Halloween Frightmares

There has been a lot of talk on the Weight Loss Surgery boards about Halloween Candy and the inherent evils thereof.

Pish posh, say I. And fiddlesticks, to boot.

I mainly roll my eyes at grown women (and to a lesser extent, grown men) who talk about candy like that. If they want to live their lives never tasting the glory of a Reese's cup again, then good for them - all the more for me, I say. What irritates me, though, is when they talk about completely depriving their children of candy. Oh, they say, my child never gets candy at home. We don't have cookies, chips, candy, or soda in the house ever. They have healthy fruit and whole grain snacks. They hear all the time from me how bad sugar is for them and how they should NOT eat it. Pardon me, but Get Real.

That shit gets on my nerves.

I understand the reasoning behind it - these are people that, like me, resorted to drastic measures to curb or cure their obesity. They don't want their children to suffer the same fate, naturally, so they eliminate all temptation from their homes. I get that, and I applaud the sentiment behind it. I don't want my Miss Peanut to have to cut out the majority of her stomach and reroute her guts, either.

That shit still gets on my nerves, because I want to scream at them that it won't work! Behavioral extremes rarely work. I should know - I grew up in a house like that. Sweets were rare - my tall, slender stepmother grew up constantly surrounded by them, and was a little chubby as a child. I've seen pictures - she was cute, and not at all heavy. Her family were what I call "pushers," though. If you didn't take seconds, you had to be feeling bad. You were sick, obviously, because you didn't want any more of the good food available. So my stepmother was probably a couple of pounds over where she should have been as a child. She was nowhere near obese. She, however, felt fat and phobic, so as a result, our sweets were severely limited. The only time we had cake, ice cream, or soda in the house was when it was somebody's birthday or a holiday. Even then, soda was rare. Cookies were limited to one a day, for dessert, after dinner. Halloween candy was severely rationed, and usually pitched by Christmastime, as it got old before we could eat it. Because I am a perverse creature by nature, I naturally rebelled, and ate all of the forbidden foods I could once I was able to purchase my own. Yeah, I developed "issues."

It didn't help that my mother, who was a stunningly beautiful woman, started telling me I was fat when I was seven years old. I have pictures. I wasn't fat. I was growing, and I'm built solid, like my father's family. My mother, raven-haired, ivory-skinned, fine-boned, and petite, was a delicate fairy to my sturdy gnome. I'm afraid I was a constant disappointment to her, rounded where she expected me to be slim, quiet when she expected me to be vivacious, clumsy where she expected me to be graceful. Our relationship has never really been mother-daughter, as my stepmother did the majority of the childrearing that I received. Even so, my mother's disappointment only reinforced my issues - even though I looked normal, because I wasn't slender, but instead sturdily built, I was fat.

So now that I have a daughter of my own, a normal-weight daughter, mind you, I am very careful not to forbid the candy and not to push it, either. I want her to learn how to live with it, and not to have to ban it from the house just to feel safe from it. I want her to know about moderation, and that no food is bad or good, but is all part of a balancing game that we play every day called "Healthy Nutrition." My daughter is all but a clone of me as a child - she's got the same big bones and chunky muscles that I had as a little girl. She's not a waif, and she'll never be a ballerina, but she will be healthy. She will have a positive body image. And as the Flying Spaghetti Monster is my witness, she will be allowed to eat her Halloween candy, as part of a balanced, healthy, realistic diet.

Just not before I've mined all the Reese's cups out of it. Motherhood has its privileges.