I teach my son not to be a bully, but I need to practice what I preach. I never realized that I was a bully until he called me out for how I spoke to myself. I was getting dressed and mumbled something about how fat I looked, and he looked at me angrily. He asked me if I would be sad if someone else said that to me, and I told him I would be.
“Look in the mirror,” he said. “The most important person in your life is saying those things about you.”
We can always count on our children for their brutal (but much needed) honesty. Thanks, kiddo.
Fat or thin, our bodies are not the enemies here. We are all fighting battles that no one knows about. Eating disorders do not discriminate, and neither does diet culture. We also must remember that we are examples for our children who see just the opposite in media.
We’ve all seen magazine covers promoting how a certain celebrity’s body “bounced back” after having a baby mere weeks ago. We read articles about the newest fad diet and absorb the message that it will solve all our problems. We watch the television commercials touting a magic pill or drink that can “change lives.”
Diet culture has permeated media to the point where we see this as normal.
I’ve lost a great deal of my life being a prisoner to diet culture. I’ve hated my body for far too long. I’ve been embarrassed of taking up space. I’ve allowed the size tag on my jeans to determine my self-worth. I’ve even gone to the unhealthiest of measures to try to be thin because I thought that would solve everything.
Diet culture is all around us, whether we realize it or not. It is so engrained in us that we don’t even know the vast reach of it. Its toxicity is contagious.
Macy’s was recently in the news for selling these “portioned” plates that in no uncertain terms, are straight-up body shaming. The plates had three “portions” for food, with “skinny jeans” being the label for the smallest serving and “mom jeans” being the label for the largest serving. This is feeding into the idea that “less is best” when eating. It’s not considering the type of food you’re eating or that just seeing this can undo years of progress to someone with disordered eating.
It was also recently discovered that Forever 21 sent unsolicited Atkins’ snack bars as “samples” with their online orders. This can be extremely triggering for anyone who is susceptible to this world of diet culture that we live in. For a store that caters various sizes, it’s makes some think that they aren’t good enough to shop there. Imagine getting a diet bar with the swimsuit you were hesitant to buy to begin with.
But you are enough. You are more than enough. Your body is ready for the beach at this very moment. And mom jeans are comfortable, darnit. Don’t @ me otherwise.
It’s already exhausting to be a human being. We are constantly burdened with labels – spouse, parent, sibling, employee, friend. Taking the ‘diet’ out of ‘diet culture’ could lessen the load for us all (men and women). We are doing nothing but surrounding ourselves with unrealistic goals and the personal backlash we feel when we don’t meet those goals.
Healthy and happy should always be our goal, just like it is for our children. Our worth cannot be found on a scale or on a size tag. We are more than any number and we need to remember that our little people are looking up to us. Let’s remove diet culture and replace it with body positivity. We are worthy.
No plate or snack bar should allow us to feel bad about ourselves. But let’s also face it that as parents we are most likely chowing down whatever part of a granola bar that our kids didn’t eat on a Paw Patrol plate anyway.
