To be really angry with each and everyone of you who has ever moaned about being 'fat'

[Lookatwhatyouvedone]

I have daughters. I've worked for years at nurturing their self esteem, reassuring them. Loving them.

Still makes feck all difference to the voices in their heads that tell them that thin and flat, or better still non-existent, is beautiful and having curves is ugly. They are a normal weight. They exercise. They eat sensibly. They aren't happy with their shape. And I think it's all your fault. All of you. Every single one of you who's ever obsessed about your thighs or your tummy or your boobs. Ever single one of you who's bought in to the lie that we can never quite be good enough, could always lose a few pounds, tone a few inches.
Look at what you've done and you still keep doing it. Fat is the demon, thin is the goddess and not a thought for the destruction done. How many threads on here asking how you can reduce yourselves. Not because you actually want to but because you think you should. But it doesn't just harm you does it? It harms all of us and our daughters and our daughters not even born. We talk about the pressure society puts on women but that's bollocks. We are society and we do it to ourselves. You don't talk about being healthy, you talk about being thin.

I am so angry, SO ANGRY, that what I say can't outweigh the damage you've all done. Tomorrow I'm sure I'll be sensible and reasonable and calm and not like this but tonight I'm bloody angry.

[myneighbourtotoro2]

Noeffing - I completely agree . Very strange post

[reni1]

I do actually agree OP that we as a society put too much pressure on girls and women to be thin and beautiful and it is really damaging.

The biggest influences on a girl's body image do not come from advertising, pop stars and random mnetters though, the real influence comes from close friends and family, especially female family. YOU in other words, OP. You did this, not I. YANBU to be angry, but YABU to be angry with me.

[ArcheryAnnie]

Look at what you've done and you still keep doing it.

So - all the women who, just like your daughters, have been taught and shamed from birth that their bodies must be just so, and that they will never ever be acceptable whatever they look like - all these women are the ones to blame?

We all try to survive in the patriarchy. Many of us try to change it, but we still have to negotiate it to survive. I'm fat. I'm generally OK with being fat, but at the moment I'm currently trying to lose weight because I will need to get a new job soon, and I know that one of the instant stereotypes about fat women is that they are lazy, have no self-control, etc etc. It's a lie, but it's a lie that may well prevent me getting a job, so I have to work on it before I walk into an interview.

Blaming women for not being impervious to social pressure imposed on them from the start? YABVU

[noeffingidea]

Why do people think everything's about them nowadays?
OP, if I want to say I feel fat then I will. My feelings about my own body have got nothing to do with your daughters.
In fact, I think your whole opening post is totally bizarre (and no I haven't read the whole thread. I can't be arsed).

[Varya]

Rubbish!

[differentnameforthis]

We've all done? Unless we have been in direct contact with your dds & poured scorn on 'fat' people then I doubt it op, but I do understand why you need to think this is our fault.

How about your direct this at the diet companies who make thousands per year from people insecurities.

How about your direct this at the magazines who make thousands per year from people insecurities.

How about your direct this at the celebrities who perpetuate the myth that fat is bad.

I am sorry that your daughters are suffering, but that isn't our fault.

[SoleSource]

Will posting on this thread make me fat?

[MagicMojito]

Sweet Jesus that was a self indulgent rant

I'm a size 12 with wobbly, well everything! My BMI tells me I'm overweight and I'm doing my best to address it. I'll have a good moan about it whenever I like thanks. My feelings about my body are as valid as anybody elses (good or bad)

Yes its awful the amount of pressure we are under to look a certain way but you have absolutely no right to come on here and try to blame us for your daughters feeling exacltly the same way that some of us do.

IMO mumsnet is an extremely pro woman site that is a great example of solidarity and compassion and judgeyness

[awombwithaview]

I was such a skinny teen and I was utterly convinced I was fat. It's crazy now when I look back but I absolutely hated my body, myself...that wasn't down to other women though, it was actually down to men and the way the men in my life behaved towards me and other women. I used to spend hours changing outfits to find one that made me look ok then being unable to find said outfit I would end up not going out and staying home hating myself instead. Ha, wish I had that body now!

My self esteem was non-existent but I can't blame other women for that and it's unreasonable for you to. I'm trying to raise my daughter to know she is beautiful but I can't control what she thinks about herself or external influences. It will only take one girl to tell her she's fat or one boy to tell her that her hair looks stupid and nothing I say during those tender years will change it.

Body image and 'thin being beautiful' isn't a new thing - look at the corsets women were forced into a couple of hundred years ago trying to get the smallest waist possible, bruised and battered trying to squeeze into bone corsets....we actually have it a bit easier now in that respect as at least we're not breaking our ribs being forced into things we can't breathe in.

[MasterchefIwish]

I do find yabu to rant but nbu to be upset and angry that your dd has poor body image.

[Mintyy]

Microferret's post at 7.50am says it all, nothing else needs to be said. Those of us who are moaning about being fat are exactly the same as your daughters.

I can't for one second think why HQ allowed your hate-fuelled, provocative and goady op to stand.

This whole thread should be deleted because suddenly the people who react strongly to your woman-hating op are the bad guys!

And it gives a chance for the terminally self-righteous to come and have a go at those who object strongly to seeing torrents of ill thought-out misogynistic clap trap directed at them.

Sadly, very sadly, many of us will have children with body image issues. Quite likely more than 50% of us I would hazard a guess.

VERY BAD JOB INDEED OP!

And HQ - what were you thinking??

[Garlick]

Lovely post, LittleElephant1 :)

[MasterchefIwish]

I think it was a shame you did not post to debate and think how we do affect those around us and how we have been affected. By ranting you did anger and alienate many.

But I do not think yabu to be angry. I do not find its just going on about weight that is an issue it is that, in our world with so many options that work differently for all, we subtly convey our obsessions. I find it sad when I go for dinner that I hear so many around me, not just on my table, desperately justifying how 'good' that they have been as though eating and enjoying is wrong. There is an obsession in the media and the world around us to not like food, to always justify eating and then feel fat or wrong if we do not. While at the same time cooking programmes abound which mixes messages.

I do think the subtle things we do we are often not aware of doing until we realise them and I suspect that you must include yourself to be angry too because I thing everyone at some point has been this way- they may not have realised.

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

I would have more respect for your thread, OP, if you posted in your original and usual name. Why change it? If I were angry I'd be angry - but I'd be LyingWitch, not name-changed. I might be bang out of order but I'd still be credible in my own name.

Moving on to what you've posted; I find your thread sad. I was a child of the 70s and my mum was a bit 'clueless' just as you seem to be. She didn't bolster my esteem, gave me amphetamines under doctors prescription that I didn't need and I have a very difficult relationship with food now. I also have a very flimsy relationship with my mum and we no longer talk about anything 'body' related. Don't be that mum. You've had plenty of good advice here about your relationship with your daughters being the strongest influence they have. Make it a positive one and make sure they can talk to you about worries they have. To be that force for good though, you need to make yourself centred.

[RachelRagged]

lolllllllllllllll

Oh OP ... Here is a Grip !

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

"I think the OP expected a big wave of solidarity where we all saw the light and vowed to forever change our attitudes and love our own selves!"

It had precisely the opposite effect for me, Nicki - it just added to my current hatred for myself - which I have been fighting as hard as I can - but not that successfully yet.

Does Lookatwhatyouvedone care about that? I doubt it.

[reni1]

Op, if you don't have any body image issues chances are neither will your daughters in the long run, well done. Many of us do have them, we try our best to shield our daughters, but often we fail. If you do have your own issues you know where to start.

[00100001]

This website is an excellent resource for girls and women


www.free-being-me.com/

We went through the programme with our guides, it was excellent

[cashewnutty]

If OP's rage lies with society and the media's attitude to body size/shape then she shouldn't come shouting at all of us on here. Many on here have plenty body issues and her original post felt like a very personal attack on all who frequent MN.

I can have plenty sympathy for people who hate the way the media portray women but there are better ways of having a discussion around this than having a massive rage and make many of us feel like we are being held responsible.

[LittleElephant1]

There's a lot of people who've taken the OPs post very personally, where I read it more as a railing at society in general. I have to say I do get where she is coming from. I was always overweight -in fact morbidly obese. Despite this I have always felt attractive and had attention. A few years ago I lost 12 stone, because I didn't want to die. I am now a size 16 -18 and although I am fat by society's standards, I feel and look fabulous. I am lucky to have a reasonably pretty face and good sense of style, however my own body image is vastly better than girls much closer to what society deems as attractive, because I've been right to the other end, as it were. It makes me really sad to see so many bright, attractive, intelligent normal-sized and even slender women I know perpetually moaning about being 'fat' and body-shaming themselves. I just want them to stop it, wake up, realise what they have and enjoy life and love themselves. So have a supportive hug from me OP.

[derxa]

OP, I get that you are coming from a place of sadness and frustration but you would be better off railing at the advertising industry, the fashion industry, the diet industry, the scourge of aspirational magazines, and in general the people who think it's appropriate to put huge billboards of skinny photoshopped bikini-clad models everywhere you look outdoors. Don't shout at those of us who have bought into it and suffered from it, we ARE your daughters.

You would probably do better to talk honestly with your girls about how society brainwashes women into hating ourselves both with the purpose of extracting money from our wallets and keeping us subjugated. That may help lift the scales from their eyes.
How very true
There are so many minefields in this topic I think I'll step into one right now. OP please explain to your daughters that there is no body type which is sexually attractive to everyone. Skinny model type figures are not attractive to all men/women.
to all posters who have anorexia or posters who have someone they care about who is suffering from anorexia. A very interesting Woman's Hour about this topic which discussed a genetic element to anorexia.

[llammallamamissesmama]

OP - are you going to come back and tell us exactly what the problem is with your daughters?

[youareallbonkers]

You are the one who has had the most contact with them, they will be getting their issues from you. Stop looking for others to blame and look at what you are doing

[microferret]

OP, I get that you are coming from a place of sadness and frustration but you would be better off railing at the advertising industry, the fashion industry, the diet industry, the scourge of aspirational magazines, and in general the people who think it's appropriate to put huge billboards of skinny photoshopped bikini-clad models everywhere you look outdoors. Don't shout at those of us who have bought into it and suffered from it, we ARE your daughters.

You would probably do better to talk honestly with your girls about how society brainwashes women into hating ourselves both with the purpose of extracting money from our wallets and keeping us subjugated. That may help lift the scales from their eyes.