Torpedo

News flash: the things that mothers say about their bodies affect how their daughters view their own bodies. 

As though there were ever any doubt. 

Some of my earliest memories are of my mother reminiscing about "the good old days."  Invariably the good old days were her college years, which wouldn't be all that strange if all her reminiscences hadn't orbited around how thin she was in college.  There are still tons of old black and white photos to back this up: My sloe-eyed mother, thin as a rail, except for her rather impressive rack, doing various collegiate things. 

I didn't inherit the family rack.  None of my sisters did either.  What we did get from my mother was a near-obsession with being thin.   By the time I was twelve, I was already dieting.  Because it was obvious to me that people were happier when they were thin.  My mother hated herself for not being thin, but she'd clearly been happy as a size 4.  Or so she said.

For my oldest sister, Elephant*, the self-starvation was a matter of control.  She could control what went into her body and that gave her power my mother couldn't take away.  Not that my mother wanted to take that away.  She loved how thin Elephant was.  I got that message loud and clear, because it was a system of reward.  Elephant was so thin that she couldn't get decent clothes in a store.  So my mother, a very talented but lazy seamstress, sewed Elephant an entire, fabulous, custom-tailored wardrobe. 

I got bupkis.   Until I lost weight.   Once I was 5'6" and 90 pounds, I had to have custom-made clothes and $100 blue jeans, too.  Self-starvation was a system of reward.  Deprive yourself and you will be rewarded.

You_sank_my_battleship

Children are a lot like computers--they can be programmed.  In fact, they are programmed, from a very early age, but parents rarely understand what kind of software they're programming their kids with.  We're like torpedoes with elaborate guidance systems, making our way toward the target that has been set for us.  Rarely is the target the one our parents think they've aimed us at, because we received our programming before they were even thinking of where to aim us.  We took our cues when we were small children and now that we're adults we can't be deterred.

Looking back, I can see that I have been moving headlong toward my mother's misery about her body.  Her self-hatred.  Seeing how unhappy she was and seeing what made her unhappy, I've spent years trying to dodge that fate.  I broke up with the first guy I ever loved, because I could see how I would learn to hate myself, to feel fat even when I wasn't.  I stopped paying attention to what my mother said about food.  I ate normally, gained some weight, hung out with lesbians and feminists and liberals.  Made it to this place where I liked myself.  Wasn't ashamed of my body.  I thought, "Great.  I dodged that fate."

Silly me.  No, my guidance system was still taking me to the same destination.  No matter how hard I worked to dodge it, I was heading there.  Pinging off obstacles, tracking my target. 

Knowing you're a torpedo doesn't mean you can stop being one.  The trick is figuring out how to reprogram yourself.  

*No, this doesn't refer to Elephant's size.  It refers to her destructive capacity.