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November 18, 2005
Opinions are like ...
I'm not getting along with my fellow humans today. In fact, I'm finding that a great many of them are pissing me the fuck off. Maybe it's the phase of the moon. Maybe it's the horrific things that are occurring in my uterus. Maybe it's the upcoming holiday stress. Whatever it is, I'm not sure if I'm the one who's going nuts or if it's the whole world around me.
I was talking to my mom, and somehow the topic of weight and food came up. After many, many years of bumping heads on these topics, my mom and I have made our peace, at least with each other.
Someone - I don't know who and I can't decide if I really want to know - recently told her, "You make sure Robin and B. aren't feeding Clara Jane junk food."
My mom explained that no, we're doing anything but. Clara Jane eats a very balanced diet with an "everything in moderation" philosophy. Very little processed food, no fast food, lots and lots of fresh fruit, whole grains, lean meats and veggies (which she's been shunning lately, but we're not giving up).
Apparently, this person had assumed that, since B. and I are fat, we eat nothing but shit. Of course! A fat person would never eat a vegetable! They live on Big Macs and Coke!
I'm hesitant to find out who this person is, because there's a good chance I wouldn't be able to resist beating the ever-living fuck out of her. Fat people have poor impulse control, you know.
My mom, bless her, told this person, "They don't keep junk food in the house. When I visit, I have to bring my own." Which is true. She spent a lot of time with us after Clara Jane was born. One night she declared, "You don't even have a damn saltine in this house, do you? No chips. No cookies. We've gotta go to Target first thing tomorrow. I'm starving!"
To which I probably said something like, "Eat a damn apple and get over it."
I'm not a health foodie. Not by a long shot. I like a little bit of everything. I've got my vices, that's for sure. I don't keep junk food in the house for a very simple reason - because we'll eat it. Out of sight, out of mind.
But it galls me to no end that someone can make such a huge judgement of me and my parenting - that I'm doing something harmful to my child's health - based solely on how I look.
Did this person take into account the year and a half of culinary training I've had? The four years I've spent writing about food? The three and a half years I've spent being paid to feed people healthy meals? The two years I spent teaching people - particularly kids - how to eat well?
Of course not. That would require some thought, which is a lot harder than making a snap judgement.
I'd love for this person to spend 24 hours with me. Let's see who has better eating habits.
Nevermind that she's putting my mother in charge of something that's not her responsibility.
Nevermind that the only time my child has eaten McDonald's or KFC have been while visiting my parents. Nevermind that her cookie consumption multiplies when she's with them. But that's fine. They're grandparents; I don't mind if they spoil her a bit. I'm not a total food Nazi, although I did ask them to never darken the door of McDonald's with my child again. It's bad enough that she recognizes that damn clown solely from underwriting promos on PBS. But I digress. Telling my parents to make sure we feed her right is like someone telling a heroin dealer, "Make sure your customer goes easy on the smack."
I'd like to think that my intense reaction to this is rooted in my current intra-uterine happenings, that it's just a bad case of the monthlys that's leading me to be so fucking angry about this. But obviously, a nerve has been struck.
Not long after this conversation, Clara Jane and I went out to lunch at my coffeehouse. At the table next to us was another mom with a little boy about a year older than Clara Jane. I've seen them in there several times, but we've never talked. While we waited for our lunches, the boy ate a chocolate chip cookie roughly the size of his face and drank half of a 12-ounce Sprite (clear cup - I could see). I'm not judging her; she's got every right to feed her kid whatever she wants. But dammit. God fucking dammit. My kid had the same lunch as hers - turkey sandwich with fruit salad, minus the cookie, substituting organic milk for the soda. And yet, if you put me beside the other mom, guess which one would be lectured on the most nutritious way to feed her kid.
It would be me. Because I'm fat and she's skinny. As I watched her kid drink his sugary soda and eat his pre-lunch cookie, a thought kept popping into my head: "She doesn't have to deal with the shit I'm dealing with right now."
Yeah, life ain't fair. The world ain't fair. I've accept that and can deal with it. Chances are the other mom has people criticizing her parenting skills for some reason just as stupid as the "fat parents = junk-food-eating kids" logic. Because that's the thing: it's always going to be something. There are always going to be people who take one tiny bit of information and assume they know the whole story, and what's best.
We have a name for those people: Fucking Idiots.
I'm at peace with my body. It's taken so many years, but I'm there. I know I'm doing the best with the cards I've been dealt and I don't waste my time pining for things to be different. I focus on living my life and making the best possible choices for our minds, bodies and souls. For the most part I'm perfectly fine with that and don't really care what anyone else thinks. Which is the real kicker in all of this: that I'm allowing an ill-informed, superficial false assumption to make me feel like shit.
Posted by Robin at November 18, 2005 02:50 PM
Comments
The sad thing is that there are kids that are heavy because of the junk food... I had a friend with two sons who were being teased at school because of their weights but during all the times I stayed with them I discovered the numerous times they had junk food. If they had weight issues because of the immense amount of bad food they ate then it was mom's job to say no when they wanted junk. Or to teach the other kids to not tease....
Tough issue...
I on the other hand don't eat nutritious and thats how i stay at my weight. If I had a well balanced diet I think I'd weigh more but then again I'm past the childhood growth time...
Well I think you rock, I think you have rocking hair when you're drunk and I think your kid is freaking awesome. Mom's suck...Mom and I are still not talking...its great...I'd like a mom...but not this one...
Posted by: mindy at November 18, 2005 07:20 PM
Well you are lucky - you have found that peace with your body. I'm still convinced that starving myself and exercising twice daily will help me lose the 70 pounds I need to. I'm still convinced that if I intake more than 5 grams a sugar per day, I will gain weight, and thereby DIE. I'm still convinced that Trim Spa will work. You have no idea how much I've spent on that shit. I'm still a fucking idiot for sure, but for different reasons.
As for the fucking idiot that opened her mouth with her head up her ass, well, as you can see, her mouth is full of shit.
Well written Robin, as always. Thanks for the eye opener.
Karen
Posted by: Karen Rani at November 18, 2005 07:21 PM
i'm still annoyed. by this and the other stuff.
co-dependent, i tell you. :)
Posted by: kara at November 18, 2005 07:27 PM
Oh, there are definitely kids with junk food issues - fat kids and thin kids. When I was teaching cooking classes for kids, I was amazed at both the well-developed paletes of some of the kids, and the horrible diets of others.
Still, I think it's an issue for the parent to handle and not anyone elses' business, although I worked my ass off to give the kids with bad diets new ways of looking at food. With some of them, it worked, at least temporarily.
I thought about your mom with all of this, Mindy.
Posted by: Poppy at November 18, 2005 08:02 PM
yeah... sucks...she and I communicated a little..I wrote straight out to her what part of that comment was suposed to be a joke. I felt that at least I could share her stupidity instead of keeping it quiet and knowing my mom is one of those people. But she is also probably one of those people because she is so unhappy. Unhappiness spreads that virus unfortunately.
Posted by: mindy at November 18, 2005 09:04 PM
That last line, Mindy? Absolutely so true.
Posted by: Poppy at November 18, 2005 09:06 PM
two words: rolling rock
Posted by: pkb at November 18, 2005 09:26 PM
I love you Poppy Mom.
Posted by: Eulallia at November 18, 2005 10:14 PM
Poppy, I really know where you are coming from with that - my child has the best diet I know - he eats EVERYTHING, and I mean everything. The only vegetable he doesn't like is peppers, and he says"I think I will when I'm older" and he prefers carrots and mushrooms raw, but he loves them. He eats all fruit, fish, meat. He also loves chocolate, sweets and biscuits and cakes, crisps... but he has them in moderation. On Fridays in his packed lunch he has a packet of low fat crisps as a treat - more often than not he brings them home as he hasn't had time to eat them - too busy eating his chorizo on granary sandwich and black olives!
I am overweight and I know that I eat really healthy food - I don't chuck ready meals and processed stuff into the oven for dinner - even if it's a simple grilled chicken breast (free range, natch!) and veggies, then that's what we have. But I'm sure that people judge me all the same.
Like you, if I had the crap, I'd eat the crap. Sometimes I DO have the crap. But on the whole, I say put me next to a skinny woman and I'd put money on my diet being better.
You write so well, I love to read your blog, I really do.
Posted by: Zoe at November 19, 2005 02:52 AM
Fuck 'em. You're smarter, better looking and have talent. Your husband adores you and your child worships you. You're a successful writer, chef and all-around super woman. Those bitches have husbands that screw anything that moves (but the wife) and children who loathe them... so they revert back to 5th grade defensiveness and say The Fat Girl is doing something wrong. Or The Gay Guy is doing something wrong. Or The Black Girl. The Tall Guy. The Nerdy Girl. The Quiet Guy.
These people, Poppy, are called Republicans. We have them out here in DC too. They're so insanely jealous of anyone else who is happy that they have to attempt to place some load of shit upon their shoulders to make them hate themselves, thus raising up the Republican to a power position.
Tell you what - once The Fat Girl, The Gay Guy, The Black Girl, The Tall Guy, The Nerdy Girl and The Quiet Guy learn to work with one another to support the "underdog" causes... well, watch out Bitchy Moms of the world. Cuz a revolution is a-comin'.
Love you the way you are.
BDB
Posted by: Big Daddy B at November 19, 2005 10:15 AM
My husband is like that about weight. And while some of his opinions are certainly valid, I think (no. I know. Because I live it.) that there are way more factors to weight than simply willpower and calories in / calories out. Sigh. Some people just do not understand what a multifaceted issue weight can be.
Posted by: Julie at November 19, 2005 10:31 AM
I think it's the whole world going nuts, because I felt the same way yesterday. I'm hoping today will be better, but my brain hasn't quite woken up yet despite my body being at work...And last night I realized that I'm so grateful the world isn't fair, because otherwise I'd have to deal with a lot more crap than I do right now.
Posted by: jess at November 19, 2005 11:36 AM
Ah, Poppy, weight is still one of the biggest legal discriminations. I'm fat, therefore I must not be; smart, healthy, able to control myself, able to raise a healthy child, able to make healthy choices, able to wear hip clothes, work for some folks, go out in public...
I'm glad that you've come to terms with your body. I've spent nearly 44 years trying to come to terms with mine. It is a daily process and I hope to conquer it one day.
Don't let them get to you about Clara Jane. You are obviously a concerned and conscientious mom. How dare they sit in judgment of you or anyone else for that matter? Silly people with small, insignificant lives.
Posted by: Barefoot Cajun at November 21, 2005 12:45 PM
PEOPLE ARE STUPID!!! They always think they know better than the parents--especially if it's a relative giving the advice.
Posted by: Cass at November 21, 2005 02:25 PM
Why why why must people comment on toddler's weights? Robin, you've seen my kid. Bit on the skinny side. So what? She's smart. Talkative. Plays well with others. Moves faster than mom, dad and dog combined.
So why the fuck do some people, including those that I love dearly, think that we're starving her? How many more 'starving Ethopian' comments must I hear?
Everyone on this forum is brilliant, and any parents here are wonders. Together, we will take over the world and rid it of the idiots. (Do you think feeding them as we feed our children would make them smarter?)
Posted by: Mary at November 21, 2005 11:04 PM
