I refuse to hide my diet from my daughters
During the summer, we visited friends in the country, all the teenagers piling into the kitchen to see what esoteric edibles we had brought. Within moments, they were wolfing down all the Tunnocks Teacakes, artisan brioche and homebaked carrot cake, a flock of Calvin Klein-clad starvelings.
When one mother attempted to remonstrate at the display of greed unconfined, the response was swift and serpent’s tooth sharp. “Ha! You’re just jealous. We’re making the most of our metabolisms… while we’ve still got them.”
As they left in a flurry of slammed doors, crumpled foil and crumbs, we were still processing their words. How rude! How perceptive. How rude! How did they know that?
I thought of them – funny, irreverent and oh-so knowing – this week as the deputy head of £18,000-a-year Wimbledon High School lectured mothers about our lamentable eating habits. Skipping meals is simply not acceptable. Discussing diets is downright unforgivable. And cutting out entire food groups stores up unthinkable problems in later life – and, yes, she was still talking about us, the grown-ups, not the children.
As mothers, we should set a good example to avoid our girls (especially) developing a skewed relationship with food and succumbing to the skeletal spectre of anorexia. Eating disorders blight lives – take lives – set vulnerable girls adrift, and my heart goes out to any parent trying to negotiate those treacherously choppy waters.
I love my daughters and I would do anything for them: sell the house, walk the streets, give them a kidney – each. But hell will freeze over before I eat carbs for them. That’s not rolemodelling. That’s self-harm.
What I eat or don’t eat is nobody’s business, unless I destroy my health and become a burden to the state, and my family’s shock and awe is opprobrium enough, thanks.
I might not eat for two days. Then Orange Club biscuits disappear. A new packet reappears (ostensibly before anyone noticed, but obviously they had). Then I serve Greek salad at every meal for a fortnight. Just herbal tea for me, thanks. Haribo casserole, anyone?
Like a latter-day J Alfred Prufrock, my life has been measured out in coffee cake, but I’m well over 40 and my thyroid function falls somewhere between glacial and tectonic, so something has to give.
Figure or face is supposed to be the dilemma for women my age. Which is to say, in my case, bottom like lard in a string bag or a face like a slapped Arsène Wenger.
But now there’s a new hang-up on the block – maintaining your figure or your teenager’s fragile equilibrium. Talk about bonfire of the vanities. Sorry, but I point-blank refuse to take that wrap (even if it comes with coleslaw), and I will not be proving my maternal love one doorstop of white bloomer at a time, however darn delicious.
It’s madness to call out the middleclass and the middle-class alone for a screwed-up attitude to food when it affects every stratum of society.
Indulgence, overindulgence and thick slices of everything is why we face an obesity epidemic which, without diminishing their plight, dwarves the number of high-achieving girls who fall prey to anorexia.
Because the truth is that ambitious girls who attend independent schools are far more likely to eat too little and exercise too much than girls in the state sector, for whom the reverse is true. Government figures show a third of all children aged between two and 15 are either overweight or obese. Obesity rates are highest among children from deprived backgrounds; by 11, they are three times as likely to be fat than children born into privilege.
But I don’t see their parents being roundly scolded for eating all the pies. They are gently encouraged to make “better” choices, because no public health body wants to cast aspersions on the poor and ill-educated, even if it’s for their own good and that of their children.
My belief is that healthy eating messages need to be conveyed more forcefully, more effectively. Treating dieting as some sort of taboo subject is preposterous.
At the moment, that gap is filled by the vitriolic pendulum swings of social media. Skinny shaming. Fat shaming. Both are egregiously unpleasant. Both are hurtful. Neither works.
Bullying individuals is not the key to altering public health outcomes. We spend more each year on the treatment of obesity and diabetes than we do on the police, fire service and judicial system combined.
Joined-up thinking has never been more urgently needed. Potshots at women – mothers – merely generates hostility.
The gulf between rich and poor, too fat and too skinny, goes far deeper. Just ask our newly crowned size-10 Miss UK, who was ordered to lose as much weight as she could to have a chance on the world stage.
To her huge credit, she gave her crown back. I suggest she tour the nation’s schools giving inspirational talks on body image and self-esteem.
For my part, as a mother, I take responsibility for instilling early healthy eating habits in my children, but short of locking them in like calves in a veal crate, thereafter, all I can do is hope for the best. Besides, whatever happened to the time-honoured adult mantra “do as I say, not as I do”? After all, it’s worked up to now.
My parents’ generation smoked through pregnancy, routinely left us in the car with a Sherbet Dab, while they went to the pub and laughed uproariously at racist sitcoms.
Did we follow suit? No, we did not. And while I would like to think my daughters respect and admire me, I think it fair to say I have a lot less influence over their attitudes than, say, Martha in Year Four or the collective forces of Instagram and Snapchat.
One of my daughters is a militant vegetarian – nothing to do with me – and I do my best. Usually, it’s good enough. Sometimes, it’s not – and for those moments, there’s wine.
See, Miss, I do embrace carbs. I just prefer to consume them in a glass.