Janet Christie's Mum's the Word - life's tutu short for body issues
“You know her. She’s got brown hair and she’s chubby,” says Youngest, who is describing someone involved in the latest “big drama” to which she’s been a thrilled witness as we walk into town.
“Curvy,” I say, stung on the person’s behalf. “Big boned, em, whatever you say nowadays (I can’t keep up).”
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Hide Ad“You’re allowed to say chubby. It’s a good thing, a compliment. Someone with proper legs and breasts and a great bum.”
“Oh OK. When I was a child and chubby, it definitely wasn’t a compliment,” I say. “Nobody liked chubby once a child could walk. They didn’t want you in their ballet class, that’s for sure,” I say, telling her about my exit after ruining a presentation for parents in a line-up of ‘skinny’ fairies in tutus dyed in pastel shades of the rainbow, not least because I was meant to be the ‘pink fairy’ and my mother had mistakenly dyed my leotard and tutu a retina-searing scarlet. I looked like a plum. My mother’s reaction was to say ”I thought your costume was the best, who wants to look insipid?” But as a four-year-old I felt shame - I didn’t know what insipid was but I knew I wanted to be it, and my ballet days were over.
“And you’ve still got the body issues to prove it,” says Youngest. “Ridiculous. Bet you looked adorable. And you can’t say skinny, it’s thin-shaming.”
“Sorry, but to me skinny’s a compliment.”
“OMG. It’s not. If you’re thin, you’re thin, if you’re not, you’re not. It’s genetic and then diet and exercise are for getting healthy whatever your shape. What you want is to be strong. Anyway, when you were very thin you looked ill. We didn’t like it,” she says, ‘we’ being my children who preferred it when I was comfortable to sit on.
“I liked it,” I say. “In fact it was probably the happiest I’ve ever been - if I hadn’t been so unhappy that is.”
“Pathetic,” she says and with the freedom of one untroubled by body or food issues, having inherited a skinny gene from Other Parent and never being refused a biscuit growing up, points out a chip shop. “Smell that? I’m starving. Let’s get chips.”
“No, I’d better not,” I say.
She sighs. “They do child portions…”
“Go on then.”
And my hungry inner child does a little dance.