheets, which urge me, in bold letters at the bottom, to PLAN TO CHANGE and I am reminded of the pressure on my shoulders. I am reminded that health risks increase as one gains more weight. I am reminded that now is the time to instill healthy habits in my children.

I buy “healthy” snacks that they refuse to eat. I limit their juice intake and I hired a trainer at the gym, and I ask them, over and over, if they want to join a sport.

I make them take hikes with me, despite them screaming at me and me choking back tears while the birds chirp around us. I make them shakes and pray that they don’t taste the spinach I’ve pulverized into the drink.

I feel like a failure on those nights I’m too tired to cook and I stop at a fast-food restaurant for dinner.

My spidey senses are on high alert when we eat out in public and I notice others watching what my kids eat. Nobody thinks twice when a skinny kid eats a banana split but judgmental eyes are on an overweight kid with an ice cream in her hand.

The time to change, to take action, to change the course of the future for my daughters is slipping out of my hands and I am becoming Annie’s mother. I am worried about what other people will think about their weight and I’m even more worried about how they will be treated because of their weight.

How many times will they be shamed for having a full figure?

Will they eat six almonds all day at work to only binge in secret when they get home? Will they not feel worthy of love because they don’t look like the models in magazines? Will they not be able to find their size on the clothing racks? Will they spend hundreds of dollars on body-shaping underwear and fad diets?

Will shame become the tone that colors the undercurrent of their daily lives, the fear that they will never be enough because they aren’t thin?

During one scene in Shrill, Annie, in a moment of poignant reflection, tells her BFF about a recent trip to her childhood home, where she looked at all of the photos on the wall of herself as a child- fat and happy child, a child cared for, and loved by, her parents

Oh, the freedom of not knowing you should care about your weight or what others think about you. It doesn’t last long enough.

My girls are happy and generally confident in who they are and what they look like. Other kids have called them fat. They’ve started to grab at their bellies. They are aware of the colorful charts and the need to “eat healthier”. They know why I slip spinach into their drinks.

They know why I ask them to walk on the treadmill on a rainy day. They know it’s so that they can be healthier, so they can have strong hearts and bodies.

They also know it’s for other reasons. Reasons that, if I don’t handle them well, could drive a giant wedge between me and my beautiful children. I know they need to change how they eat but I also need to change how I relate to them.

I want to throw the BMI chart in the trash.

I want to shred the healthy body plans. I follow body positive social media pages and encourage them to, too. We shop at stores that offer fashionable clothes in their size.

I will never, ever let someone tell my girls they can’t wear tight jeans and a crop top because of their weight. I will never let someone tell them they can’t participate in an activity because they are “too fat.”

I never want my daughters to think that they aren’t enough for me. I never want them to think that, because they don’t fit the skinny mold doesn’t mean that they don’t have as much value.

I don’t want them to grow up and think all I see is their size.

I want them to always be able to come home to me and know they are loved and supported exactly as they are because — they are.

Want to read more from a mom who knows that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting? Check out Megan Llorente’s article “I’m Calling Bullshit on the Screen Time Limits for Kids.”

Teresa Morillas has a MAS in Nutrition and Health & Psychology of Eating. Check out her article “When we Overeat Our Stress” to learn more about overeating and stress.

And, hey! Thanks for reading! Check out my story about mornings with my kids here. Check out this story about my struggles with body image here.