You know how, when you’re a kid you can run around wearing nothing more than a cute little bathing suit during summer, and never think twice of it. But, then you grow older, it starts becoming a competition to either make yourself conform to society’s standards as much as possible, or hide your body as best you can. Now, there are plenty of articles that criticize society for making Beauty and impossible standard, but society isn’t just some far off nebulous body that reaches out to touch us, but is never directly felt. Society is our friends, our role models, and more than anything, our mothers.

Now I was a confident little girl, I wore whatever I felt like wearing, in Kindergarten it was long sundresses that made me feel like a princess, then later in elementary school, it was gym shorts and t-shirts, but in either one, I felt I could conquer the world. Even by 5th grade, magazines and television had begun filling my friends’ heads with these ridiculous pictures of perfection, but it hadn’t quite reached me, and to be honest, I’m not entirely convinced that it would have. But what did reach me, was my mother, and the things she said about her body.

I grew up listening to my mother berate herself about her body type, her flabby arms, her thunder thighs. I would just shake my head and tell her she was beautiful, no matter what she told herself, because she was, she is. But, eventually I got tired of saying something she never listened to. I still thought she was beautiful, but I knew she would never think that about her. Every day before she left the house she would grab a sweater, proclaiming the absolute necessity to cover her fat arms. Every morning she would pull on her pants and exclaim that her fat thighs wouldn’t fit into her jeans. By the time middle school rolled around, I found myself under the scrutiny of my own eyes. I covered up my own arms and legs in shame of my own fat self.

One day, my mother over heard my mumblings about my legs and interjected that I had Czechoslovakian walking thighs, just like her, and just like my grandmother. She told me that it was fine and that it was just genes. As she shut the door behind her tears sprang to my eyes. What I needed to hear, was that I was beautiful, just like I had told her all those years, but instead I got an excuse for my ugliness.

My mom has always been petite, but after extensive back surgery several years ago, she gained some weight, a result of some complications. The berating and comments toward herself became more and more negative, and in turn I became more and more critical of my own reflection. My mother would never know, but she was unintentionally, indirectly insulting me.

In January of 2011, my mother attempted to kill herself. Thankfully she was unsuccessful, but all the same, I felt devastated and betrayed by the person I trusted most. I felt like it was my fault, and I slipped into depression. By February, I had started cutting. It was like that old saying, you know; if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you? Evidently if one of those friends was my mother, I would.

I have gotten over my depression and haven’t cut in several years, but every now and then I get that urge, because I have been taught to hate myself. I write this article not to inspire pity in my story, but to inspire change. I need mothers everywhere to know that it is not okay to shame themselves because of how they look or how they act, because whether or not they know it, they are shaming their own daughters.
I love my mom, but these seeds of bitterness and distrust have been sown and can never be removed. Sure, I can keep them from sunlight and refuse to water them, but weeds have a nasty way of spreading in an uncontrollable way.

I write this article in the bathroom, because this is where it is most relevant, this is where I look at myself in the mirror and hear my mother’s words echo in my head. This is where I pray to god that there aren’t others out there with this kind of experience. But I know there are, and to those to whom this situation is a daily occurrence, I say I’m sorry, and I say I love you, no matter what you look like, and no matter how you act. I love you and you are beautiful.