From Chub Chubs to Daddy Long Legs

I barely had a chance to form an opinion about my body before one was imposed on me. When you understand where your beliefs come from only then can you change them.

The Very Beginning

Fat! was bad. Very bad. This was the message I received before elementary school. There were several significant events from those early years that helped shape my view of my body and expectations of being female. After all, it really was okay for men to be overweight. They didn’t go on diets. It was the women who had to be slim. Men never complained about their bodies–only women did. But why? Was it because they felt judged by men?

My earliest memory is being called “Chub Chubs” by a pediatrician. We were living with my grandparents at the time and were told that the nightly ice cream ritual had to be dialed back to once a week. Saturdays. I was fat. I had to lose weight so I wouldn’t be called chub chubs. The man said so. My grandparents switched from ice cream to a drink called Alba. It was no substitute. I missed my ice cream.

Elementary Years

By fifth grade, I felt like a giant. My best friend, the boy next door, was so much smaller than me one Halloween he climbed on my shoulders, put on a mask and wore a long overcoat. It was great fun, but I would have liked to have been his size. or have been the one carried. I wished I was tiny like the other girls. As an adult, I discovered a note I had written around this same time and for some reason kept. It read: I’m going on a bike ride to burn up all this fat, fat, fat!

Middle School

When the middle school years arrived I grew a few more inches. My nickname changed to Daddy long legs after the spider. No more chub chubs. My family traveled to Florida to visit my grandparents. We went to Ft. Myers beach. I was wearing a bikini. I was standing next to my family when a car drove by and a man leaned out the window and whistled at me. The incident sticks out in my memory because I was shocked. Whistling equaled sexy. I was a kid who played whiffle ball, basketball, and football with the neighborhood boys. Someone whistling at me collided with my view of myself. I became extremely self-conscious. It was one thing to wish my body looked like other girls and another to think my body was being gazed at and judged by guys. It was probably the last time I wore a bikini. It felt as though in that moment I went from being a carefree girl to an object.

During my later middle school years, I was able to fly alone on standby to visit family members. Standby often meant hours in an airport waiting to see if there was room on the flight. If not, I’d wait until the next one. Men approached me. At twelve years old I knew there was something wrong with grown men offering to share a hotel room with me and an airport employee calling me “princess” and wanting me to write him letters. Luckily, I was smart enough to avoid their advances. I couldn’t understand why men would seek out a preteen. The naive girl wanted to believe they were simply being kind, however, from deep within I heeded the voice that shouted get away! Again, I felt like an object. Prey. The message was clear. The way I looked was being judged, even rated on a scale from 1-10. It’s no wonder I spent hours getting ready for school. Oh, if only I had spent all that time reading instead of with the curling iron, hair spray, and make-up, it would have done wonders for my self-esteem.

High School

My eyes were wide open to my role as a female teen. If I wanted to be accepted I should strive for a rating of 7 or above. There was the boy in  high school  who called girls dogs. There was the boy who when asked about me said, “He’d seen better.” There was the girl that was labeled a tease because whenever she made friends with a boy they would fall for her and all she wanted was friendship. It’s no wonder I had a closet full of baggy sweaters and sweatshirts. The more I covered my body the safer I felt.

Adulthood

It wasn’t until after I had my daughter that I began to feel better about my appearance. Too fat, too thin, it didn’t matter. I was a busy mom. My focus changed to her. I met some strong women who are still my friends today and my world opened up. We all had daughters and we wanted them to grow up strong. We knew what they would face one day. We not only wanted them to have the same opportunities as our boys, we wanted them to be so secure with themselves that when they faced the pressures of appearance they would have inner strength to call upon. It turned out I didn’t have as much time as I thought to teach my daughter those important lessons.

My Children

One day she came home from elementary school sad. She couldn’t speak the word she had been called so she wrote it down: FAT. My heart broke. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her. The message was still being sent to our boys as early as seven years old. It was okay to judge and then voice an opinion of a girl’s body. Five years later, my daughter wore baggy hoodies all through sixth grade.

When my son was about to enter college he told me of an app that rated college girls. My anger flared. Nothing had changed. My son and husband listened to my rant. I asked where the app was that rated men? I knew this was wrong, but I wanted women to speak up. I wanted women to turn the tables on the critics and give them a taste of what it was like to be treated as an object instead of a person. Revenge, which is never a good thing. My passion for the subject made me realize the pain I had felt from the very first time I was called chub chubs, to the whistle, to the pedophiles who approached me in the airport. Every incident based on the appearance of my body. I asked my son if he knew how awful it was to treat not only college girls but all women that way. I questioned whether I did a good enough job as a mom teaching him to be respectful of girls in his words and his actions.

What Was Said 

Then, some time later I stood and listened to a man congratulate my husband on my appearance. It was something like “way to go!” And more words that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable even though I think the man felt he was offering compliments. It had happened once before years earlier, and I had never discussed it with my husband. I was shocked both times. I stood there in disbelief as the men talked about me as if I wasn’t there–as if I was property. It left me feeling very small, yet I said nothing. Years of accepting boy’s and then men’s judgment of my appearance rendered me silent. It was what they did. Accepted. Perhaps it was  silence and a frustrated acceptance that has allowed behaviors like this to continue and be passed down through generations. A kind of boys will be boys attitude which is a really a phrase that excuses bad behavior for boys that would never be tolerated for girls. Eventually, I brought the incident up for discussion with my husband. I was happily surprised to find out he had been upset about what was said too. Except he felt the men were hitting on me in front of him and that’s what angered him. For me it was different. I had to explain to my husband how it felt as a woman. I was surprised he had no idea. Change begins with communication. It took me too long to find my voice.

It’s difficult to decipher just how much of my body image is from what I expect and how much is from what I’ve learned I should expect. I can say that I’m healthier, stronger, and better aware of the effect healthy foods have on my body and my health. For that I’m grateful. It’s taken me until now to get a better picture of how all the pieces from my childhood through adolescence and adulthood have come together to form a picture that tells the story of a young girl growing up in today’s society. Some of the expectations and pressures are the same. It’s my hope that through open and honest discussions, discussions that require vulnerability because body image triggers shame, we will begin to understand the pressures we put on one another when it comes to body image. Rating each other is not the answer! Respecting one another always is.