This is such a universal topic. We grow up in this society, where we're constantly bombarded with impossible standards for beauty, where our value is directly related to our attractiveness, and then some of us have the misfortune to have a nparent who not only supports this bull****, but sanctifies it! Home is supposed to be where people love and accept us as who we are. I'm so sad for myself, and all the other children of ns who never saw home as a refuge.
My nmother started monitering my weight when I was 8, it had turned into name-calling, attacks and enforced diets by the time I was 11. I wasn't supposed to want to be pretty, because that would have been considered vain, but I was also supposed to be as thin as possible. She used to tell me that if I was fat I would 1) not be able to get a job, 2) not be able to find a mate, 3)be an embarassment to my father. I was anorexic by college. I think my nmother's obession with my weight was her own projected self-loathing and deathwish. Sometimes I think she would respect me more if I'd managed to kill myself with anorexia. Not that she's capable of anything resembling respect.
I've gotten enough distance on the abuse that when those negative voices come up, sooner or later I recognize them as hers, and not mine. No one's attractiveness, goodness or worth is based on what someone else thinks of how they look. I maintain my health, mental and physical by 1) not hanging out with people like my nmother, 2) doing a variety of exercise that feels good during and after, 3) giving myself a huge break when the inner nparent comes up and tries to make me feel afraid. Sometimes I feel beautiful, sometimes I feel not so beautiful, and sometimes I just feel like me - unattached to the concept of pretty or not pretty. I like the latter the best.
