Mommy, why are you always taking pictures of your self?

body checking, inherited shame, and the slow rebellion of letting myself be full.

“Mommy, why are you always taking pictures of yourself?”

My 7-year-old asked me this recently. I answered her right away:

“Sometimes I think I look different in my head than I actually do. The picture helps me see what’s true.”

And that was honest. But not the whole truth.

Because the real answer is: I’m body checking.

Not out of vanity. Not even out of the insecurity people love to diagnose women with.

It’s quieter than that. More chronic.

A slow, inherited ritual. A checking:

Am I still acceptable? Still palatable?

Now that I’m single, it’s another level.

I’m not just looking through my eyes—I’m involuntarily seeing myself through the male gaze again.

Even when I mentally reject it, my nervous system hasn’t fully caught up.

The camera becomes a proxy. A mirror shaped by centuries of conditioning.

I don’t need reassurance.

I don’t need tips on self-love or how to reclaim my worth.

I know I’m worthy. I know these systems are bullshit.

I also know I’m aging. It's beautiful AND also how can I delay it? How can I hold on a little longer?

Can I avoid arriving at that lonely place where it’s just me—and my love for me—and nothing else to lean on?

But fuck.

I’m already there.

In the quiet of my home.

With my daughter.

In the soft places of my body.

In the way I feed myself without punishment. (not always but getting there).

In the way I let myself be full.

Be soft. Be here.

And still—

How do I look?

I know my daughter is watching.

She’s already picked up the script: skinny = good. fat = bad.

it wrecks me that she knows. the she said the other morning, “my thighs are fat”.

I’ve worked so hard to not pass it on. “wrinkles are wisdom! every BODY is good!”

But it’s not just about what I say, it’s about what I transmit in those semi-conscious moments with the camera on. In front of the mirror. It’s what she absorbs from around her. Including the legacies other mothers have inherited and passed down to her peers.

Lasagna and Gut Out

I had a healing session once where the resolution was a vision of me sitting at the table with my fat Italian relatives from Staten Island. My grandfather’s side.

We didn’t see them much.

They weren’t considered “high class” like my grandmother’s side. And I was raised to understand that.

Raised with shame. With standards.

My maternal great aunt Nini looked at my full breasts and scoffed:

“Mine were like two bee stings.”

Another aunt said, “If you can hold a pencil under them, they’re too saggy.”

These weren’t just offhand comments. They were formative.

This was the curriculum on how to be a woman.

But in the healing vision, I was at another table.

Lasagna. Eggplant parm. A pack of Salems on the table. Gold chains and French tip nails I was told were “trashy”.

My pants unbuttoned. My belly soft. My posture loose.

Nobody monitoring. Nobody fixing. Just being. Just belonging.

Even if it was messy. Even if it was “low class”.

It was ours. It was real.

And it tasted like freedom.

So here I am, somewhere between tables.

The one that told me to be small.

And the one that let me be full.

I nourish myself now. I let myself enjoy.

And still, sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder:

How do I look?

This is me being inside the lasagna layered reality of it all:

The knowing and the undoing.

The inherited shame and the reclamation.

The longing for freedom and the muscle memory of surveillance.

The motherhood. The womanhood. The fucking complexity of it.

So I sit at the right table.

Unbutton my pants.

Feed myself.

Let myself be seen.

not through their gaze, but mine.

Not for approval, but for truth.

In the quiet of my home.

With my daughter.

In the soft places of my body.

In the way I let myself be full.

Be soft. Be here.

And still—

How do I look?