I'm interested in reading about the experiences of others who grew up in an environment where body-shaming and particularly fatphobia were a problem.
My mother was aware of my fat fetish long before I ever came out, and she detested it. I remember there used to be a TV show hosted by a very voluptuous man in his 20s, and try as I might I haven't been able to find out what it was. He used to wear Hawaiian shirts which didn't succeed at disguising how well endowed he was in his chest area, and one time as I sat there watching him in sheer joy, she shouted at me, "That's disgusting! It just wobbled!" Apparently it was allowed for her to say she liked Colin Firth, but if I mentioned someone I liked, she made a revolted noise.
My sister has always been a large curvy lady. A couple of years ago she confided in me about how awful our mother had made her feel about herself as a child. Her self-confidence still suffers and she has spent all her life trying to lose weight and has only grown bigger over time. I wish she could be happy with herself as she is. And it wasn't just fatness. I was made to feel bad for being thin and told that thin women in the media were only chosen because the people who controlled the media were gay men and the thin women's bodies looked like boys' (which is a horrible thing to say about gay men as well as thin women), and unpleasant comments were always made about people's bodies. This had and continues to have a profound effect on me. My mother once told me that a childhood friend had front teeth that made her look like a rabbit, and as a child I innocently repeated this and got in trouble for it. Even today, I'm acutely aware of an urge to notice and comment on people's physical qualities from experiencing my mother laughing at athletes on TV because a horseman had big thighs or she said she only watched winter sports because she found it amusing when skiers fell over. Being creative was seen as unworthy and if I drew or wrote anything I was always told it was crap, and my first instinct when someone tells me they have written a poem or done a painting is to think it is crap. Certain words we were not allowed to use (I don't mean swearing or rude words, they were just ordinary words she happened to dislike), and I have to resist criticising how other people use words.
I don't want this to degenerate into a rant about parents, and have come to terms with this as my mother having had children too young and for the wrong reasons. I just wondered if anyone else has experienced this, and how do you deal with the conflict of being fat or finding fat people beautiful against this poisoned background?
My mother was aware of my fat fetish long before I ever came out, and she detested it. I remember there used to be a TV show hosted by a very voluptuous man in his 20s, and try as I might I haven't been able to find out what it was. He used to wear Hawaiian shirts which didn't succeed at disguising how well endowed he was in his chest area, and one time as I sat there watching him in sheer joy, she shouted at me, "That's disgusting! It just wobbled!" Apparently it was allowed for her to say she liked Colin Firth, but if I mentioned someone I liked, she made a revolted noise.
My sister has always been a large curvy lady. A couple of years ago she confided in me about how awful our mother had made her feel about herself as a child. Her self-confidence still suffers and she has spent all her life trying to lose weight and has only grown bigger over time. I wish she could be happy with herself as she is. And it wasn't just fatness. I was made to feel bad for being thin and told that thin women in the media were only chosen because the people who controlled the media were gay men and the thin women's bodies looked like boys' (which is a horrible thing to say about gay men as well as thin women), and unpleasant comments were always made about people's bodies. This had and continues to have a profound effect on me. My mother once told me that a childhood friend had front teeth that made her look like a rabbit, and as a child I innocently repeated this and got in trouble for it. Even today, I'm acutely aware of an urge to notice and comment on people's physical qualities from experiencing my mother laughing at athletes on TV because a horseman had big thighs or she said she only watched winter sports because she found it amusing when skiers fell over. Being creative was seen as unworthy and if I drew or wrote anything I was always told it was crap, and my first instinct when someone tells me they have written a poem or done a painting is to think it is crap. Certain words we were not allowed to use (I don't mean swearing or rude words, they were just ordinary words she happened to dislike), and I have to resist criticising how other people use words.
I don't want this to degenerate into a rant about parents, and have come to terms with this as my mother having had children too young and for the wrong reasons. I just wondered if anyone else has experienced this, and how do you deal with the conflict of being fat or finding fat people beautiful against this poisoned background?
