Heather Haldeman
Facing The Music
“Given that you were overweight as an adolescent, what do you think about childhood obesity today?”
A question I wasn’t expecting hit a nerve when I was doing a reading for my memoir, Kids & Cocktails Don’t Mix. A stylish woman with large horn-rimmed glasses posed it.
Before I could answer, an older woman, with perfectly coifed hair, piped up from the first row. “Look at you now!” She extended and arm full of bracelets toward me as if my body was on display. “No one would ever guess you had a weight problem.”
My mind jammed, and the eleven-year-old me wanted to cringe. As women, we all hate being judged solely by our bodies, large or small. My head moved into a canine tilt as I wondered about how to answer.
“It was the 60’s,” I began. “Body shaming wasn’t yet a phrase, but…” I paused. “Being overweight never left me.” My voice grew quiet. I scanned the predominantly female audience; all focused on me. This was clearly a topic that touched many. “Though I’ve kept the pounds off for fifty-four years, what I haven’t lost is seeing my former self in the mirror,” I admitted. “Often, I have to shake myself into the present. ‘This is you, Heather.’”
Women all around me nodded.
My weight problem started in the playpen. Behind wooden bars, whenever I cried to be picked up, Mom would hand me a cookie instead. That pacified me, until I’d start crying again. As a baby, I learned that seeking attention was rewarded with food, not hugs.
Meanwhile, my mother lived on her own never-ending diet to keep the 26-inch waist that she accentuated with a big rhinestone-encrusted buckle over a little black dress when she went out with my father – that is, before her two divorces. Her shapely legs were a natural gift on her five-foot five frame. “I’ve got great pins,” she’d boast. Her favorite physical asset, though, were her full breasts, displayed with ample cleavage whenever possible.
For my mother it was “all about the bod.” She lived on instant coffee and a dry piece of toast in the morning, a salad lunch, followed by a light dinner accompanied by a stiff vodka on the rocks. When she couldn’t seem to drop the few extra pounds, she’d take a Dexamil to shed them. Her figure took precedence over everything. Including her children.
When I became a pudgy toddler, Mom shrugged it off as baby fat. But by the age of eight, when the baby fat turned to just plain fat, my mother was embarrassed by me. She stopped offering cookies, and when she caught me with one, she scolded.
“Quit! Or you’ll be the size of Guam!” Food became my shame, and the comfort I needed to hide.
Buying clothes for me was torture – for both of us. “Just find anything that fits,” she’d tell the saleswoman as I slinked back into the corner of the dressing room with a dress half-zipped and stuck between the rolls of fat. There were no nice words like “curvy” in the 60’s and 70’s for fat, no mannequins who looked like me. All I saw was svelte. Everything was the opposite of what I was.
By fourteen, I was tipping the scales at 155 on my petite frame.
“You need to face the music,” Mom said. “And, I’m going to be with you through it all.”
Finally, I’d gotten her attention, but at what cost?
She signed me up for Weight Watchers and I was hooked. Here were people like me who were hurting. Not just the physical pain of too much weight, but the emotional pain from hearing cruel comments. They spoke of how hard it was not to just reach for the French fries or a candy bar to fill up a need.
“I don’t want you to suffer like that,” Mom said on the drive home after that first meeting. And even as my weight slowly went down to my goal – it took a year to get there – Mom and I bonded. She never missed taking me to my Monday night meeting. She listened to the others and her attitudes changed. Never again did she comment on my weight. Now I was the one wanting the change. I lost the weight not for her, but for me. Not for her. Still, I basked in her attention.
As I considered the question that had been asked, I moved out from behind the podium to address the audience more intimately. “Maybe it would have been easier to be a child today, where people are more accepting. I’m sure adolescents feel the same shame as I did, even with the dolls like them, plus-sized models, and shorts that fit. All of that doesn’t really matter if they have a mother who is embarrassed by them.”
“I’m happy I lost the extra weight,” I continued. “I live an easier life, not worrying about physical limitations or finding clothes that fit. And, I have never eaten anything with abandon since Weight Watcher’s.” I paused and corrected myself. “Well, maybe not after a martini,” I laughed. “Then, all bets are off.”
I can see now that my mother placed too much importance on body image, a curse and a blessing. She was the one who got me to go to Weight Watchers and her presence by my side on the journey changed both of us.”
“How?” the woman in the large horn-rimmed glasses asked.
“She was proud of me like she’d never been before. Not for the weight loss but for my discipline. She seemed inspired by and later laughed that the only way she ever lost weight was by going through a divorce.”
“But her squiring me through the experience was everything I’d ever wanted. I craved my mother’s love and attention. And when I didn’t get it, food was a poor substitute. So, what do I think about child obesity today?” I said, returning to the podium. “I guess not knowing why a child overeats, I just send love their way. I’ve been there. I don’t judge.”
Back to “Motherhood and the Body”
Heather Haldeman writes entertaining and inspiring essays drawn from her experiences as a daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Kids & Cocktails Don’t Mix: A Memoir (2021), which recounts her life growing up in Los Angeles during the Mad Men era. Her work can be found at heatherhaldeman.substack.com.