The day I first felt shame about my body, I was eight years old and we had gathered for a celebration at my grandma’s new home. Showing us around, she took us to a skinny, dark hallway only wide enough for me and her while my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were scattered throughout the room, close behind.
There, on the carpet against the wall, was a plastic, white analog scale detailed with tiny scuff marks. “Get on,” my grandmother said.
I didn’t think much about it. The red needle toggled up and down until it perfectly settled on a number that would end up sticking to me for many years to come: 100. I weighed 100 pounds. I heard exclamations around me. I looked up and saw smirks across faces, stifled giggles lingered in the air, but I didn’t understand what they signified. To me, it was just a number.
The red needle toggled up and down until it perfectly settled on a number that would end up sticking to me for many years to come: 100. I weighed 100 pounds.
This was back in the 1990s when diet culture was all around me. Appetite-suppressant pills were glamorized on television, weight-loss-promoting food dominated shelves in grocery stores, and celebrities were celebrated for being thin—popularizing the heroin-chic look. A popular sentiment at the time was that “extra” weight was a marker of laziness, lack of willpower, and a general state of inferiority. My mom subscribed to this culture, praising me for choosing snacks labeled “low-fat” or “diet.”
On an episode of the reality show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” former model Yolanda Hadid said to her daughter supermodel Gigi Hadid, “Have a couple of almonds and chew them really well,” after Gigi calls her mom in distress, worrying about fainting during a fashion show because she hadn’t eaten enough. Recently, these clips have started trending under the hashtag #almondmom, referring to mothers who have bought into the diet culture and “an obsession with healthy eating, with her body image, with her daughter's body image. Maybe a little bit of an obsession with fitness. But it tends to veer on the side of overdoing it,” according to YouTube influencer Tyler Bender.
It took me years to realize that my mother might be an “almond mom.”
In my family, women are held to an extreme standard, both in terms of looks and how they act. We are expected to stay thin for as long as possible to be considered “attractive” and “disciplined.”
As an adult, I visited my frail, elderly grandmother once while she was watching television sitting in her bed. Her room smelled like newspaper and cotton clothes. I repeated to her a phrase that I had heard my entire life, “Did you eat yet?” In Asian culture, it is supposed to be a way to show someone you care about them. She roughly shook her head and said, “Grandma is eating less. Grandma is so afraid of getting fat.”
I recall similar moments with my mother throughout my life when I would tell her that I haven’t eaten all day. She’d respond, “Good. Me neither. It’ll make you skinny.”
Growing up with an almond mom not only strained my relationship with her but also with my body. Even though my mother meant well, I became hyper-aware of my physical appearance at a young age, complicated by the clash between Western standardness of skinniness and my Asian cultural values. Food, which has long been a symbol of love for us, now became my forbidden fruit. It was not long before I spiraled into an eating disorder.
Even two thousand years ago during the Han Dynasty in China, a woman’s desirability and femininity was associated with her thinness — it increased her chances of getting married. In Vietnamese culture, marriage was a key aspect of a woman’s identity, especially after the Vietnam War. It had the potential to bring economic stability and social status; the more desirable you were, the higher the chances were that you’d be able to take your family out of poverty.
My family brought that mindset over to the United States and projected their concerns onto the newer generations of women through constant critiques of our bodies that came with unintended but negative impacts on our mental health.
Studies show that among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, eating disorders, alongside other mental health disorders, are underreported and understudied. This is likely due to the stigma associated with disorders that stop Asian cultures from openly speaking about mental health issues; it was the reason why I kept it a secret from my family, later in my life, that I was seeing a therapist.
Another barrier AAPI communities face is a failure of clinicians to recognize eating patterns in Asian communities. This means that Asian American women end up demonstrating higher rates of disordered eating than other demographic groups. A 2021 study shows that Asian American college students also report higher rates of restrictive eating compared to their white peers, as well as higher rates of purging, exercise, and cognitive restraint when it comes to food intake than their white or non-Asian BIPOC peers.
The same year I got on my grandmother’s scale, my mother took me to the doctor’s for my annual physical, where I stepped onto another scale. This time, it was a beam scale, controlled by a nurse in light blue scrubs. I remember the metal clanging as she tried to balance the weights to get a precise measurement. She directed us to the examination room and had me wait in the patient’s chair.
A tall, thin, Asian doctor with a blunt, black bob and large square metal glasses entered the room. She said a lot of things that were of no interest to me. The only thing I remembered was when she mentioned my weight: 100 pounds. “You should exercise,” she said, and made running motions with her arms, hands clenched into fists. I looked at my mom, who was sitting in the corner, for a reaction. I just saw a familiar grin. That afternoon on the way home, my mom told my stepdad my doctor called me fat.
Like so much about body shaming—the practice of criticizing or humiliating someone because of their body shape or size—my parents’ comments about my weight and diet weren’t meant to hurt me. But they changed my view of myself profoundly.
I started to focus on thinness, hoping all this attention and shame around my body would go away. The scale became my main method of keeping my body in check compulsively, which studies show, is a behavior often associated with eating disorders and several negative behavioral, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. I paired this with pinching at my stomach daily to check if it had gotten bigger or smaller overnight, counting the calories I ate, and waking up early to follow along workout infomercials which advertised the newest, get-thin-quick program. At night, I did crunches and floor exercises in hopes I could one day fit into the same clothing sizes as my thinner sisters.
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 22% of children and adolescents show signs of disordered eating that represent or could lead to an eating disorder. A study shows that many girls start to worry about their weight starting at the age of 6 and a majority by the age of 14 are actively trying to lose weight.
Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder are characterized by many dysfunctional eating habits, including restriction and avoidance of food, binge eating, or other behaviors that serve as compensation for not being one’s desired body type. While many people generally become concerned about their weight or health from time to time, those with eating disorders are fixated on and attempt to control how their bodies look, often to the detriment of their physical, emotional, and mental health. In some cases, these disorders can be life-threatening and become classified as psychiatric comorbidities.
As a teenager, I was encouraged to wear clothes that hide certain parts of my body to appear thinner. Throughout my early 20s, my mother and I traded tips on the latest juice fads and “fitness teas,” glorified laxatives repackaged to appeal to the “wellness” community. I started weightlifting with some friends which led me to follow fitness influencers on social media who promoted “clean eating” alongside workout routines. That was my introduction to the slippery slope of orthorexia, which is an obsession with healthy eating leading to restrictive behaviors that can cause damage to a person’s overall well-being through consequent issues such as malnutrition and impairment of psychosocial functioning.
Soon, my friends and family started taking notice of my weight loss. I was finally getting the attention I had always wanted from my mom. It felt like I had become someone she was proud to call her daughter, someone who could just fit into this mold of what was acceptable to our culture.
But on the inside, I was stuck in a rigid mental space where I feared my next meal and guilt-tripped myself into four-hour gym sessions, attaching my sense of worth to my dedication to weight loss. In the summer of 2021, I remember spending an entire night crying because I had eaten dinner past seven in the evening, all because as a child, I had heard Oprah Winfrey attribute part of her major weight loss to never eating anything past seven. “Not even a grape,” she said.
Yet, I was increasingly being praised for being unwell, receiving more compliments the thinner I became, something I had always craved since I was a child.
The thinner I got, the closer I became to my mom, the two of us bonded by our body dysmorphia and desire to hit the forever-moving bullseye of this abstract concept of “the perfect body.”
Ironically, even with this new figure, the conversations people pulled me into still revolved around my body. People asked questions about eating habits, some out of concern and others who sought tips for their own journey through weight loss. My mom questioned my eating habits eventually, as well, but I took that as a victory. I had surpassed everyone’s expectations.
The thinner I was, the closer we became, bonded by our body dysmorphia and desire to hit the forever-moving bullseye of the abstract concept of “the perfect body” imagined by a society that knew it did not truly exist.
And yet, I was living with a full-blown case of body dysmorphic disorder, a mental health condition where an individual is compulsively anxious about certain “flaws” in their appearance that to other people may be minor or imperceptible. When I looked at my body, it was as if I was looking into a warped mirror. I would have nightmares where the body parts I was self-conscious of were unrealistically exaggerated. I’d spend extra time at the gym to focus on those areas, but I’d never be satisfied.
When I was at my thinnest, I looked at myself and thought, “I’ve got a few more pounds to lose. Then I’ll stop.” But that desire never went away.
Until I was in my late 20s, I did not even recognize I had an unhealthy relationship with my body and with food. My diet had become very restrictive, but I thought it came from a sense of discipline and will. I spent many nights fantasizing about my next cheat meal but when it came time to indulge, I could never get myself to actually eat my cravings. All I could think was, if I gained weight, would I no longer be successful in my mother’s eyes?
One night, as I thought about the “should haves,” I started to regret my lack of discipline and it kept me up all night. The next day, I confided in my psychologist. She urged me to seek specialized help and prioritize this issue over others, because according to her, my eating disorder was a “comorbidity.” Begrudgingly, I took her advice.
Finding a therapist who was a woman of color, accepted new patients, and specialized in eating disorder recovery required tremendous effort and research. During the initial intake appointment, I doubted that I even belonged in a recovery program. Many defensive thoughts ran through my mind: “What is wrong with having a bit of discipline? Why is it okay for other people to be concerned about their health and body but not me? I set impossible goals for myself because it feels good to reach them. What is so wrong with that?”
I remember sitting in front of my laptop in the virtual waiting room, filled with resentment. It felt as if my hand was forced. Soon, a woman with long, curly hair wearing a white V-neck shirt with burgundy stripes showed up. She was friendly, warm, and smiled a lot.
But she also called me defensive and said we had a lot of work to do, even though I didn’t agree. But I kept going back to her. Every week, I told her a bunch of half-truths, hoping that I could prove to her that I was fine, so I could go back to “not having an eating-disorder” and doing exactly what I’d been doing. But she soon turned me around. Six months later, I unintentionally gained weight and felt all my self-worth fly out the window. That is what it took for me to finally accept that I had an eating disorder.
Every week, I told her a bunch of half-truths, hoping to prove I was fine so I could go back to “not having an eating-disorder” and doing exactly what I’d been doing.
When I think about those interactions with the women in my family that revolved around my weight, it makes me wonder how far back into our ancestry this eating disorder and body dysmorphia goes. Did my grandmother attach her self-worth to the shape of her body just as my mother did to hers and I am doing to mine?
I spent years resenting my mother for not allowing me to feel acceptable in my own body. It has been three years since I last sought treatment, but the process of healing my relationship with food and my body has been much longer and through it, I healed my relationship with my mother as well.
I now understand that my mother’s judgement was just a projection of her own personal fears placed on me. Now, when we go out to dinner and I notice her eating no more than a few bites of her food, I can’t help but empathize with the anxiety that fills her chest and the muscles that contract within her stomach to help her appear just a little bit smaller.
On her last birthday, I offered to take her out to lunch and she declined, saying “I’ve been eating too much lately.” I wonder what she saw in the mirror that day. In her own strange way, my mother tried to protect me the only way she knew how to: by trying to squeeze me into a box that was becoming smaller and smaller in hopes I would become more palatable to a society where standards for women keep getting higher and higher.
