Growing up, I believed that skinny was pretty. And that everything else was unattractive. Unworthy. Meant to be criticized.
My parents poured encouraging words into me, but their words were not enough. In the battles I fought, I needed more than praise.
I fought the idea that girls and women should diet if they looked a certain way. My Southern grandmother fed that idea to her daughters, and we heard our mothers speak. I can’t remember a time when my family’s women weren’t talking about trying to lose weight.
I fought the idea that girls and women should compare themselves to soap opera actresses and magazine models. I grew up in the 80s and early 90s; that was the messaging.
I fought the idea that girls and women should one-up each other, size up each other, and take shots at each other so as to make themselves feel like the smartest, prettiest, and most attention-getting in the room.
And so, my teen years were full of fighting. And controlling.
In the midst of the fighting and struggling with how to love my alcoholic father and trying to hide my sadness in the midst of my parents’ divorce [Read more…] about From Hate to Love: My Body Image Story
