I was eight when I realised my parents thought I was too fat – here’s how I finally learnt to feel happy about being stout…

I was eight when it became clear to me that my parents thought I was too fat. At dinner, I could feel my mother’s eyes judging the contents of my plate; I’d clear the table and finish off the odd potato surreptitiously on the way to the dishwasher.

It was the late 1970s and my mum bought a book: Cooking to Make Kids Slim, which had a sad-looking plump girl on the front gazing disconsolately at the scales she was standing on. God, I hated that book.

I was forced to take ‘healthy’ lunches to school (so I couldn’t eat the canteen custard). Those Tupperware boxes full of lukewarm grated carrot and cottage cheese haunt me still. Carrying them into lunch was the equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter, except this one said: ‘too fat, problematic’.

In my teens it got worse. I was sent to a diet doctor in Harley Street. I nicknamed him Dr Slimy – because he was. He had a tufty beard and always got a bit too close when he weighed me. His laugh was annoying and he said ‘super-duper’ a lot. 

He put me on amphetamine pills to limit my appetite. I took them for several years. I was still never thin. Though when I now see photographs of myself from then I realise I was a totally normal size, yet I was made to feel like a heifer.

Eleanor Mills says her parents’ focus on her weight was unhelpful to say the least

This very focused attention from my parents on my weight was unhelpful to say the least. My dad left my mum when I was five and one of the few times I saw him alone after that was when he took me to the fat doctor.

The fact that my parents, who didn’t agree on anything much, both thought my size was an issue made me feel bad about myself. Not good enough. Too much. Like there needed to be less of me, like I needed fixing to be lovable. Even to them.

Nowadays, after two decades editing newspapers and magazines, then founding a website for midlife women, I am a pretty confident person – but even so, my appearance can be my Achilles’ heel.

Before a big speech or TV interview, my anxiety goes not to what I will say (I always feel confident about that) but to what I will wear. I can lie in bed working through the upsides and downsides of possible outfit combinations for literally hours, trading off comfort (flat shoes, comfy knickers) for glamour – meaning looking thinner (heels, Spanx). 

Appearance becomes the sticky heart of my nerves around an event. And, yes, I berate myself for this obsession with form rather than substance. I know how stupid it is.

Particularly now, as a 53-year-old woman, when nobody is looking at me anyway. Where probably the best we can do is to be cheerful, elegant and not frighten the horses, perhaps with a flash of verve and personality to show we are still alive.

The truth is, even without parents obsessed by your weight, women have been programmed to be relentlessly concerned about our size and appearance – just observe how often you tell small girls they are pretty, or that you like their dress. I am no exception to that rule. Even as we understand and rail against the forces that conspire against us, it is only human to feel them, given the world we have grown up in.

In fact, in my experience, that world tortured the beautiful more than it did those of us who knew we did not fit beauty’s ideal. The women I’ve known who have been most worried about perfection, and measured themselves against it constantly and harshly, have been those closest to it – tall, slim, gorgeous; they exaggerated any imperfection and tormented themselves for not being quite good enough.

Having ‘it’ – whatever ‘it’ was – never seemed to make them happy, as though the closer you got to ‘it’, the more evanescent it was and the further away it became.

Those too are the women who feel the most anxiety now, as we age and our bodies draw further and further away from that ‘ideal’ – youthful, unlined skin: a pert and, above all, thin body. 

I see it now. It is my most beautiful friends, the ones whose looks were always intrinsic to their identity, who come and confess they are considering an eye lift, or tweakment.

I was always miles away from ‘it’. I’ve always been buxom and curvaceous. At my thinnest a size 12/14 on the bottom but always an HH cup on top, necessitating bras that can be worn as head-dresses with very supportive straps. Not that I ever had any complaints from men or a lack of takers. (I’ve been happily married for more than 28 years, I should say). 

It’s the internalised misogyny of the female gaze that I’ve felt found me lacking. Like my chubby thighs or tummy rolls were an affront to other women.

But it is so hard to quash, that negativity, the way we’ve been taught to judge each other, to seek out signs of age and ‘imperfection’ with an often cruel and ruthless eye.

We all do it. I come back to my mother – often we are taught to do it by our mothers. That generation are forever criticising other women’s bodies, pointing out their imperfections, starving themselves to meet an inner standard they could never measure up to. 

My mother is 80 now and she’s still worried about being too fat (she isn’t!). That post-war and Baby Boomer generation, young in the 1960s and 70s, were forever on a diet and still are. They were brought up on the maxim ‘you can never be too rich or too thin’.

Think about it. ‘Have you lost weight?’ is that generation’s highest compliment. Appearance is always mentioned, discussed, as if that is what is most crucial to a female identity. How thin and beautiful a woman is. How she measures up to society’s ideals; what mate she can attract. 

Many of that generation see themselves almost entirely through a male lens. These are women who were taught to judge and scrutinise other women to keep each other down, to compete for male attention, because that was where power lay.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. My two daughters, aged 21 and 19, don’t do this. In their generation it is rude to comment on someone else’s body. 

Many of them have had ‘issues’ around eating – anorexia, bulimia, eating disorders – and they know that a throwaway comment about whether a person is thin or not can trigger an avalanche of inner turmoil. They don’t ever comment on weight or bodies, and increasingly simply don’t judge or measure themselves in that way.

And yet their mothers all too often stare in the mirror with self-hatred, smoothing away our wrinkles, breathing in to remove that extra tyre.

What would happen, I wonder, if rather than judging ourselves so harshly we tried to be loving or generous to ourselves instead? If we saw ourselves through a lens of celebration, taking pride in our years and our wisdom rather than only valuing ourselves as women for our fanciability and fecundity, as society has taught us? 

After all, if we don’t truly see and love ourselves and other women of our age, how can anyone else? All change starts inside each of us and spreads out in a positive vibration around the world.

The truth is, whether we admit it or not, by 50 most of us understand that defining ourselves by what we look like is a total waste of time anyway. It’s sweating a diminishing asset. I remember being at a grand charity ball, held in an ornate ballroom in Claridge’s in central London, and looking around me at all these wealthy ladies of a certain age. 

They were plucked, and tweaked, and Pilates-ed up to the max, but I remember thinking what a colossal collective waste of time and energy that was. No surgeon or product – however expensive – would make them young again. They just looked like weird, distorted versions of themselves. Skin over-shiny, faces that didn’t move, identikit brows. Trapped in delusion.

Of course, stay healthy and active and look and feel like you want to be – I’m a great believer in ‘you do you’. But remember, one of the great liberations of turning 50 is that by this point in our lives, however beautiful we’ve been, our looks are no longer the key to anything.

As a woman, one of the great liberations of turning 50 is to put the constant focus on appearance behind you

By midlife it’s time to embrace all that we are – creative, intelligent, kind, competent, experienced, loving, loved, dextrous, fit – not just the externals. It’s time to transcend the constant focus on our female appearance. To put it behind us. To revel in and be all that we are – freed from the pressure to be pleasing to the male eye.

I’ve felt that shift myself. Five years ago, I used to wear heels; I am quite short and roundish so I thought they made me look taller and more elegant. Now? No way. They hurt and if I put on a pair I can’t stomp to the Tube, or walk between meetings. 

I suppose I could carry heels in my handbag, but you know what? I’m often heaving around my laptop and I just can’t be bothered to carry stilettos or truss myself up in Spanx any more. The days when people were looking at my body are gone. If they are meeting me now, it’s for my brain and the content of my character.

It’s nice to look cheerful. Colourful maybe. Like a good version of ourselves. Or, as an old mentor of mine, at 80, puts it: ‘Neat and tidy – that’s the best I can do.’ That is fine.

It’s a different way of being in the world. I’m not trying to be fanciable; I’m no longer trading on erotic capital. My aim is to be memorable, chic, comfortable and entirely myself. I love my gold Air Force trainers and my outsized gold sunglasses. 

I have crazy curly hair and I love a bright-green sweater. A green leather coat. Shiny green chrome nails. It’s about looking cool as an older version of yourself, feeling confident and vibrant as you, not trying to project an unconvincing va-va-voom.

The truth is that confidence is what is attractive in a woman, especially as she ages.

And perhaps we are starting collectively to get the message.

My friend Tabitha James Kraan is an elegant, 55-year-old hairdresser in Gloucestershire, who talks all day every day to midlife women about how they feel about themselves and how they would like to look. If anyone understands their programming and insecurities, it is her.

Fascinatingly, she sees real variation across the age groups, with women in their fifties being the pivot generation. ‘I find that women aged 65-plus who were very much brought up to value themselves on their looks are generally obsessed with looking as young as possible; these are the cohort who, if they have the cash, are straight down to the clinic to get surgery or Botox,’ she says.

Once again we find that Boomer generation in the bracket where looks are the priority and nothing is ever quite good enough.

‘Women in their 50s, however, are beginning to shift – they are more keen on growing old with individuality,’ continues Tabitha. 

‘They are often concerned about young women, often their daughters’ generation, who are growing up in a world of Instagram filters … I find there is a growing sense among older women that we need to be role models for younger generations, show them how to value themselves as they age; that we need to resist the current celebrity route of Botox and surgery and dyeing our hair into oblivion and model something more self-accepting and authentic.’

I was so interested to hear Tabitha say that because it is very much what I see around me. Out for drinks with about 15 of my oldest friends from university recently, it was striking that none of the women had that Botox wind-tunnel look; we were all wearing our wrinkles with pride.

I’ve learnt to do the same. And I have learned too to follow my daughters’ example and try never commenting on other women’s bodies, or weight. It feels strange to begin with, but then it works. You just train yourself out of thinking about it or giving it centre stage. What a relief!

Eleanor follows her daughters’ example and tries to never comment on another woman’s body

I wish I could have had that attitude towards my body, and those of my friends, as a teen. It’s taken me the best part of 40 years to get here, but how liberating it is never to feel that I am somehow wrong or too much. I no longer think I should take up less space. Shrink myself. Make myself small to make it easier for others.

Tragic as it sounds, I wish my parents could have forgiven eight year old Eleanor for her appetite too. Today, I look back and can hardly believe how bad she was made to feel about herself.

Now, I embrace the odd bulge, the odd ripple of flesh. I’ve had two kids and I love pasta. I feel happy about being ‘stout’, planted, resolutely and totally me, never again to eat sad lunches of cottage cheese and carrot.

In fact, that ‘stout’ quality, feeling grounded, rocklike, solid, I now believe is a very important part of the 50-something journey: learning to accept and love ourselves just as we are, in our true essence, and to feel proud to take up that space. To be truly ourselves. To be whole. It’s a revelation.

Adapted from Much More To Come by Eleanor Mills which is published by HQ on August 1, at £16.99. © Eleanor Mills 2024. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 10/08/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

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