Scarleteen

When you're with friends or family, how do the people in those groups talk about their bodies or the bodies of other people? Do you find those discussion norms helpful to your own body image, or are they unhelpful?

For instance, my family tends to be highly critical when talking about their own bodies (this can make holidays with large meals interesting. And by interesting I mean full of mixed messages like "you should eat more! Ugh, I can't believe how big my waist has gotten"). But my friends are much more body positive. So I end up feeling way more comfortable with my body after being with my friends than with my family

This is such an important discussion topic! I'm wondering what others have experienced in their families, especially from a young age and growing up through puberty and beyond...

In my family, my mom is constantly talking about her own body and how she is dissatisfied with it. She has done this for many years. In middle school, my younger sister suffered from an eating disorder. I can't help but think the two things are connected. My mom also used to make comments about my body and my sister's body, subtly suggesting that we were either getting too fat or too skinny. She has stopped doing that in the past couple years, I think after both me and my sister and our dad have said things to her. However, she has not stopped talking about her own body.

Even talking about bodies at all in a critical way can have an effect on those around you. I have friends who have made pledges to not talk about bodies in a critical way at all, and I have tried to do the same. Even saying things like "you look so skinny in that outfit!" can have detrimental affects. I try to stay positive and encourage people to love and accept their bodies--even with my mom. I tell her that she looks great in anything that she wears, that I am proud of her for exercising to stay healthy, and that I would rather not talk about body size when she brings it up. Sometimes it is best to totally avoid the topic of body size and appearance, and focus on having conversations about other topics.

My family has been pretty bad about body-shaming talk, essentially, my entire life. I think its definitely had negative effects on my ability to find my body beautiful and worthy of love. Thankfully I have a couple of fat radical friends that I can be open and openly talk about being positive about bodies.
I've still got friends that say ridiculous things to me, like how "fat" they are for eating a large meal, or how they're "too fat" for somebody more in shape than them while they are themselves are skinny. I've been slowly correcting friends that do these things in small ways because it's important to me that I not feel ashamed of being a fat person when I'm talking to a person.

In my household, we have disability in the mix - including some pain and physical restriction on my partner's side - so the way we talk about our bodies includes that. We're definitely not a centre of "bodies are AWESOME and ours are the BESTEST we love them!", because in common with a fair number of people with pain and/or physical restrictions, that just doesn't fit with the reality of daily life. But, we also do not speak of or think of our bodies as any kind of "less good" simply because they're disabled. To me - and to my partner too, as I understand - it's a radical and defiant act to think of and talk of our bodies (especially Partner's) as enjoyable, as things of wonder, to appreciate them for what they Can do, in a world where the norm is to devalue and shut out disabled bodies. When we really get down to it, a body that's simply living - even if imperfectly, even if needing some external supports to actually live - is already doing so many incredible things.

We talk about how a body physically feels, or about how we feel about our own body. There needs to be room to say and express things like "argh my back hurts, stop it body" or "I don't feel right in myself today at all" and talk about any sadness, frustration or confusion that comes with any of that. We don't ever say anything mean or belittling about a body. Personally, I feel some responsibility about not throwing around any meanness or shamey-ness about or towards my own body, because in physical appearance I am loads closer to socially-approved norms than my partner is, and I am aware of so much horrible stuff that has been said to my partner on physical-disability grounds. I feel like, if I was ragging on my own body, what would that suggest about Partner's? It's actually worked out really, really well in my favour; a complete lack of negativity has been really healthy for how I feel about and see myself. And nothing is shut down or unspoken, because "I'm having some really hard feelings about my body" is a thing we say or discuss; it's only "My body is <meh thing>" (other than factual, like "hurting"!) which is out.

When I was growing up, the body talk in my house was really, really awful. Like, "Content Note maybe skip this paragraph if you're working on avoiding harmful body attitudes for your mental health" kind of awful. Neither of my parents were negative or shamey about their own bodies. However, they were both lean, muscular sportspeople, and it seemed like the whole world was seen through that lens. I was always aware that that wasn't my kind of body, and felt less-than because of it. My mother clearly had some kind of issue with people of size, because when she saw someone who was slightly larger, she responded with physical, facial and verbal disgust. She didn't say anything directly to a person, but there must have been plenty of times in the street where her reaction was apparent. Afterwards, at home, she would talk about how disgusting someone's body had been. My best friend was a little chubby, and from around when we were 8 or 9, my mother often talked jaw-droppingly negatively about her body (when she wasn't around, but directly to me), and literally shuddered in disgust at the small "rolls of fat" around my friend's middle. My mother also pointed and laughed at how fat my belly looked for a full five minutes, when I was 12.

Unsurprisingly, I had ISSUES with body image in my teens. Somehow, I managed not to absorb any attitude towards any other person, but I clearly absorbed it all about myself. I just wanted to be invisible so that no-one would have to see my body - for their sake, not mine. I thought that my body - in any form it could possibly have - was too objectionable to be seen. The thing that made the biggest difference to that was simply getting away from the awful talk and attitudes, and then having other people respond positively to my appearance, and then defying the earlier attitudes (hello, short shorts!); over time in my late teens to early 20s, it eased up and faded. I got a shock when I saw a picture of myself at 18 a few years later: what i saw in the picture was entirely different to what I'd been seeing in the mirror all my teens and when the photo was taken. I had literally been seeing something very different to what had actually been there. So, those body-talk norms were clearly deeply harmful to me, and gave me what was probably a mental health condition.

I'm fortunate with the people around me now; no-one seems interested in talking about bodies other than in a disability-access or a real-self-presentation kind of way, and there don't seem to be the social norms of self-criticizing as a kind of bonding ritual. It's really healthy! It feels really grounding to be around people who have lots of other higher-priority things to think/talk about than nuances of what they or other people look like, and it makes it much easier to be in that place myself.

Just came back and read your post, Redskies...that line in the beginning, "When we really get down to it, a body that's simply living - even if imperfectly, even if needing some external supports to actually live - is already doing so many incredible things," is so wonderful. I'm so glad you have come to surround yourself with people who speak healthily about their bodies, and I'm truly sorry about how your family hurt you when you were younger.

And QueenDee, that's awesome that you are starting to correct your friends when they say body-shaming stuff! That is super brave, and you definitely don't deserve to be ashamed about your body, ever.