Interview with Bryce Conway, author of “My Mom is FAT!”

27th August 2009

Interview with Bryce Conway, author of “My Mom is FAT!”

posted in Body-Affirming, Book Reviews, Fat Acceptance |

Bryce Conway is a working mom of two and a partner in Cognitively Correct, Inc., a self-publishing company Bryce Conway - My Mom is FAT! of books that promote positive learning skills. Conway is a published co-author of the manual How to Speak with Your Preschooler About… Food & Nutrition, the workbook The Dots Connected – A Relativity Theory on Integrated Human Development and the text Connecting the Dots: The Cognitively Correct Way to Speak with Preschoolers. Her latest release is a children’s book titled My Mom is FAT! (that’s Bryce and her two kids on the cover). The 24-page illustrated children’s book features photos of Conway and her two children, 8-year-old Sydney and 5-year-old Spencer, and other illustrations that show both mom and child how they are loved and loving regardless of how they look or what they weigh. As Bryce writes in her release, “It’s time to start a new generation of children who are exposed to a positive way of thinking about their body and how it’s all about their abilities.”

My Mom is FAT! will be available beginning Aug. 31 online at www.mymomisfat.com and in local bookstores, but first Bryce takes the time to answer some questions about the project for readers of the-F-word.

What inspired you to write the book?

The inspiration for writing this book was quite simple. My daughter not so long ago turn to me and said “Mom you’re fat”. To which I responded “And do you love me any less?” This simple question put an entirely new perspective on the word FAT for me and how I felt about myself. I knew I had all sorts of other abilities and that it needed to be shown that your life and who you are , are all about your abilities irregardless of the physical state in which you find yourself. Though, it is an indisputable fact that the adjective Fat does aptly describe my physical state – It no longer effects my mental state. I am Fat which is to say the opposite of thin and that is all of the emotion I now give power to this particular word. I, of course, instructed my girl that since the term fat can be hurtful to other people, we should only use it to describe objects or animals.

How do children typically react to fat parents, both to their own and their peers’?

Children react to people the way they have seen their parents react!!!!! If their parents treat “fat” in a derogatory and disgusted way either about someone else or themselves their children will, too. Children’s body image starts in the preschool stage of development and are established by kindergarten (I believe NPR did a segment on this). It naturally follows suit then that the only place children learn about body image is from Mom & Dad.

What do you hope children (and parents) get from this book?

My hopes for the individuals who read this book – to create a future generation who has different options about how to think of their own body. The total ancestry of humans have only known one way of thinking about their body – a negatively critical way. You would be quite hard pressed to find even 1 person who looks in the mirror daily and says “I LIKE THE WAY I LOOK!”, let alone “I love the way I look.” Most people have something about their body they look at with a negatively critical eye. So, children have very little chance of escaping that judgment (in the guise of bettering their lives and for the good of their children). Even if, a parent never directly criticizes the child – they inadvertently set the negatively critical eye in motion when they (the parent) themselves look in the mirror and criticize themselves in front (or within earshot) of the child.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Body-Affirming, Book Reviews, Fat Acceptance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On August 27th, 2009, D said:

How fabulous! I’m going to check out the website RIGHT now…

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

2 On August 27th, 2009, Kate said:

The book sounds like a great resource although it can be a slippery slope to teach kids “it’s all about their abilities.” Having people with disabilities in the family as I grew up, we learned quite naturally that it’s all about treating someone with respect and love no matter what their abilities (or appearance) are.

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 12:24 pm

3 On August 27th, 2009, Rachel said:

@Kate: Yes, but even children with disabilities have abilities in other areas that they can be made to feel proud of and sometimes we can even learn to see our disabilities as abilities. For example, I have ADD, which makes it difficult for me to concentrate, focus and remember things. But ADD is also an ability in that it also allows me to hyperfocus on certain things, allows me to think creatively and on-the-spot and has contributed to a general feeling of empathy for others. I do think it’s important to teach kids that our actions matter so much more than our looks and I think this is what Bryce was more so suggesting.

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

4 On August 27th, 2009, l'zhiu said:

I have a very strong memory of being about seven and being teased by a friend for having a fat mom. I went home crying, and when my mom finally got me to talk, I croaked, “Anna said you’re fat.”

I’ll never forget how she answered. “So? I AM fat.” (And, years later, I finally appreciate what she was trying to tell me.)

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

5 On August 27th, 2009, jasmine said:

i would probably have bought 2 copies of the book if i could see inside like on amazon for a couple of pages, but i really have no idea what the content is like so I’m not gonna buy it. hopefully they’ll have more info/scans/excerpts after the 31st!

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

6 On August 27th, 2009, Rachel said:

@Jasmine: Bryce sent me a digital copy of it, so she may be able to send a preview of it to you, too. Email me at Rachel (at) the-f-word (dot) org and I’ll put you in contact with her.

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

7 On August 27th, 2009, meerkat said:

Hmm, I don’t think my parents did any of that body-bashing when I was growing up and yet I ended up with a poor body image anyway. But I guess I did have a pretty good body image at a young age. However, it wasn’t indestructible by later influences at school and in the media, and now it is not what you could call “good” at all. But I guess it could have been a lot worse.

posted on August 27th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

8 On August 28th, 2009, Andrea said:

I remember when I was about 8 my mother telling my aunt that my sister was in slim pants but I never would be because I was a “big” kid. My mother also used to compare me to my sister while we were in high school (who was a size 0 while I was a size and how much bigger I was than her. She never once taught me how to eat healthy or make wise choices. She also taught me that food was love.

Here we are 15 years later and I am a size 10 and my sister is a size 22. I recently visited my sister and mom, and mom told me I need to get some meat on my bones. Talk about a complete 180!

posted on August 28th, 2009 at 10:49 am

9 On August 28th, 2009, Emerald said:

When I was small I had a best friend with a fat mother, but I didn’t really notice her size until my own mother, who was very thin, started going on about it. What I remember far more vividly is what a lovely, warm person she was. I used to spend a lot of time at her place (as did many of the local kids – and they had three of their own, plus a bunch of pets, so it was pretty chaotic!) because I felt so much more welcome there than in my own, much more authoritarian home.

Really, I don’t think the size of anyone’s mother was an issue for us kids at all back then. It scares me how much more aware of these things kids seem to be these days, and at an ever younger age. Yes, maybe ability is a tricky issue too, but I think anything that counters the ‘it’s all about looks’ message has to be a good thing. I hope Bryce’s book helps in that.

posted on August 28th, 2009 at 10:59 am

10 On August 28th, 2009, Rachel said:

Okay, so I was wasting time this morning on LOL Cats and thought this one to be appropriate for the conversation here. Enjoy!

posted on August 28th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

11 On August 29th, 2009, Lindsay said:

In the entire time I knew her, my mother was always heavy. No matter what anyone else said about her – how well she dressed, how her makeup and hair were always flawless, how attractive she was as a whole – she just was fixated on the weight issue. There was always another diet, another weight loss scheme, and enough battering of herself to go one forever…she was truly never comfortable in her own skin and continually forced that message onto me. I remember being on diets from the time I was 10. Being thin was the ultimate measure of success and happiness for her, and it tooks years before that message finally left me for good. I look at myself as an adult, and while I’ll never be tiny, once my metabolism recovered from all the damage that dieting did over the years,, my weight modulated to the point where I’m not particularly big. I have to wonder what my body and my mind would have been like had my mother been more comfortable in her own skin. Maybe books like these will foster more self-acceptance, and help mothers and fathers pass on more positive messages to their kids about size and self-esteem.

posted on August 29th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

12 On September 19th, 2009, julie said:

My mother was never fat even after having 7 children. Both my parents had very good eating habits and taught us those same eating habits which I passed on to my children. My Mom and I wore the same size when I was in high school. As she got older she did put on a some weight, at 90 she now wears a size 14 and is 5’5″ and very active. I did fine until I was in my 40′s and now wear a size 16. My adult daughter also did fine until she reached her mid 30′s. I’ve started healthy again because I also want to be a grandmother who can attend all my grandkids weddings and walk and play with with my great grandkids.

posted on September 19th, 2009 at 10:39 pm