Story 831
I remember as a teenager being obsessed with my bum and the size of it. To me it was big and fat and horrible and I just wanted to be skinny like the other straight up and down girls in my school. One day I tried to express this unhappiness to my mum and her response was ‘little boys like little bums, real men like real bums’. Though not a direct comment about my appearance she may as well have said ‘yes your bum is big and fat but don’t worry one day you’ll find a man who won’t care that it isn’t small’. I’m now 33 and have only just started to accept my body. That comment stayed in my head for decades and though I realise my mum has her own body image/food relationship issues and didn’t realise what her ‘advice’ would do to me as an adult, it’s stings even more now I have my own children. It’s not just the obvious pointing out of our appearance, but the subtle confirmations that our bodies are wrong that can do so much damage. I WILL make things different for my children.