Reality check

The slowest train wreck in history finally happened, and she's back in a safe place for now.  With the breathing space this time allows (easy for me to say, I know, having been separated from the trauma for weeks already), I look around with weary eyes, and struggle to contain my angry reactions at the correlating factors in our world.

Recently, I informally polled a subset of my peers. "Look at me - I'm 42.  I exercise 5-6 days/week and eat healthfully whenever possible, but really focus on moderation more than anything.  I'm relatively thin, but still find myself focusing on my 'flaws' when I get out of the shower.  My belly, my arms.  When is it OK - at what age - for women to stop obsessing about their bodies?  When is it OK to just...relax?"  Granted, I live in a circle of fairly well-off people, so these are women who have leisure time, and like me they all place a high value on physical fitness.  It's almost like asking a chef 'when do you stop caring about food?'.

Still, I was saddened to hear advice on flax seed to combat belly fat, with it's plant version of hormones that trick the body out of reacting to decreased levels of estrogen.  I was disheartened at the laughing eye rolls, and exclamations of 'never!'.  But I wasn't terribly surprised.  After all, look at the messages on TV and in magazines.  This has all been said before, I know, but it's hard to break out of self-enforcing cultural messaging.

What was disturbing, to the point of shocking, was something that came after my poll.  One of the two Flax-Seed Women went on to talk about her concerns about her daughter's weight.  AFTER hearing about what is going on in my family.  In the exact same conversation, no less.  This woman talks about the girl's thighs being thick.  She says that she's set the girl up with her own personal trainer once a week.  She smiles at her own cleverness, swapping out healthy ingredients into her daughter's milkshakes at home. Her daughter is 14.  I hadn't seen her daughter for several months around school, so wondered if she'd been overtaken by a period of early teen flab (I remember gaining and losing weight over my teens for no apparent reason).  Obviously not much below morbid obesity would justify such a heavy-handed intervention by a parent - a mother - in my opinion.  At the school's closing ceremonies a few days later, my jaw dropped when I saw her - stunningly beautiful, and from where I was sitting, not even 5 pounds 'overweight'.  I was filled with fury on her behalf.  There are not even words to describe all the things wrong in the situation, swirling through my mind.

But worse. During a phone conversation yesterday I hear about a mom just outside my immediate family setting up an app on her and her daughter's phones that monitors caloric intake each day.  It has you input all you eat along with your exercise, and identify your target daily number of calories.  If you eat something high calorie, it tells you how much additional exercise you should do to offset it.  This sweet girl, who now is bonding with her mom by obsessing over daily calories, is 13.  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I really, truly understand that mental illness is not caused by messages or activities like these, but... what in the name of God do these mothers - some of the smartest women I know - think they are teaching their girls with them?