Madison and I just got back from the grocery where we ran to get a cake for my boss’s birthday celebration (we need to leave for it in about 45 minutes) and cherries to take to the Clippers game tonight. She buckled herself in while I put the cart away and when I came back and got in the car she said, “It’s ok to be a little bit fat, right Mama?”
And I said, “Yes. What’s important is eating right and getting exercise. If someone is doing those things then their body is going to be exactly what it’s supposed to be, which might be fat and might be skinny.”
She said, “Ok.”
I said, “Were you thinking about me being a little bit fat? Were you watching my body when I was putting away the cart?”
(The line after this paranthetical paragraph is where you see how Dawn will climb up on the cross for the public good of her blog reading public to combat size prejudice. Much of the following info is similar to what I’ve written before but further down you can see what Madison says about herself and see why being explicit — i.e., getting up on the cross and daring to say, “You mean my fat ass?” is important.)
She said, “Yes, I was looking at your tush.”
I said, “My fat tush, huh?”
She laughed.
“Well,” I said. “You know how I eat a variety of food and you know I’m running and exercising so you know that my body is just supposed to be a little bit fat.”
“Not straight like Lis [babysitter].”
“No, not straight like Lis. But that’s how my body is and that’s how Lis’s body is. You know, people might look at me and Lis and say, ‘Wow, Lis is so straight! I bet she really exercises!’ but actually I exercise more than Lis and this is just how my body is. That’s why you can’t ever look at someone and know if they eat too much or too little or exercise at all. People will tell you that you can look at someone and tell but they’re wrong. And they will try to tell you that how people look is ok or not ok but they’re wrong about that, too.”
(Lis will not mind my telling you that I exercise more because she is one of the people I talk to about this stuff anyway.)
Madison then said, “It is just racist to say that people who are fat don’t exercise!”
I said, “It’s not nice to say things about people’s body shapes and sizes but it’s not racist. Racist is when people make assumptions about people based on race — on being black or white or Asian. Some people call it size-ist when people make assumptions about people’s size.”
“I exercise and I eat a variety of foods.”
“Yes you do. You are really healthy.”
[beat]
Then I said, casually, “What do you think about your body?”
“A little bit little and a little bit fat.”
“And since you exercise and eat right, your body must be exactly right.”
[Note: Here I wanted to say all kinds of "beautiful" and "strong" and "pretty" but I felt like this was coming from my reaction to her saying "fat" and wasn't necessary and in fact would be "she doth protest too much." Because if she had said, "A little bit little" I would have just said that bit about being exactly right so I stuck with it. I sat on my proverbial hands. The ones that would otherwise be wringing.]
“Yes,” continued my dearest darling Madison. ” Can you be straight and fat at the same time?”
“Yes, you can have a fat tushie or a fat tummy and straight arms and legs. Bodies come in all shapes.”
“Like a fat belly? Like Pennie has a fat belly because Roscoe is in there!”
And then we segued right from size and body acceptance into how babies are born, what they do before they get born and adoption.
It was the longest ride home from the grocery EVER; I am exhausted and recuperating with coffee (to make up for that lame-ass diet coke I had this morning).
I have been wondering when Madison would bring up the fact that she is bigger than her friends because obviously she knows this. For one thing, they play dress-up together and clothes that fit her friends don’t always fit her. That she used “fat” matter-of-factly gives me hope because this is a label that will be put on her (she is female after all and I think you could be 5’4″ and 105 pounds and still could get that lobbed at you) and I’d like her to own it and not the prejudice that comes with it. And note: The first step to this is asking her explicitly, “Are you talking about my fat body?” And then saying explicitly, “Because my fat body is ok.”
The very first time I heard a 4-year old girl call herself fat was when I was babysitting and this adorable, beautiful and yes, round little girl said, “I am too fat to be the princess; I have to be the prince.” See, the problem is not that she (lovely as she was) called herself “fat”, it’s that she thought beautiful princesses could not be fat. Fat is not the problem; some of us are fat. That word isn’t the enemy. It’s the prejudice behind it and the only we can dismantle it in our own families is by disempowering it as an insult. First step to doing that? Not flinching when your kids say it and even inviting them to share their thoughts even when you know it’s your fat ass they’re eyeing.
There’s a lot I do wrong as a parent. Like yell at the kids when the root of the problem is that I’m drinking diet coke at breakfast instead of coffee. Or get so tense about money that I have a heart-attack when someone innocently asks why we are so mean as to deny them a trip to the (expensive) movies. I mean, these kids have worlds of lame parenting to explore in therapy someday. But this stuff — this explicit talking about fat and about sex and about race and about adoption and all the hard stuff — this I can do. And I have a strong belief, surely born of my fear that I am screwing up in many ways, that if we see our kids as the full-fledged people they are with ideas and concerns and experiences that matter as much as our own and treat them with the serious attention they deserve then they can deal with our neurotic breakdowns. Knock wood.
From Madison telling me that she wishes we were all black (you should’ve seen her, elbows on the table, waving her hands and rolling her eyes as she said it) to saying that she is “a little bit little and a little bit fat” with the same casual certainty that she says she likes pink, I figure this girl is gonna be ok.
