It always hurt me that instead of seeing my kindness, my temperance, my smarts, that my mother focused only on my body

Trigger/content warning: Discussion of eating disorders

In the Philippines, there is no shortage of audacity—especially during family reunions. One extra cup of rice here or another stick of barbecue there opens the floodgates for criticism about you and your looks. And the loose jaws that criticize often comment on weight most of all.

When I was a kid, I watched as my cousins gorged on the hotdogs and pancit, the potluck food as their treasure trove. They were all trim and small. I had always been a chubby kid. I was still learning my ABCs, proudly singing along and beaming with a hotdog and marshmallow on a stick the first time I had been berated for eating too much at a family reunion.

“No! Or else you won’t be sexy!” A tita or tito would say. And that was the word they would use as well as my adult neighbors, the tricycle drivers, and the grocery vendors. Sexy—what did I care for that word at just five years old? And yet, it persisted.

I personally took to hiding my food after that, afraid of being told no. Afraid of fixating on something I didn’t care to be as a child—what did that even mean, sexy? I was five. I was happy to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” I said I wanted to be a singer on career day.

Because even if I was bright, vibrant, smart, and loved to sing and dance, no accomplishment was better than how little space I took up

Still, it felt like a bad thing, but I also loved my grandmother’s cooking and the feast that was always laid out in front of us. I snuck food into my room and ate there alone if I had to. Other times, my titas would ask, “Pang-ilan mo na ‘yan?” in an effort to shame me for getting another plate when they and their husbands were happily having their fill.

I would try to reason, say I didn’t eat lunch that day, or breakfast, or that the night before I had skipped dinner. Over the years, those excuses became reality because the comments and the teasing from everyone everywhere I went never stopped. Teachers, passers-by, neighbors. I had learned that largeness was the enemy, that I could not take up that much space, that I was a girl and so my body was under scrutiny. That it was thin or bust.

At six years old, an adult neighbor was joking around with me as I was walking home from the sari-sari store at the corner of the street. “Tama na yang candy na yan,” he said. “Baka mamaya, di ka na sexy.” And I felt upset by it. “Di mo ba yan gusto?” And I just said, “I want to be thin.”

Years later, my classmates would say the same thing. All of us, with our mothers in our shadows, leaving half-eaten plates, denying dessert, and counting calories before we were even 13.

I was a girl, so I had to make myself small. Because even if I was bright, vibrant, smart, and loved to sing and dance, no accomplishment was better than how little space I took up. My mother, compliant with this standard, agreed.

My mother and our (?) body image obsession

Growing up, my mother would constantly harp on my hair, my skin, and my looks. But the aspect of me that got the most criticism was my weight. It stemmed from her own obsession over her own body and would eventually morph me into a creature so eager to please, I would become a sliver of the girl I used to be. Most of the girls I knew did too. A misogynist Philippines ensured this, instilling an almost cruel neurosis about our own bodies.

My mother tried every fad diet that ever reached some semblance of popularity. Sugar-free everything, South Beach, fasting. She had obsessed over her waistline ever since I could remember. Every time we fit clothes, she criticized herself so heavily and strung me into those criticisms with her. I was so young the first time she studied my stomach in the mirror. A child. Baby fat on legs. Still, it felt like she had set a timer, and I had to meet an expectation before that ran out.

She had rows upon rows of Tae Bo DVDs, workout VHS tapes, and every popular workout that promised to “shed those pounds!” She would eat like a rabbit and watch the Food Network to get her fill. Her refrain was always, “I need to lose weight” or “I need to get thinner.”

Need. And to fulfill what necessity? I thought at first it was to achieve something medical or health-related. I learned later it was a need that had no bottom, it would never fill.

That translated to me, as her daughter. This translated to so many girls around me, who would be berated at the dinner table, who would be shamed in dressing rooms.

I watched as my mother powered through hunger and berated herself in the mirror

I watched as my mother powered through hunger and berated herself in the mirror. My mother is a beautiful woman, she always has been, and is not the least bit big to me—and even if she was, it wouldn’t have been a bad thing. But her obsession, her fixation, her eye on herself in the mirror made me start to look at myself the same way.

Slowly, that eye turned to me.

To earn joy, I denied myself

When I shed my childhood and suffered through puberty, I was still chubby. I remember seeing my pediatrician, and he told me I was too big, that it was “sayang.” My brothers were at that same appointment, some of them also chubby like me. But I was the only one he pulled aside to tell me I was a little heavy.

The adults joked about putting me on intensive diets, “just like her mom.” After he laughed, my pediatrician looked at me and said, “You’re a girl, you need to slim down—how else are you going to find a husband?” I didn’t understand the correlation, but watching my mother obsess and nitpick over herself from her hairline to her waistline to her toes, and then turn to me to do the same thing on my behalf, I thought I had been doing girlhood wrong. Maybe that is what I had to do.

During my first school milestone, my first holy communion, she ordered the white dress a size smaller so I could “work towards it.” I was in the second grade. As I posed on the kneeler for the photo, I couldn’t breathe

She was relentless in her pursuit of my weight loss, too. In dressing rooms, when I couldn’t fit, she would shake her head. At meals, when I’d get seconds, she’d ask me if I was sure. She enrolled me in sports, which I didn’t mind all too much considering I had been naturally sporty, but it became another avenue for her to point out other girls in the team with me and talk about how thin they were, how small they were, and why I wasn’t getting that same result when I was also playing the same games.

During my first school milestone, my first holy communion, she ordered the white dress a size smaller so I could “work towards it.” I was in the second grade. As I posed on the kneeler for the photo, I couldn’t breathe.

I grew curves early on, earlier than my classmates. An hourglass body that was still a little thick. My breasts developed early and were bigger than I thought they would become, more than I could manage. She grimaced all the more now that she had to buy the large size for my clothes. I tried to hide in them, tried to drown in them, but then she would say I would only look bigger and formless.

“We have to cinch your waist,” she would insist, some illusion, she would explain. I had no idea what she meant by it. An illusion of what? It was a body. It was my body. It was there. But I corrected myself again—was that not girlhood? To believe that smallness was all I could hope for?

When she pushed the dress close to my waist, she finally smiled. “See? Look how beautiful?” She beamed. Something in me clicked. I wanted that from her forever. That approval. That gladness. That joy

When she pushed the dress close to my waist, she finally smiled. “See? Look how beautiful?” She beamed. Something in me clicked. I wanted that from her forever. That approval. That gladness. That joy. Every voice I heard in my head that commented about my body was her voice now.

So I listened and clothed myself in what would make me small. I started reading glossy magazines about slimming clothes or tricking the eye. Started to wear black and crushed my waist with belts. I hid my arms that she always deemed too big. I started to refuse plates. I started to lie: “I’m full, no thank you.” To earn that joy back, I denied myself.

It was mother, actually

When I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2018, my therapist also told me that my stories growing up also reflected a potential eating disorder in my childhood all the way to my 20s. I knew I wasn’t bulimic because I tried—and my mother and I both laughed because we realized it was because my fingers were too short.

My therapist said that since she didn’t know the full extent of it at the time and because I had slowly overcome those behaviors, she couldn’t give me a proper diagnosis. She did, however, properly guess that I didn’t believe I had one because I didn’t look like I had one—I was still chubby.

“But you lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time?” She asked me, and I agreed. She nodded. “It can happen—you don’t necessarily go under BMI, but you’re still putting yourself in danger. That is still disordered thinking. And you were hurt enough to do that to yourself.”

I sat there perplexed. She sat back as well. She paused before tapping her pen on the table and then finally leaning forward. “Was it your mom?”

I met her eyes with surprise.

In the name of beauty standards that never favored women

At my thinnest, I was in varsity in my senior year of college, had the smallest outline of abs, a well-defined jaw, and sharp cheekbones. I was also eating only twice a week and training every day. I was miserable and starving. I ate crackers if I was really desperate. But I saw myself in photos, so small, my collarbone finally jutting out, my arms firm with muscle and not fat.

Even then, because I had been working so hard in varsity, my thighs and calves had gotten thicker with muscle. She pointed it out as she eyed me up and down. “What happened to your thighs? I thought you were on a diet?”

The smile I had worn on my no-longer-chubby cheeks faltered. Had I done it wrong again? It was the smallest I had ever been, the smallest I had ever made myself, and still, she said, look at the tag on your pants—still a large.

I sought counseling not long after that and confirmed what I probably already knew all along—that my mother had her own psychological issues with weight, and then projected it onto me as her daughter

At my thinnest, I was depressed, angry, and self-harming. I was so small, but no longer had the light and joy I did in the past. “But at least I’m skinny,” I would say. “At least I’m skinny.”

It was unsustainable, the diet—or lack thereof—and I eventually spiraled. Even at my smallest, my mother did not beam at me again. And I finally felt the foundations of this shoddy endeavor give in. It was not enough, I would hear her voice in my head say.

I sought counseling not long after that and confirmed what I probably already knew all along—that my mother had her own psychological issues with weight, and then projected it onto me as her daughter. That the female suffering she felt inclined to put herself through was something I also had to endure—because I was a girl too, just like she was, just like her peers were, just like her sisters who all did the same thing in the name of a beauty standard that never favored us.

I inherited this unending need for smallness, just as so many other girls did, not knowing there was an option to be anything else. It always hurt me that instead of seeing my kindness, my temperance, my smarts, that my mother focused only on my body. Not my mind. Not my heart. Just the thing that housed them. And I could not reconcile it, this need for my mother’s approval while also wanting to break free and be more than small—to be smart, to be funny, to be kind.

Because for my mother, being a woman was to submit to tape measure and weighing scales. It hurt her to strive for beauty, and so it had to hurt me too—because then it wouldn’t make sense

Because for her, being a woman was to submit to tape measure and weighing scales. It hurt her to strive for beauty, and so it had to hurt me too—because then it wouldn’t make sense. Why would she have put herself through all that if I could just opt out of it?

After correctly guessing that it had come from my mother, my therapist rubbed her temples. She then detailed everything she thought was wonderful about me: “You are kind. You are a wonderful writer. You have a good heart. You are one of the smartest women I have ever met.”

I cried wordlessly in her office chair, and she let me. A warmth blossomed in me, knowing she saw more than just how clothes hung off my body, knowing even if I had weighed double my weight, she would have still seen my heart—something I had been waiting for for so long, and couldn’t admit. Something I worried I’d never get from my mother.

Years down the line, seeing it from that lens, I had pitied my mother. And then I had forgiven her.

In the end, forgiveness and love

These days, I am fit and strong. I work out, I eat what I like (with attention to certain limits, of course), and I smile. I am happy, I laugh out loud with my friends, I am intelligent, I am kind. I cup the softest parts of my body with my hands, even the ones where there is no firm muscle underneath, and I say thank you for holding me.

Food is fuel for me to work hard, to stay connected with others, to lift my body. I tell myself that all of this work I put in is to be strong, not just to be skinny. There is a need for me, but it is not bottomless anymore. Because I am strong and still a little pudgy. I wrote this down in my diary and said that it was okay. I look in the mirror, and I admire my round, beaming face. I thank my thick thighs for keeping me upright. I thank my cheeks for rounding out my smile. I thank my hands, very much not-slender, for pushing me off the ground every time I do fall and cushioning me.

My mother and I have a better relationship. I emerged from the mirror she used to scrutinize us both in, and I felt she panicked at first, knowing I was no longer receptive to what she had to say about my body. But in that leaving, I think she also realized she had hurt me

I tell myself my girlhood is not over, and so there is no reason to mourn it. That girlhood is not all reduction—and it should never have been. That I am still free to wear the floaty dresses even if they don’t fall on me the same way they did when I was skinny. That I can still enjoy a slice of cake. That I am still beautiful.

My mother and I have a better relationship. I emerged from the mirror she used to scrutinize us both in, and I felt she panicked at first, knowing I was no longer receptive to what she had to say about my body. But in that leaving, I think she also realized she had hurt me. It was never an explicit apology, but the loosening of her grip until I was free to just be. I think she has also learned how much of herself she has harmed and lost.

She has since always had dessert after dinner, even and especially when I come to visit.

I remind myself that this is the only body I’ve got—and I need to treasure it, care for it, and nurture it. I do. And I hear it now in my voice—that I love the thing that carries my heart, and I will continue to love it for myself.