Fat Dad, Nutritionist Mom

***trigger warning for fat-shaming, disordered eating and self harm***

Hello there!

I'm thlingan, a 21 year-old transgender college student and fat-positive thin ally. Samantha C. has invited me to contribute some stories of growing up and living with a thin, nutritionist mom and a fat dad. The focus for me will be on how my mom's treating my dad like a horrible food ogre affects our family relationships and what it's like to live with a nutritionist. In that vein, here's a glimpse of what it's like at my house... (Note: Instead of names, I put "husband", "wife", "thlingan")

A week and a half ago...

We're done eating dinner. My dad brought home some large holiday cookies a co-worker gave him (which earlier elicited scoffing-grunt noises and comments of "More cookies again!?" from my mom). We're all trying them and gushing about how delicious they are.

Me: These are amazing...

Dad: Seriously, I could eat like six of these n--

Mom: *interrupts my dad with a patronizing, judgey laugh* I know you could, husband... easily... Well, you--

Dad: ...but I don't, I don't...

Mom: --don't need to be eating six of them

Dad: I'm just saying they are really, really good cookies.

-only minutes later in conversation-

Mom: I really should just have eaten half of one, they're so big...

Days later...

The three of us are in the kitchen, my mom is reading some holiday dessert recipe and sings "'Tis the season for gaining weight..." in a belittling fashion...

Hours after that, I come into the kitchen hunting for ice cream, my parents can see me in the next room, where they are watching a movie...

Mom: You and your sister ate up all those peppermint cartons in like two days... jeez the two of you are going to be Two Ton Tessies...

Me: That is awful! That is belittling fat people and shaming them...

Mom: I was just kidding...

Me: No, that is being mean... You shame Dad just because he even WANTS to eat junkfood.. Newsflash --Everyone likes junkfood! It doesn't help for you to shame them for it...

Mom: *waving her hand at me as if to shoo me from the room, shaking her head patronizingly* Goodbye, goodbye

Next Day

Mom: Husband, you're having cookies again?!

Dad: I'm having a bite of some cookies...

Mom: "A few bites" doesn't matter! All that matters is the number of the scale...

An argument between me and my mother ensues...

Christmas Night...

As Jews, we were of course going to a Chinese restaurant after seeing a movie. We're sitting at a table in the lobby, waiting to go into the movie...

Dad: I'm getting an appetizer tonight...

Mom: *makes awful scoffing-grunt noise, seems about to make annoying comment*

Dad: I am.

Mom: *tone of voice implying my dad is being 'touchy'* Alright, get whatever you want...

Every. Damn. Day.

#1

Dad takes out some SugarFat (SugarFat=term I want to use for any food deemed 'unhealthy')

Mom gives him shame-stare.

Dad: *pretending he genuinely has no idea what Mom's deal is* What! I'm just having a little bite...

Choose from 1 or more of the following Mom responses:

• Eyeroll-scoff
• Husband, you already met my arbitrary Horrible Food Ogre eating quota for today had some SugarFat/a huge meal/list of every-'bad'-food-he-ate today.
• I'm sick of your 'little bites'!
• You're always 'having a little bite' of everything!

Dad: I did not meet the arbitrary Horrible Food Ogre quota for today had a small SugarFat/list of every-food-he-ate today.

Mom: *scoff-grunt-stare*

Dad: *animal noise intended to be an impression of my mom's scolding*

#2

Dad gets a little second helping after dinner.

Mom: Husband! You're having MORE? You already had HFO dinner quota all that DinnerFood. Why don't you just wait and see if you're hungry?

#3

Dad mentions [Food-He'd-Like-to-Eat].

Mom: (Choose 1 or more)

• Yeahhh, you don't need to be eating [Food-You-like-to-Eat].
• No one else is going to want to eat that.
• We're having [list of scheduled meals] this week. You're not going to make [Food-You-Like-to-Eat].
• Are you kidding? We don't need to be eating a bunch of SugarFat.

Dad: Thlingan will eat [Food-I-Like-to-Eat] *secret aside to me* We're going to have [Food-I-Like-to-Eat]

I think the awfulness of the above examples is fairly self-evident. However, what seems particularly disturbing to me is my mother's blind assumption that my dad is fat because, without her policing, he would be a Terrible Cookie Fiend who orders tons of appetizers in restaurants and cooks only recipes where the primary ingredients are meat and cheese. Her attitude is always OF COURSE my dad would eat EVERY COOKIE IN THE WORLD, given the opportunity, and that this imaginary proclivity of his is deserving of sarcasm and shame-stares. She acts like she thinks thin people don't even like SugarFat and that my dad's enjoyment of it is some kind of taboo sexual fetish. Then, when faced with the evidence that two of her thin children are, in fact, fiends for SugarFat without gaining weight from it, she "jokingly" warns us that we are going to get OMGTEHFATZ. My mom just thinks that, obviously, since my dad is fat, he has no idea what his body needs and that he has a super-human desire for SugarFat.

What's truly bizarre is that my dad has actually lost a lot of weight recently. He had a minor stroke a few months ago (which the doctors said was completely unrelated to his weight) from which he is now completely recovered. After the stroke, my dad started getting really serious about losing weight to reduce his chances of having another stroke or other health problem. My dad has gone through a flerbillion cycles of losing weight and then gaining it back. He is now in the most persistent weight-loss phase I have ever witnessed him going through. Thus, my mom is pleased. So what I think is bizarre is that she still shames my dad for even liking SugarFat and treats him like he's some insufferable pain-in-the-ass whose behavior she's forced to police. Like.. what does she want? For him to be a Food Vulcan who eats only for sustenance and takes no pleasure in SugarFat? That is clearly unreasonable.

My mom is perhaps unusual in that her obsession with fatness is genuinely unrelated to beauty norms. She dated and married my dad while he was fat, he's been fat their whole marriage and I've never once gotten the message from her, subtly or explicitly, that fatness makes someone unattractive or that beauty is a good reason to lose weight. In fact, my mom even believes that some people can be fat and healthy. However, she also believes that anyone who is fat and has certain health problems (like my dad) MUST lose weight to improve those health problems. Thus, supposedly, central to her obsession with my dad's weight is his health. While I believe that my mom is genuinely motivated by concern for my dad's health, I think she's also motivated by fat hatred. If it were just about health she wouldn't treat him the way she does. To demonstrate my point, consider the following:

My mom's Why-My-Dad-Is-Fat Theory is this: My dad is ultra-stressed out all the time and also never really learned healthy eating habits. As an outlet for his stress, he eats tons of SugarFat, causing him to gain weight. This weight gain will ultimately lead to a premature and horrible death. Now, if we assume this theory is accurate, does my mom's behavior make sense? To fat-hating folks, it probably makes sense: she needs to correct him on his eating because obviously he doesn't have the self-control to regulate himself. In this hypothetical situation, my dad's eating habits are self-destructive and slowly killing him. In the media, out in the world and in my own house, fat-hating folks are constantly claiming that obesity is literally the same as being addicted to drugs and that it's an epidemic of death equal to a fatal disease. My dad's at an age where a lot of these supposed fat-related deaths tend to occur. If the anti-obesity folks genuinely believe the dire claims they say they do, you'd expect their behavior to match up, especially when it comes to people who they think may die in the next few years. So, let's consider whether my mom's behavior would be considered health-motivated and reasonable if my dad was actually engaging in potentially fatal, self destructive behavior...

Revisiting my mom's Why-My-Dad-Is-Fat Theory...

My mom's Why-My-Dad-Self-Harms Theory is this: My dad is ultra-stressed out and depressed all the time. As an outlet for his feelings, he cuts himself. Although he is not actually suicidal, there is reason to believe his self-harm will slowly kill him.

My mom's Why-My-Dad-Is-Anorexic Theory is this: My dad believes his worth as a person is tied up in whether he meets certain beauty standards, he's stressed out, feels like his life is out of control and deals with it by controlling what he eats.

In either of the above two situations, would scoff-grunts, shame-stares, eyerolls and belittling be considered appropriate responses when someone shows signs of a self-destructive behavior? If you noticed someone with anorexia not eating, would it be reasonable to give them an I-Can't-Believe-You're-Being-So-Obnoxious shame-stare and then say, voice dripping with disdain "Jeez! You already skipped breakfast today, now you're not going to eat lunch?" or "I know you would eat just lettuce for a meal." If I'm meant to take seriously the claim that my dad's alleged compulsion to eat too much could kill him at any minute, most likely within the next few years... shouldn't I be horrified at the way my mother and other people treat him? Supposedly he has this stress-induced compulsion that endangers his life, but instead of sympathy and understanding, instead of acting like the situation is tragic or serious in any way, people basically just scold him and act disgusted. I am of course not arguing that people SHOULD act like my dad's fatness is tragic, since it's not. What I am saying is that, on some level, the obesity-panic people, including my mother, can't really believe what they claim to believe. Or, if they do, they're cruel hypocrites. Rather, I think people who behave this way toward fat family members, including my mother, are mostly just policing fat people for Being Fat because that is Bad and Gross. I basically feel like my mother's reaction to my dad's eating things is nearly indistinguishable from her reaction to the fact that my sister and I are unmanageable slobs. Furthermore, my mother isn't some horrible exception and her behavior doesn't represent any big departure from the message of mainstream fat policing. I want to make clear I'm not singling her out as being particularly awful because, sadly, she's not. She's just another example of the norm. As a result, ultimately, I think, the message I receive about my father from fat-shaming concern trolls is that a person I love is slowly dying in front of me, but that I shouldn't take it seriously or empathize with him because he's fat.