We’d just finished a family dinner when I pushed back my chair and announced, “Whoa! I’m stuffed. I ate too much.”
Immediately, my adult daughter chastised me.
“Mom, do you mind not body-shaming in front of Annie?” she snapped, referring to my granddaughter. “I grew up hearing this all the time, and I don’t want her exposed to it.”
What? I was baffled by what I had done wrong. Had I called Annie — or anyone else for that matter — fat, that would be body-shaming. But commenting on how I felt after eating? How was that a problem?
Body-shaming is far broader than commenting on another person’s size or shape.
Welcome to another chapter of the generation gap: special body language edition.