Apparently I'm beautiful NOW

[BlueSilverCats]

I have very slowly been losing weight. Mum has been making comments but I mostly downplayed it, not looking for compliments or mentioning it or anything.

Today she told me I'm actually beautiful now. Jeese... thanks mum. Only took 30 something years.

Every time she moaned at me for being fat it was always followed by "of course it's mainly about health". No , it's not. At least not to her.

This.

Sadly my mum is no longer here, but she struggled with this messaging around weight her whole life, despite never being even remotely overweight. I am really glad that at least things on this front have been better for the generations following.

I'm not sure that's true.... anorexia and bulimia were not really a thing in the boomer generation.... those have become prevalent in the generations that followed. I could name 4 young girls I know at this moment with severe body image problems, none of whom have a boomer's influence. I think it's Gen X that followed the boomers where the body image probems started. And no, I'm not exhonorating ALL boomers, but def Gen X have a lot to answer to.

I’m gen X — my mum (boomer) is very much like the OP when it comes to weight: I’m not.

Lately I've been rather shocked, nay horrified at the vitriol hurled at us
" boomers". Especially since our children are in one of these generations and compared to our childhoods, have been relatively cosseted, loved, cared for and supported, even living at home longer, into their thirties. They expect to be helped to buy or rent a home, while we are working up to 6 years longer than our mothers , looking after elderly parents and often Grandchildren. There was no "bank of Mum and Dad" in our younger days, no sense of entitlement to any inheritance or gap years and Higher education. Rather we knew we had to get a job asap, to contribute to the household budget. Old fashioned? To younger people, yes. When I tell my son about my childhood, he laughs, he's convinced I'm parroting the "4 Yorkshire men" sketch. 😂😂😂

Yes, I said SOME boomers were like that, but the epidemic of body issue problems took off in Gen X .... and again, not ALL Gen X, but that's definitely where today's explosion of body image obsessions arose. It just WASN'T a thing in boomer time.

It really WAS a thing in Boomer time — that’s the generation that had DIET BREAD (!!!) (Slimcea and Nimble) and were warned on tv to check whether they needed Ryvita because they could “pinch more than an inch” on their waists. I remember as a kid being sickened by the obsession of the generation before with their “figures” and their constant remarks about my “lovely figure” and “tiny waist” as puberty hit, and don’t get me started on the 18-hour girdles etc. The day that some of them rebelled and burned their bras in protest set the tone for Gen X, thankfully.

Can you still fit in your wedding dress? 🙈 🤯

Pinch more than inch and slimcea ads were the eighties!!! Way after boomer time...

Seventies - 80s gen x were teeneagers — Boomers were sending out the messages.

Interesting article
www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/24/forty-years-since-fat-is-a-feminist-issue

i thought aobut this thread with my own dm today,
she is 89
and the last few years or so, everytime she goes out for food, she will put half of it in a napkin to bring home for another day, she went for a social club christmas lunch and did the same, and if i am with her she pushes her food around her plate and keeps trying to pass it to me or if my dd is there, to her!
i was quite annoyed with this today, and we had lunch at her house, apparently she was so full she wasnt sure she would eat again!
i came away quite annoyed, and wondered what her friends think when she does this
she is proud of it

She's the generation of waste not want not. A pretty good mantra to live by imo.

yes i agree with waste not want not, but it is lack of eating a full meal, passing the food to me for instance which is annoying. competitive under eating

Yeah this. Me and DH (me especially) sometimes can't eat everything when out at a meal, and I take the leftovers in a doggy bag. It annoys the shit out of me when people accuse others who aren't big eaters of being 'competitive under-eaters.' I get this from a couple of people in real life too. Pointing - and laughing at me because I only eat half as much as them.

Don't project your issues onto me. Just because you are a big eater, don't look down your nose at me, because I'm not, by mocking and deriding me.

.

No it's not. It's someone who can't eat big meals anymore. I can't. Competitive under eating, you're being utterly ridiculous.

i dont want her waste food
she needs to eat a square meal

people point and laugh?
crazy folk you know

Makes for a very depressing read though.

True — but it’s important I think to look at these things through a lens based on more than prejudices and hunches (see the who’s-to-blame rabbit hole above).

1960 was a boomer year

I was born in the early 50s, so guess that makes me a boomer in modern parlance, a word which conjures up all the wrong impressions in my view. It was a time of extreme austerity that would make recent times seem positively extravagant. No TV, no fridge, no phone in the house, an outside loo, coal fired heating from an open fire etc. etc. We read books, walked for miles, and rarely saw sweets, never any form of junk food (no supermarkets). Everybody kept a few hens for eggs. But it was a balanced and disciplined life. most kids were healthy, perpetually hungry, but healthy, considering despite some fairly nasty kids accidents I didn't see an antibiotic until I was 15yrs old. My generation may have invented and created most of the systems in place today, but if fell to following generations to abuse them.

I think the difference from boomers to Gen X is that many, many of my mothers generation (82 year old) think nothing of telling other family members whether they have gained or lost weight (or indeed passing comment on what strangers eat or look like) whereas Gen X know that telling a close family member that they have gained weight is incredibly hurtful and would never dream of it.

Most people who are offended by fat are lying either their claim of being concerned about health.

They just don’t like the way fat people look.

Mines exactly the same! It’s horrible. He recently told he’d seen an old school friend of mine and enthused about how slim she looked- so wonderful, she must have really got herself together etc …. I had to tell him that she’s actually been seriously ill this year hence the weight loss. He still seemed very pleased!

Goodness, ageism and ignorance abound on this thread! Actual baby boomers, i.e. those babies born just after WW2, would be naturally skinny in the UK as rationing officially continued until 1954, nine years after the war ended, and even after that, in Britain, people were critically poor, many had lost their homes, their workplaces and the men who earned the money for the household, and goods were scarce. Growing up with no food and no money makes a person thin, without effort.

Most “boomers” are now no longer on the planet. To continue to accuse people who are over 60 of being in any way of the same generation is an insult to those who suffered and an insult to the children they left behind them. People can be complete arses without being boomers.

OP, your mum sounds unpleasant, and I hope you can find a way forward.