The Cheese Grates It: Holiday Size Shaming: Thanksgiving 2018 Version

Image from food52.com

Your holiday feast should not come with a side order of body shaming

The inevitable holiday size shaming.

Trigger warning for size shaming and a brief mention of weight.

Disappointed but not surprised.

It is stressful for my son to go over to visit my mother on holidays, but he agreed to it because my mother was worried that Denny's would be terribly crowded. (I had suggested that we just meet at Denny's so no-one has to cook.)

My mother bought a flannel shirt as a gift for my son. My son is a tall, burly fellow with a little bit of a belly, either an in-betweenie or possibly a small fat. My mother made a point of patting him on the belly and saying "you need to lose this gut."

I wasn't aware of this until my son brought it to my attention after we left. He said that the funny thing is, last time he was weighed at the doctor, he actually dropped seven pounds for reasons unknown because he hasn't been dieting. He said the technician was praising him and he told her it didn't really make a difference to him, to which she responded with a look of surprise.

My mother refuses to acknowledge that leaving his home environment can be difficult for my son, who is high functioning autistic and has issues with anxiety (including a degree of agoraphobia) and depression. He becomes overly stimulated with my mother's insistence on keeping the television on, to Dr. Phil or the news or such. The constant barrage of advertisements is even more distressing to him than it is to people who don't become overstimulated. He doesn't react to stimulus in any perceptible way, but he will become withdrawn for a time after the fact.

It makes me sad that my mother continually shoots herself in the foot when it comes to her relationship with my son. I guess she knows that I'll flip my bitch switch if she mentions my weight, so she has to inflict her opinion on somebody, and she thinks since my son is a guy, he should be "tough enough to take it" when someone is "being real" with him.

I don't know if it's even worth bringing it up with my mother, because she will be "terribly hurt" by my "attack" on her and ask me why I'm always so "angry" even when I am speaking in a perfectly even tone and not doing any name-calling or making accusations, none of which I can say about her past interactions with me.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~