on mothers, daughters, and defiance

photograph by Eldar Nazarov

A few days ago, my young daughter had her customary scoop of speckled vanilla bean ice cream for dessert, cleared her plate, and asked me if she could also have some chocolate chips. I said, “We already had dessert, sweetie. We can have chocolate chips tomorrow.” She pulled an aw man face and began to turn away — but before she did, I realized I wanted a few chocolate chips, too. I said, “Wait. Actually, chocolate chips sound good.”

She watched me open the cabinet and reach for the glass jar, her eyes wide, a grin spreading on her face. I unscrewed the lid and shook a few into my hand, and a few into her hand, and we tossed them back, chewing sumptuously. She said, “Can I have more?” I said, “No, that was enough, I think.” She began to turn away — but before she did, I realized I wanted more, too. I said, “Actually, yes, let’s have more.” I was laughing, and she was laughing. I unscrewed the jar and shook a few into my hand, and a few into her hand, and we tossed them back, both of us surprised and delighted. We ate the chocolate, sweet and dark and silky. And I decided to expand the moment’s plentitude. My daughter watched me put the jar away…pause theatrically…and pull it back out, saying, “I think just a few more, for good measure…” Her face! I wish you could have seen it. Lit from within, her freckled cheeks shining, her eyes sparkling and with a gleeful disbelief, head thrown back with laughter. I unscrewed the jar and shook a few into my hand, and a few into her hand, and we tossed them back.

In one way, this was pure fun. On the other way, it was political. I not only wanted a few (more) chocolate chips myself, I wanted to acknowledge the presence of her appetite, and mine, with levity and acceptance — even joy. I wanted to take a moment that often floods us with a false sense of our wrongness, with unnecessary embarrassment — wanting or going back for just one more bite, experiencing our willpower “falter” — and rebuild it as a moment of humor and humanity. I wanted to do this for my daughter.

Since she was born, I have gone out of my way to treat all foods as neutral, to model all food as potential sources of pleasure and nourishment (physical and/or emotional), to speak well and never poorly of my fat body in front of her, and to let her see and observe my body with all its softness, strength and volume; I do this in order to break, or at least chip away at, the generational chains of body loathing, body controlling, and dieting I inherited and from which I’ve worked to liberate myself. (I’ve written and spoken about this process elsewhere.) I believe I’ve laid a meaningful foundation for her; still, I know the clouds are gathering, and our culture, with its insistence that women spend their entire lives striving to meet narrow and arbitrary beauty standards, particularly around the size and shape of their bodies via what they eat, will soon be whispering in her ear. She and her friends have recently begun to talk about “being pretty.” One of her friends has fretted over the size of her thighs. They are six years old.

So I want to model for her, again and again, that she can trust food, even food to which we have a culturally fraught relationship, even food that is supposedly “not good” for our bodies, including cosmetically (i.e., things that “make you fat”), like sweets. She can trust her desire, because her desire is human and fine. (So, by the way, is fatness.) She can partake, and partake again, because that, too, is normal and fine; it is also fine to say no thanks to sweets — this isn’t about gluttony or a “free for all,” it’s about helping her developing a relationship with her appetite and with food that is relatively free, that isn’t as freighted as our collective one, and that is rooted in trusting herself. My wish for her is that she experiences meals and snacks with what activist and thinker Dana Sturtevant describes as “pleasure and gusto.” And in order to grease the wheels, I need to sometimes break our family’s (albeit soft) “ rules” around food.

But not just break them — break them with cheerfulness, with a sense of leisure, delight, and ease. So we sometimes have handfuls of chocolate chips after dessert, and we once in a while have ice cream for breakfast, and sometimes she gets to pick two cookies at the bakery, and she is allowed to pour her own syrup on pancakes even if that sometimes means they are swimming in it. (Lest anyone be clutching their pearls: yes, she also eats, and enjoys, plenty of what one might call “healthy” food — dark, curling ribbons of kale, briny black olives, chewy brown rice with parsley and olive oil, plump garden cucumbers in glassy shades of green, spoonfuls of raw purple sauerkraut, bowls of plain fatty yogurt, romaine lettuce sprinkled with sticky balsamic vinegar, and juicy slices of heirloom tomatoes are among her favorites and in heavy rotation.)

Black poet, activist and filmmaker Kathleen Collins observed that, in our culture, while men are expected to “become themselves” by refusing limitations, women are expected to become themselves by accepting limitations; this is what the culture asks of us — that we learn our limits. This is how the culture would have us define ourselves, and it’s within these limits that the culture would have us live. Nowhere is this more true, in my view, than when it comes to women’s bodies, including what we eat and why. So, yeah — these miniature acts of resistance are about pleasure and fun, but they are also serious business. I think of them as tools of both power and revelry, of both defiance and creation. They help fortify the relationship my daughter will have with her sovereignty in a world that will seek, in ways large and small, overt and subtle, to control her and her body, her appetites. I can’t stop the cultural tide from coming in, and I can’t prevent her from feeling the current. But I can teach her to swim.