My Ex-Husband Called My Son Fat. Why Did Nothing I Say Stop Him?
It changed how my son viewed his body for a long time.
My son was 8 years old when his father first forced him to think about the way his body looked. Until that day, I think he thought of his body as a propeller. The thing that moved him from one adventure to another. He had strong legs to push him higher on the swings or pedal his bike as he rode around the neighborhood in his Superman pajamas and cowboy boots on Saturday mornings. He had strong arms that caught footballs his older brothers threw him or bounced basketballs in our backyard. He had solid little hands that painted with sure fingers or held mine with easy trust, feet that kicked soccer balls or raced his friends, a face as open as the big blue sky. His belly was just the place where his food went. Until his father gave him the nickname “Chubs” during a weekend visit and suddenly opened a door to my son’s body I never really was able to get closed again.
He was different right away when he came home from seeing his dad. I saw his face and my hackles went up. I could feel something was off. He walked differently, slumped over like he had aged several years in the 48 hours he had been away from me. I asked his dad if everything was okay and got a shrug like “How would I know?” As though he had no way of finding out about his child’s mood. As though asking him if he was okay was beyond him. Or beneath him.
At dinner that night, my son was a quiet center in the middle of the usual boisterous storm of voices and passing plates and stories being shared. Not angling for his turn to tell stories like he normally would. Not eating joyfully — up until that point he had been a happy eater — as he normally would. He loved to write the night’s menu on a little Ratatouille chalkboard we had on our fridge for me, adding his own restaurant-speak to meals with descriptions like “World’s best spaghetti and meatballs” or “Build your own sundae on Friday!” He lived his life like a human exclamation point but suddenly he was a question mark.
I asked him why he wasn’t eating. He shrugged. I asked if he wanted dessert. He said no. Instead he went outside and ran the length of our street, grim-faced. He told me not to pack him too much food for his lunch the next day. He went to bed without kissing me goodnight and then came back to hug me so tight I couldn’t breathe for the sadness in him.
It was his little brother who finally told me. “Dad gave him a new nickname. Now he and Grandpa call him ‘Chubs’,” he said over breakfast. “I think they think it’s funny.”
I felt a sort of liquid panic, a fury mixed with helplessness. Because I knew what the outcome of this would be. I knew I would call my ex-husband the second I was alone that night to tell him he had to stop. I knew I would try reasoning first, then cajole, then beg, then rage. I knew I would try to explain that this kind of “joke” does irreparable damage. That if he kept it up, it would change the way our son looked at himself, potentially forever. I knew he would respond exactly the way he responded. “You’re too sensitive,” he told me. “You’re putting your own thing about being fat on him. Boys don’t care about that.”
I tried to turn the clock back for my son for the next two weeks. We talked about that nickname, how it wasn’t funny. How it was mean and wrong and not about him at all. The further we got away from his last visit, the more his eyes cleared. The more he came back to the boy who went on adventures and sang while he ate his cereal.
Then he went back for his next visit. And the cycle started all over again. His father still called him ‘Chubs,’ probably in response to me prodding him about it in the first place. My son came home, deflated and sad and seeing his body as the enemy all over again.
There was nothing I could do to stop the tide. I spoke to my lawyer who said it was none of my business. This was not an issue of abuse, so really the family court had nothing to say about it.
But wasn’t it?
He was changing the way our son would look at his body, forever. Suddenly, he thought about his belly, his legs, his arms, his face, as the enemy. As a way the rest of the world got to judge him. He actively wanted our son to feel wrong, to feel too big, too much, too different. He made that decision over and over again.
We did the best we could for as long as we could, my son and I. Eventually he was old enough to choose not to return to his father, who claimed to be confused by this sudden betrayal.
He is a grown man now. I think he is confident in who he is after all those years of finger-pointing and shame. I hope he sees himself the way he once saw himself; they way I saw him, the way he was meant to be. As a boy with a body that was a propeller for his adventures. A boy with a face as open as the big blue sky.