Only now that I am pregnant do I realise how much – and how routinely - women are discouraged to eat!

[SkaterGrrrrl]

I am pregnant and for the first time in my life - or rather, for the first time since I was about 10, I am being encouraged to eat. Relatives press a second helping on me: ?Go on ? have some more?. Female friends/ acquaintances encourage me to order cake rather than a salad or sandwich when we meet in a cafe: ?You?re allowed to! You?re eating for two!? and colleagues offer me the biscuit tin ?Make the most of it while you can!?

It has really hit me how throughout my adult life, I have never been encouraged to eat dessert or take seconds. It?s as if , by being pregnant, a temporary loophole has opened up on the lifelong strict cultural expectation on women to eat very little. (The terrible pressure on women and girls to diet is detailed better than this in The Beauty Myth and Fat is a Feminist Issue).

I am also beginning to realise why some women put on a lot of weight during pregnancy ? a friend of mine put on 55 lbs. Because for the first time ever we are allowed to eat, guilt free, ask for seconds and not be censured.

Kim - lots of people: my family, random blokes on the pub who tell me I should show off my figure more (I've always been very WTF? about that particular gem) my lovely friends encourage me to eat (the assumption seems to be that I can eat whatever I like and am naturally slim) my mum and grandmother also are always trying to get me to have little bit more to eat. However, if I put on weight I'm sure they would all start to tell me to eat less. I don't think you can win really.

'society definitely tells women to eat like birds'

Given that the average woman is a size 14, women don't appear to be listening to society.

Not saying BTW that All my friends and family are like this. Some aren't bothered and don't notice at all.
People tend to comment on appearance a lot full stop though don't they? I got told once that I was 'quite fit for a ginger' and of course he was such a looker! Currently my mode of dress (scruffy) is over shadowed by my hair which my parents hate.

Morello - but so many of them are on diets. I don't think it's a co-incidence that the USA (just as an example) which has the biggest diet food industry also has the biggest problem with obesity.

'society definitely tells women to eat like birds'

"Given that the average woman is a size 14, women don't appear to be listening to society."

OR, they could be a size 14 because trying to eat like a bird makes you bloody starving and messes up your relationship with apetite and your body's needs???

As i said i think women are listening but they listen to the 'diet industry' and diets on the whole don't work longterm.

Kim - I ignore them or if I'm going to be eating round there I have a smaller breakfast or lunch so i'm really hungry and can eat more (my mum is a really good cook and will do a big family meal with 2 puds).
With regards clothing and size comments I also ignore or tell them that I feel more confident and comfortable in the clothes I'm wearing. My mum is loads better about it. I have to tell them the same about my hair (I really do feel more comfortable how it is now so would they please shut up).

Kim - they also feel they have a right to accuse of not eating properly when you are slim.

British women are getting bigger and heavier. If we are being told not to eat (which I don't accept) it seems not many of us are taking any notice.

I think women are listening very hard to the messages about staying slim. They're just failing to do so and feeling shit about it.

There's a direct correlation between how obsessive the message about not eating is and how fat the population is.

No co-incidence at all that in the USA, the biggest female stars are those whose body fat % is so low that some of them can't possibly be menstruating, while the general population has the highest % of overweight people and an astounding number of really, really shockingly obese people.

The contradictions between what you see on TV and what you see on the street, are amazingly stark.

Doctors are now starting to tell underweight women, to restrict their calorie intake for a couple of weeks, then eat normally, then restrict calorie intake again, in order to put on weight.

In other words, to yo-yo diet.

A massive percentage of women in this country, do that all the time, as a norm. In order to try and be slim.

And in fact, it makes you fat. Which is why doctors tell women who need to put on weight, to do it.

It's massively simplistic to assert that because lots of women are fat, that means they're not listening to the "don't eat" messages.

It's also unempathetic and cruel actually. Masses of women feel really shit about being fat and spend wasted hours obsessing about it when they could be doing something fun and enjoying themselves, or fighting the patriarchy.

I agree Basil. The diet industry also mainly targets women. Men go to the gym and bulk up but women musn't because it isn't 'feminine' to have muscles and be strong, no, women must starve themselves to acheive the 'ideal' unrealistic body shape

Not that I'm suggesting that fighting the patriarchy isn't fun btw.

It is, of course.

Yes agree Wotmania. I had a lover last year who damaged his back forever, by over-weight-training in the gym. He was very vulnerable to the "men should have a six pack and lots of muscles" message. But it never occurred to him to restrict his eating - just to damage his body in a different way.

I have never felt this pressure.

kim you sound like you have a very healthy relationship with food.

That's quite unusual and it's not in capitalism's interests - if you're happy with your body and your relationship with food is normal, that means you're not going to spend loads of money on faddy diets, bizarre foods, supplements, disgusting tasting shakes, dieting club subscriptions, meal plans, diet books, etc. etc.

Weightwatchers - FFS, they have a failure rate of over 90%. Over 90% FFS! Most people go back and back and back, year after year after year, paying their subscriptions, buying the recipe cards, trying out the menu plans, spending loads of money on this astonishingly ineffective programme. Makes me want to throw cream cakes at the directors of that bloody company.

THing is, the message is wrong and unhealthy. All this 'diet food' shit makes people fatter, yet the cultural pressure, mainly on women, not just to be thin but to percieve fatness as a moral failure, means they eat badly, in a way that not only makes them hungry and miserable, but actually makes them gain more wieght.

Skatergrrl, on the one hand, know what you mean about being encouraged to eat more, but on the other hand, you will get an equal amount of 'You mustn't eat that, you mustn't have so much as a sip of a spritzer', no matter what your own feelings of risk awareness are.

Ariel, that's because you live in a lovely palace beneath the sea.

It's the only place you can get away from it....

I only restrict food if my mum is doing a big family meal so i can fit in 2/3 puds :o otherwise I just refuse the extra round of sandwiches etc.

I think the car convo would have driven me mad. One of my brothers is a gym bunny and does stuff like food diaries. But it makes him happy and he doesn't do steroids etc.

My dad also feels the need to comment on how much I eat- even when I was breastfeeding a 4wk old DS. I had to be quite strident to get him to shut up. And, now that I'm an adult, I also notice how much he comments on my mum's food intake. She is permanently on a diet- except when she "falls off the wagon" and eats LOADS to compensate. I've also called him on referring to an obese woman in our neighbourhood as "scary". Well, that's one man who certainly has issues around women and weight, anyway!

What also gets my goat is women (especially older ones it seems) talking about how "good" they've been to stick to their diet or how "naughty" it would be to have a pudding. It's not a moral issue FFS! It sounds very infantile.