This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief
Women have spent generations shrinking themselves. The real question is why.
At our annual family picnic, my mother turned to me with a brownie in her right hand and asked me, “Should I?”
She was 100 years old and asking her youngest daughter for permission to indulge in a treat at a family celebration. Something felt very wrong with this picture.
Wrong, but very familiar.
What We Hand Down
My mother had been on a diet for my entire life, with the scale deciding her attractiveness and her worth. I watched her behave as though she could never be small enough to fit into the space the world allotted her. And she worked on it her entire life, from exercising with Gloria on the living room floor to frequenting a local Curves well into her 90s.
When she was about that same age, I asked to borrow a rather fitted sheath dress. She commented that I’d have to wear a girdle to hide my round belly. Her head snapped up when I responded, “Oh, no! This bump is my badge of motherhood.” She drew in a sharp breath: “Oh, I never thought of it that way. I always thought we were supposed to keep our stomach flat.”
My eldest sister told me that she ate only one hard-boiled egg for lunch because it took more calories to burn a hard-boiled egg than the egg itself contained. She was 25. I was 11. In my eyes, she knew everything.
Two generations believed in and passed down the “tradition” that a woman’s worth was inversely proportional to her size and rested entirely on her appearance. The chief instrument was the scale.
Thin by Another Name
Botticelli’s rounded, voluptuous Venus, once the icon of feminine beauty, was replaced by the stick figures of Twiggy and then Kate Moss. Our medical system, based on data from the male of the species, began using weight as the criterion for health. But did we ever really leave behind or get beyond thin, small, white, and blond as ideals of feminine beauty? When it became politically incorrect to espouse those ideals, we reshaped ourselves around words like strong, healthy, and beautiful from within.
In trying to be the perfect woman, we elided what was buried deep beneath our awareness and simply moved along the surface, using “fit” to replace the word “thin,” while still equating the number on the scale to attractiveness. Still, underneath it all, we continue to subscribe to the dictum that a woman’s worth lies in her attractiveness, and that attractiveness is determined by the cultural mores set by men.
”Healthy” was ”thin.” We renamed the cage.
Breaking the Cycle, Eating the Brownie
We claim to be free from dietary restrictions and from appearance-based judgment. Yet, no matter what form it takes, we feed this subservience.
This isn’t really about carbs, metabolism, or muscle mass. It’s about control—how our autonomy and self-love have been subjugated to someone else’s desire for us.
And how we—through generations—perpetuate it.
Just when I thought we were headed in a healthier direction—weight positivity, greater awareness of weight discrimination, deeper conversations promoting beauty from within—the Ozempic trend descended upon us. And we’re buying it hook, line, and sinker. Thin is back in. In the biggest way.
This shift backward from the mantras of healthy and strong to “objective: thin” hits my gut with the most profoundly patriarchal punch.
When my hero, tennis star Serena Williams—former champion and spokeswoman for positive self-image—began doing ads for GLP-1s, my heart sank. It showed me that the wellness era was a rebrand, not a liberation.
I have no judgment about this. I’m as much a participant as the next woman, and the ones on either side of her. But I see it. And I cringe.
What I want to see is a movement of soulful, radical, militant acknowledgment—and then rebellion against this imprisonment. Freeing ourselves to eat the brownie is as good a place to begin as any. Freeing ourselves from the albatross of the scale is better.
Because we’re in this together—our daughters, our granddaughters, our sons and grandsons too.
We carry this weight until we decide, together, to put it down.
13 Responses
Such a powerful piece, the story of my life, and at the root of all the work I do these days. Thank you for sharing this very important perspective.
These are all thoughts I have had also. I was never a person that thought about my weight or what I ate until after children. But I have decided at 71 if this is what happened after I had this wonderful blessing of children so be it. I thank God for my life and for them.
I really needed to hear this, again. I’m 70. This is what I look like, be it good or bad, yet I still let 3 or 4 pounds determine how I feel. I have to remind myself that it’ better to have a little cushion at my age than bones that might break! Years of indoctrination. So sad.
I needed to read this. I have constantly been called “chubby” all my life. I look at pictures of me as a little girl and wonder why my parents and other family members say that to a young girl. For most of my life, I have been self conscious because of it, not wearing the types of clothes I wanted to wear, but those that hid my “chubbiness.” As an older woman, I’d lost my job due to that awful word, restructuring. My mother had the nerve to say to me, “Do you think it’s your weight that they aren’t hiring you?” I stared at her stunned. I’d not even had an interview yet and of course, discrimination for any reason is against the law. (Although, I’m sure it still takes place.) After reading this today, I am going to wear the clothes I want to wear, probably without spanx, and try to worry no longer about how I look. Thank you!
About a month ago, I was taking my 87 year old mother to lunch and when I picked her up from her house, she asked if her short sleeved shirt was okay to wear. I asked what was wrong with it and she hesitated for a second before saying “I just hate my arms”. I was stunned. She’s 87 years old and is STILL worried about how she looks. I knew that she valued a cute figure above all else (something she felt she never had, even when she was a size 8) and was always on a diet when I was growing up, but I think it is so sad that she still hates her body at her age. It inspired me to wear sleeveless shirts and shorts for the rest of the summer – my arms and legs deserve to see the light too! I’m working now to get over my own body image issues because I do NOT want the shape and size of my body to be something I think about when I’m in my 80s and beyond.
My inner hedonist is cheering every word of this. ‘Thin’ has always equaled sacrifice, doing without, less than … literal smaller-ing. And it became so systemic, so part of the water we swim in that we need to have articles like this to remind us it’s not how it should be.
So I’ll be eating the browning (or in my case, the scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam) and relishing the fact that I can, even as I deliberately shush the Weight Watchers lady in my head.
What’s rather depressing is realizing I have to have this conversation with myself.
What’s invigorating is to know that there are more and more of us living our lives in ways that show our granddaughters they don’t have to.
At 67 years old , and weighing in at 200ish, I am done. Did the diets, Scarsdale, Special K, Grapefruit, and most often Weight Watchers. Done. Maybe it was my open heart surgery for double bypass, or maybe it was the loss of my sister to a brutal cancer, or my husband’s terrifying mini strokes, but I am done measuring my life in calories and clothing sizes. I will be eating the brownie and enjoying my natural size for the rest of my time on this planet.
Paula,
Thank you for being an excellent human and role model for all mankind! I love, love, love this revolution we like minded women have started – resisting advertisements over the past 100 years telling us we’re too skinny, too fat, too old, too young, too gray, too wrinkled, too white, too tan, etc.
John Lennon wrote about a question during class discussion he had as a child:
Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up?
John Lennon: Happy.
Teacher: You don’t understand the question.
John Lennon: You don’t understand life.
When I stopped listening to these messages that were feeding my inner critic, I starved that little b*tch, let my natural salt & pepper hair come in, wear what I want, don’t feel compelled to look like a 30 year old at 58, and am finally happy in my body. This is the point of life – eat the damn brownie!
I’ve heard elderly family members on their deathbed talk about being pleased that they were lucky enough to keep their intellect and memory, or remained physically healthy enough to live independently. I’ve heard dying friends and family (of all ages) treasure the vacations and experiences they were able to have, and the celebrations they enjoyed with friends and family. I have never even heard OF a dying person saying, I’m so grateful that I stayed a size 6, or never had saddlebags, or kept a flat belly. Use common sense and take care of yourself, but eat the damn brownie and enjoy your life. Because you have no idea how much of it you’ll be granted.
My mother was “on a diet” from the year of my birth in 1955 through her passing in 2019. Our treasured memories centered on Weight Watchers meetings and summer lunches of hard boiled eggs and grapefruit. The result? A lifetime of disordered eating for both my sister and me, odd relationships with food, and lots of “permission granted” or “permission denied” logic around having ice cream on my birthday….to this very day.
As for Serena Williams? Her husband Alexis Ohanian is a VC guy who’s invested in RO. She’s not a neutral spokesperson.
It’s horrible isnt it? To have grown up with your world on a diet?!? To look around and recognize that you’ve never left? To reach for and then put down what is neither reward nor punishment but a delight of life?!
As for Serena, I didnt know. But there is neutral that matters in this instance, is there?
All the best, Lynn!
Thank you for expressing my exact feelings – this ozempic era has been incredibly depressing and triggering for me and I too hope that there will come a day sooner rather than later that we can be liberated from the guilt of
Enjoying our brownies!
It’s painful to watch gifted, talented, dynamic women reduce themselves to a weight or a dress size. AND to be tempted to join them! Cheers to feeling free and at ease in our skin! To picking up and enjoying all we want in life!
All the best, Paula!