When I was twelve, my mom told me if I still had my dad’s big Italian/Jewish nose when I was fifteen, she would pay for a nose job.

Way back when I was a teenager, I cut off my relaxer and went back to my natural kinks (which was considered by my relatives to be, like, a massive radical anti-establishment statement or something).

This happened when I was in middle school. One day I was wearing a long dress and heels to school because I had an orchestra dress rehearsal later. The heels were low but I only ever wore sneakers so I couldn’t walk in them very well. My mom was driving me to school, with my 3 year old sister along for the ride. On…

Dementia can be tough for the family members. But I’m sure her suffering will be over soon.... Mwah-ha-ha!

When I was 13 I got my hair lightened. I’ve always been vain about my hair and I decided to get it lightened. I hadn’t seen my father for about a day afterwards. It happened to be his turn to drop my friends and I off at the movies. As we were piling in the car, he stopped me, grabbed me, and yelled at me at the top…

“You’ll never be pretty, but maybe you’ll find a man who will look past that.” As my mother was doing my hair for prom.

I am very tall and big enough to rival mama June when my weight is at its highest. I was asked to be a bridesmaid for a friend in college. She chose pale pink satin strapless numbers. I can VIVIDLY remember my grandma repeating over and over “oh you’ll look like a pig stuffed in satin!”. Clearly her verbal filter was…

Don't ever go back. Just don't. Ever.

This wasn’t to me, but on Christmas morning, my Dad took my mom aside and told her how fat she was getting. This was before we did presents. My mom spent the whole morning crying.

I had asthma as a kid (so could never do the running-jumping-climbing trees thing) and eventually PCOS now, so I was, and probably always will be, chunky. For a brief period in high school I had an eating disorder, but even at my skinniest I was a 10/12 (I’m 5’11” for reference).

“I hate your face.” - Mom, on my wedding day after I just returned from getting my hair done

I was a pretty chubby tween. Let’s just say that. My dad was banned from shopping with us after the fateful day when I held up a dress and he nonchalantly responded, “Aren’t you a little fat for that?” My eyes welled with tears, my mother spun around with rage screaming my dads name, and he just looked bewildered.…

I was in 7th grade, and one of my best friends had started to develop early on. She was probably a C / D cup by then, and I barely had boobs. My grandmother tells me, that my friend should give me some of hers....like I really had a choice in the matter.

I have cystic acne, it’s manageable now but when I was an early teen it was pretty bad. I never got taken to a doctor for it and only found out you could do that when I got to college

My dad (who is a drunk and an asshole and completely out of my life) once commented on the way I dressed by saying, “I feel like I’m going to see you on Girls Gone Wild someday.”

I was talking to my mom about possibly breaking up with my long-term boyfriend. I was laying out the pros and cons and how things are stable but not passionate and I think I want more... She cuts me off and says, “Look. You’re pretty enough now, I guess, but you’re no spring chicken. Just lock this one down while you…

My mom has done so many!

Leaving for my first day of junior high, wearing my my first pair of “cool, grown-up” Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans - last thing my mom said to me as I headed out the door “If you knew what you looked like from the back you wouldn’t be wearing those.”

I overheard my mother and grandmother (her mom) discussing my weight after I’d had two miscarriages and then successfully (and safely) delivered my son. They both said they were “disgusted” at how fat I had gotten during the pregnancies and “mmm-hmmed” at each other that I would never be any lighter than I was that…

Pops said, “Maybe if you brushed your hair, boys would finally start liking you.”