Photo by Cynthia Edstrom © 2023
On a recent morning, as I glance in the mirror and see my body now a bit more pear shaped than curvy, I become aware of the immediate and automatic thoughts of criticism tinged with some fear that begins in my head. I am surprised to see these thoughts, that, although familiar, have been travelling just below my awareness until this moment and I wonder about it. I also feel my body’s cringing response to the mean diatribe (which I will not repeat here) it endures. And I wonder, why would I care about whether I’m a bit pear shaped if I feel good? “It’s obvious, of course, because thinness is health, right?” the critical voice insists. “Well, that’s probably a bit simplistic, don’t you think?” I respond. I begin to wonder; how would my body feel if there were no cultural ideas I was supposed to live up to? How would I eat, care for, and adorn myself and the body I live in?
As these questions (and inner arguments) about my body and body image were stewing on slow cook in my mind, I decided to reread some letters I have stored away. I thought I was looking for clues about other questions, not body issues. I have the amazing gift of letters my mom wrote to my grandma Vestana, when Mom was pregnant with me and during the first year of my life. I wondered what I was like as a baby and what my first months of life were like. What was happening in the family in those months before and after I was born? How did Mom respond to me? Were there things about me that led to the ways I was treated and how I feel about myself now?
I have read these letters before. In fact, the first time I read them was a few weeks after Mom died. Dad found them among their things and was excited about them. “They sound just like Mother!” he said, “I have a hard time getting through them, but they’re special.” I was excited to read them, but then soon felt disappointed. These letters are newsy and filled with family gossip: who is doing what, what Mom is sewing, who is visiting, what she thinks of her neighbors, and all of the endless laundry and ironing that filled the days of women in the 1950s before electric dryers and permanent-press fabric. I had hoped the letters would show Mom’s deep reflections on being pregnant, her place in the world, her changing identity as she became a mother. But no, the letters were about her irritation with and criticism of a neighbor, events at the church, whether someone was getting fat, or how much ironing she had to do.
This time, knowing I would not find deep thinking reflection, I was able to read the letters with a new curiosity. I read them with the awareness that I was present as she was writing the letters, either as a fetus in utero or as baby. I was truly listening in. And I found something surprising in plain sight. Mom was dieting, even while she was pregnant! Every single letter talked about food, usually about being deprived of it. She talked about what food she wasn’t allowed because the doctor said she was gaining too much weight. Here is an excerpt:
Feb. 25, 1958
I went to the Dr. yesterday and found I had gained 3 lbs. in 3 weeks. He said it was alright but that I must not continue to gain a lb. a week or I will be too fat. From now until the baby is born I am to have no desserts at all and no salt, no ham, no lunchmeat, and no pizza. Boy, potatoes are just horrible without salt. I must use no salt in my cooking and have everybody salt it himself at the table. Homer[i] will think I am a terrible cook[ii].
Really, lunch meat? She wrote about dreading her doctor visits because he would tell her to cut some other food from her diet. She often mentioned being “starving”, a word Mom used liberally throughout her life. I believe she meant that she felt hungry and deprived.
Mom included her weights in some of the letters, so I know that by today’s standards she wasn’t “fat” and didn’t gain too much, but at that time, I think the medical profession was pretty strict about what was and wasn’t acceptable food and weight gain in pregnancy.
Not only was Mom struggling with trying to comply with her doctor’s recommendations, but she was also dealing with her own biases against becoming “fat”. In her letters, she reported Dad calling her fat, and she is calling herself fat when, in fact, she is simply pregnant. They make fat jokes and fat slurs.
Mom did not become overweight by today’s standards until she went through menopause. Nonetheless, she and Grandma were often dieting to get into some clothes for an event, or to avoid becoming “a whale” - pronounced with a lot of extra air and emphasis on the “wh” of whale to make the point of how awful being a whale was. In a female rite of passage, I started my first dieting (as was expected) in early high school. I had physically matured and went from 99 to 105 lbs. No one told me the weight change was normal (in fact, the track coach said the weight caused me to run slower), so I limited what I ate to avoid getting “fatter”.
I have long known that my family had a weird relationship with food, but I couldn’t articulate what was going on, only that it was unhealthy – toxic even. My parents were both highly critical of people who were not thin, including themselves. They were vociferous (voracious?) fat shamers. I learned early on that being fat was one of the worst things one could be, probably a distant third after “dishonest” and “lazy”. My parents argued and struggled over food. Dad could be highly disciplined and would go on strict food and exercise regimens, then would binge for a while on ice cream and restaurant food, until something clicked, and he’d get back on the regimen. Mom would rebel against whatever Dad was doing, calling it “torture”, and complaining that Dad wouldn’t let her have this or that food she longed for. Dad would make fat jokes and Mom would make judgements about people who were “whales”. I was sure they talked behind my back about me when I became more generous in size, because I heard them talk about others and that hurt. It was toxic and confusing.
After I was born, as was typical of the time, I was fed on a schedule, then expected to sleep through the night at 2 months (I complied), much earlier than now considered healthy. For the first week of my life, Mom tried unsuccessfully to breast feed. She reported that I was “starving” and cried all the time, something that resolved with they gave me formula and a bottle. After that, food was carefully managed and doled out to me as my parents attempts to be modern, good parents following the advice of Dr. Spock (1957 edition)[iii]. Meanwhile, my mom continued to diet. Here is an excerpt when I was 3 months old:
August 1st, 1958
Dear Mom and Pop,
I was sure glad to get your letter yesterday. It was real interesting too.
My diet is paying off. I weighed today for the first time in a week and a half and I am only 112 lbs. That’s about 5 lbs. lighter already. I’m aiming for 108. I think that is skinny enough. I haven’t really been killing myself with this diet but I am hungry a lot of the time. I cut out all desserts and sweet stuff, eat only 2 slices of “Diet Aid” bread a day and have no coffee break or bite before I go to bed. I cut down on the amount of potatoes too[iv].
Mom was 25 when she wrote this. She was just over 5’1”. Sadly, I suspect all that dieting was unnecessary for her health.
Like our parents, my brothers and I have gone through various health and diet regimens trying to figure out some way to feel healthy and good about ourselves. Talking about food and the latest best method of diet and exercise has long been a staple of family discussions.
Six months or so ago, I began to notice that I was uncomfortably hungry much of the time. At first, I didn’t think much about it. I had reached an “ideal” lean weight after gaining then losing weight during Covid lockdown and was maintaining it by careful food planning and tracking. I became curious about this (uncomfortable) hunger. It felt deep, deep in my body and being. Food wasn’t satisfying it. What is this hunger, I wondered? Is it emotional, spiritual, a longing for me to do something? Do I need more protein, fat, a supplement? What is going on?
When I found that Mom had been dieting even while I was developing within her, it was an “Aha” moment. I have been dieting since before I was born! I was imprinted with a distorted body image and the belief that food is dangerous long before I had any choice. The same was likely true for my mother and grandmother and perhaps many more generations. We learned that woman’s appetite is dangerous and not to be trusted. Wow! Do I really believe that?
Truly, I thought I had this healthy diet thing dialed in: a well-researched, plant-based diet considered healthy by most experts, well researched supplements to make up for our cultural and soil deficiencies, an App that helped me monitor the number of calories taken in compared to weight and activity and viola! I could maintain a stable weight in the thin category. But I was hungry and cold and uncomfortable in my body. I felt weak and sluggish.
As I write this, I hear the many voices from our weight-obsessed culture begin to chime in, because I’m not the only one who obsesses about this stuff. Seemingly everyone has am favorite or latest answer to what ails someone else thus becomes an expert about what you and I need. Here are a few.
“Stop eating gluten right now! It’s killing you!”
“You need to eat meat, that’s your problem.”
“No, no, no, you just need to go to the gym, lift weights, get on my health and endurance program.”
“No, silly, it’s all emotional. It’s trauma. Dive into your childhood issues.”
“I know what your problem is. It’s your ego, your mind out of control. You’ve got to release that thing.”
“You must” …fill in your favorite recommendation here.
They are endless: supplements, extracts, essences, exercise, meditation, retreats, therapy, on and on.
I can’t begin to tell you the paths I’ve travelled looking for food and health Nirvana. But here’s the thing I’ve just realized. I’ve been telling my body that whatever it does, it had better lose weight and stay thin. And what does that imply? Certainly not nourishment, not care. Rather, I have been telling my body not to absorb the food, not to extract essential things from the food I feed myself. See, the culture I was born into and continue to live in imprinted me with the belief that I am only ok if I conform to the given image, an image I did not choose and yet, find difficult to shake off. It feels so embedded in me that it feels like it is me. But it’s not.
What this boils down to living in a state of deprivation and believing that is what is necessary, that it’s ok. I let myself have only enough food to meet the criteria of the diet or system of the moment. Occasionally, I break out of this and eat whatever I want for weeks or months, inevitably gaining weight as I eat from anxiety, from lack, from fear until eventually some inner voice cracks down. “Enough!” It yells. And I rally the fortitude to lose weight, reach that weight and feel good about myself for a while. Then some part of me breaks out of the constraints again and the cycle repeats. Just like my dad. Of course, I’m hungry all the time.
What do I and we do about this cultural predicament? What do I do when it feels like the images of what I’m supposed to be are imbedded in my cells along with my hunger, as though I can’t see or be anything else? It’s hard to understand water when you’re still a fish. Well, now that I understand my predicament as imprinting, I can’t continue to treat myself this way, I can choose to treat myself better. So, I’m questioning and looking for new ways to think about weight and health. Wouldn’t it make sense that humans have biological appetites that were trustworthy? Shouldn’t our bodies come encoded to know what nourishment they need? How do we access that knowing?
I am just beginning this part of the journey, exploring having a different, gentler relationship with my body and with food. So I’m asking myself questions. What would it be like to feel nourished and to allow nurture? Might I learn to treat my body with genuine care and gratitude? Can I learn to accurately feel and understand my appetites and, more importantly, learn to trust them?
Isn’t it interesting that after all these millennia, so many of us humans still don’t know how to be comfortable with with our bodies and our need for food? Isn’t it interesting that we don’t really have useful definitions of health and wellness, but that we rather rely on the latest fad, publication, or expert to tell us what health is or isn’t? This obsession with weight, appearance and conflating these with health started long before I was born, likely many generations ago. Busting the myths, breaking the spell will take some doing. To me, myth-busting seems worth the effort.
I’ve gained a bit of weight since this awareness began and that still scares me. But surprisingly, I feel more vibrant, healthier. I catch a glance of myself in the mirror and wonder, what would my body want to feel and look like if I didn’t have all these cultural imprints. What would happen if I could break free? What if we could all be more free to be ourselves however that looks and feels?
I catch the old demeaning commentary before it takes off and tell my body I’m grateful…for how it moves, how it feels, how it looks, all of it. It’s a start. I’m practicing telling myself “Hey, you look good”.
Sometimes, I even believe it.
[i] Homer was my father’s brother.
[ii] Sylvia Edstrom letter to Vestana Bruff, February 25, 1958. In: William and Sylvia records collection.
[iii] The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Spock, Dr. Benjamin. 1957, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York.
[iv] Sylvia Edstrom letter to Vestana Bruff, August 1, 1958. In: William and Sylvia records collection.
Further reading:
I read Body of Truth, How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight – and What We Can Do About It by Harriet Brown (2015, Da Capo Press) as I was going through this exploration. I found it helpful and interesting. Her research includs historical information on the cultural demand for thinness for women. She also her personal journey with making peace with her own body which grew out trying to help her daughter as she struggled with anorexia nervosa. Brown offers evidence to dispute the American cultural insistence that thinness is necessary for health.