I’m 21 years old. I don’t have a daughter. I don’t even know if I’ll ever want kids. But sometimes — in quiet moments, in fitting rooms, in family gatherings where someone comments on my body like it’s public property — I think about her. This imagined girl. My future daughter. And I whisper a prayer I never thought I’d say out loud:
“I hope you don’t grow up fat.”
Not because I’d love her any less if she did. Not because fatness is something to be ashamed of. But because I’ve lived inside this body for 20 years, and I know what this world does to girls who take up space it doesn’t want them to occupy.
This isn’t about health. It’s not about “taking care of yourself.” It’s about rejection. Invisibility. Humiliation. It’s about how the world decides who gets to be wanted, who gets to be seen, who gets to take up space — and who doesn’t.
Fat is Never Just a Body. It Becomes the Whole Story.
When you’re a fat girl, your body is the headline, the plot twist, and the footnote. Everything else — your voice, your humor, your kindness, your intelligence — becomes “despite.”
- “She’s pretty, despite her weight.”
- “She’s confident, despite her size.”
- “She’s actually really sweet once you get to know her.”
As if fatness is some unfortunate handicap you have to compensate for.
You don’t just wear a larger size — you wear guilt. You wear apology. You learn to shrink in every other way: laugh softer, dress simpler, never ask for too much. You become a master of deflection. You joke before anyone else can. You laugh at yourself first, so it won’t sting when they do it.
You don’t sit at the edge of the bed because you’re dramatic — you do it so the mattress doesn’t sink. You keep a mental checklist of restaurants with chairs that don’t have armrests. You go shopping with friends, pretending you’re “just browsing,” when in reality, nothing in that store even carries your size.
You become an expert in invisibility — until you’re suddenly hyper-visible. A target in the hallway. A punchline at the party. And worst of all? You start to believe it’s normal. That it’s your fault. That this is just how the world works when you’re “not disciplined enough.”
This Is What I Don’t Want Her to Feel
I don’t want my future daughter to know the specific kind of shame that comes from someone saying, “You’d be so pretty if you just lost a little weight.” I don’t want her to mistake hunger for discipline, or think that skipping meals is an act of self-respect. I don’t want her to see food as something she has to earn, or beauty as a prize given only to those who can fit into a smaller size.
I don’t want her to flinch when a camera accidentally turns on. I don’t want her to tilt her face or cover her stomach before she smiles. I don’t want her to delete pictures that capture her joy just because she doesn’t like how her body looks in them. I want her to live freely in her memories, not crop herself out of them.
I don’t want her to grow up believing she’s the side character — the funny best friend, the comforting listener, the one boys talk to about other girls but never look at that way. I know what it’s like to be “such a great friend” but never the one someone chooses. I know what it’s like to hear someone describe your personality like a consolation prize. And I never want her to feel that quiet sting of realizing that kindness, humor, and depth are never enough when people are busy chasing appearances.
I don’t want her to feel that pit in her stomach when a relative pulls her aside at a family gathering to give “advice.” I don’t want her to practice laughing it off — pretending it’s fine, pretending it doesn’t hurt — when someone makes her body the topic of conversation. I don’t want her to learn the skill of disguising humiliation as maturity.
I don’t want her to equate thinness with worth, or to think love has to be earned back pound by pound. I don’t want her to believe that being soft makes her less. I don’t want her to learn to exist in fragments — only showing the parts that the world finds acceptable.
Most of all, I don’t want her to spend her twenties learning how to love herself again after the world teaches her to hate every reflection. I don’t want her to heal from words that were said “with good intentions.” I don’t want her to waste years apologizing for the space she takes up. I just want her to live — freely, fully, and without fear of being too much.
But Here’s the Catch — I Don’t Hate My Body Anymore
It took time. A lot of it.
It took crying in change rooms.
It took deleting calorie-counting apps at 2AM because they were turning my life into a spreadsheet.
It took finding people online who looked like me — happy, thriving, stylish, free — and realizing that I didn’t have to be thin to be lovable. I just had to unlearn every lie society ever taught me.
So no, I don’t want to pass down shame.
I don’t want to be the mother who says, “You shouldn’t wear that.”
I don’t want to be the woman who lets mirrors dictate moods.
I want her to see me eat cake at a birthday party and mean it. I want her to see me dancing without sucking in my stomach. I want her to know joy isn’t something you have to be skinny to deserve.
But still — I worry. Because even if I love her loudly, I can’t silence the rest of the world.
We Don’t Talk Enough About How Society Punishes Fat Girls
We really don’t talk enough about how unkind the world is to fat girls. Not just in the obvious ways — the jokes, the comments, the clothes that never fit — but in the quiet, everyday ways that remind you, over and over, that your body is an inconvenience.
Let’s start with dating.
When you’re fat, you learn early that romance often comes with conditions. You’re either someone’s secret or someone’s experiment. A fetish or a favor. A dare or a “you’re not like other girls.” It’s rarely about being seen — really seen — as a person. You’re taught to settle. To be grateful for attention, even when it’s crumbs. You tell yourself that love is something you’ll earn later, after you’ve lost weight, after you’ve changed, after you’ve finally become “desirable.” Because the world has convinced you that love is a prize for discipline, not a right everyone deserves.
Then there’s work. Job interviews where confidence is mistaken for arrogance, where your size is silently equated with laziness, where your abilities are doubted before you even say a word. Studies have proven it, but I’ve felt it — the way people’s eyes linger, assessing, before deciding who you are. As if your body speaks louder than your résumé.
And then there’s the doctor’s office, which is supposed to be a place of help, but often feels like another battlefield. You walk in with a sore throat, a headache, or anxiety — and you walk out with the same advice, every time: “You should lose weight.” No tests. No curiosity. Just a prescription for shame. People have died because doctors refused to look past the number on the scale. Because when you’re fat, the assumption is that your body is the only problem worth solving.
The world is full of tiny humiliations like that — airplane seats that dig into your sides, movie theatre chairs that barely fit, clothing stores that treat your size as an afterthought, if they acknowledge it at all. The spaces you exist in remind you constantly that you were never considered during their design. That you are too much for a world built to accommodate less.
And instead of questioning why these systems exclude people, society’s answer is always the same: “Well, just lose weight.” As if it’s that simple. As if the solution is always to change yourself, never the world.
We never ask why we punish softness.
Why we equate thinness with virtue.
Why we make people feel unworthy of comfort, care, or love simply because they don’t fit a standard built on airbrushed lies.
Maybe if we did — if we actually questioned it — we’d stop blaming bodies for existing.
So What Do I Want for Her, Really?
Maybe it’s not that I don’t want her to grow up fat.
Maybe it’s that I don’t want her to grow up punished for it.
I don’t want her to inherit the quiet dread I once carried — that uneasy feeling every time a mirror caught me off guard. I don’t want her to turn sideways in photos to look smaller. I don’t want her to see her reflection and immediately start scanning for flaws. I don’t want her to fear mirrors the way I did, as if they existed only to confirm everything the world said was wrong with her.
I don’t want her to be twelve years old, whispering to her friends about “good” foods and “bad” foods, counting almonds like confessions. I don’t want her to equate hunger with success, or think that self-control is the same thing as self-worth. I don’t want her to believe that happiness can only exist on the other side of a smaller body.
I want her to move because she loves the way her body feels in motion — not because she’s trying to make it disappear. I want her to eat cake and not think about how many calories it has. I want her to enjoy food without attaching morality to it, to understand that nourishment isn’t something you have to earn.
I want her to take up space — loudly, shamelessly, beautifully. I want her to stretch out her arms and claim her place in the world without apology. To walk into rooms like she belongs there, because she does. To laugh without covering her mouth, to run without worrying who’s watching, to exist without making herself smaller for anyone’s comfort.
I want her to look in the mirror and see herself — not as a project or a problem, but as a person. To say, “This is mine. And it’s enough.”
Because it is.
It always was.
And I Know the Work Starts With Me
I can’t raise a confident daughter if she grows up watching me pick myself apart.
I can’t tell her she’s beautiful if she sees me wince every time a camera captures me off guard.
I can’t ask her to believe she’s enough if I keep treating my own body like a temporary version — something waiting to be fixed, something that doesn’t yet deserve love.
So I’m doing the work. Slowly. Quietly. Some days with more grace than others.
I’m learning to sit with my reflection instead of running from it.
I’m unlearning the hunger — the constant, gnawing need to be smaller, lighter, better.
I’m deleting old screenshots of bodies I once wanted to trade mine for.
I’m buying clothes that fit me now, not for the “someday” version of myself I used to chase.
I’m trying to speak gently when I talk about my body, even on the days I don’t feel gentle at all.
Because one day, if she’s here — my daughter, or even just a girl watching me exist — she’ll notice.
She’ll see how I look at myself, how I talk about myself, how I carry myself through a world that keeps trying to make women disappear.
And I don’t want her to learn shame from me. I want her to see resistance. Softness. Growth.
Even if she’s not here yet, I’m already practicing being the woman I want her to see.
Final Thoughts: Let Her Be Free
If I ever have a daughter, I don’t care if she’s fat.
I care if she’s safe.
I care if she feels seen.
I care if she knows she’s allowed to be every version of herself — soft and strong, silly and serious, loud and lovely — all at once, without apology.
I don’t fear her growing up fat; I fear her growing up in a world that still punishes girls for taking up too much space. I know what the world does to those who don’t fit neatly into its narrow mold — the stares, the jokes, the unsolicited advice wrapped in cruelty. But maybe, if enough of us keep pushing back, the world won’t always be this cruel.
Maybe she’ll never hear the sentence that haunted so many of us — “She’d be so pretty if—”
Maybe she’ll never learn to shrink herself to be liked, or to stay quiet to be loved.
Maybe she’ll grow up knowing that beauty isn’t a requirement, and worth isn’t something you have to earn.
Maybe — if we keep doing the work — she’ll be the first in a long line of women who learn to love themselves first, and completely.
Until then, I’ll keep healing. I’ll keep showing up.
I’ll keep learning how to live in this body with gentleness instead of judgment.
Because she deserves a softer world — one where softness isn’t mistaken for weakness.
And maybe, just maybe, I deserve to live in that world too.
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