Almond Mom: Did You Grow Up With Almond Mom?

Warning: This text consists of dialogue of consuming issues, eating regimen tradition, and weight stigma. If you happen to or somebody you recognize is struggling, please contact NEDA.

Did you develop up with an almond mother? It’s a query many ladies and women requested themselves earlier this week, after clips of Yolanda Hadid—mom of Gigi and Bella Hadid—went viral on social media. 

Within the movies compiled from Hadid’s stint on The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills, Yolanda calls Gigi’s physique “huge and ponderous” and complains she “eats like males.” Throughout an episode on Gigi's birthday, she tells her then teenage daughter she will solely “have one evening of being dangerous” then has to “get again on her eating regimen,” earlier than permitting her a single chunk of cake. Essentially the most troubling of all, nonetheless, is a scene through which Gigi calls her mom complaining that she feels “actually weak” after solely consuming “like half an almond” that day. Yolanda’s response? “Have a few almonds, and chew them very well.”

Regardless of Hadid’s viral feedback, the almond mother is just not a novel idea—and positively not restricted to stage mothers. I do know as a result of I hail from a era of ladies whose each day lives revolve round how little they’ve eaten and the way a lot weight they’ve subsequently misplaced. Almond mothers are obsessive about weight-reduction plan, however don’t overtly acknowledge it, justifying their restricted energy for the sake of being “wholesome.”

What issues most to an almond mother is getting and staying skinny, a lot that it inevitably overshadows accomplishments, accolades, and milestones—except, after all, you look skinny whereas celebrating. To make sure that stays the case, they have an inclination to maintain themselves on single-digit portions of almonds—although they sometimes dabble in inexperienced juice, 100-calorie snack packs, and nonfat yogurt—and battle to grasp why their daughters don’t do the identical.

TikTok has proved the expertise is alarmingly common: If you happen to search “almond mothers” on the app, you’ll discover content material created across the matter lengthy earlier than the Yolanda clips resurfaced. On the time of writing, the phrase has amassed 600 million views.

Within the movies, teenagers and 20-somethings parody their “half-an-almond-a-day mothers” who refuse to eat throughout eventualities like trick-or-treating or on the Hershey retailer. Others spotlight the triggering poisonous mantras by which their almond mothers dwell, together with “A second on the lips, eternally on the hips” and “Nothing tastes nearly as good as skinny feels,” reciting them with cheerful fervor.

Hadid seemingly replied to the criticism with a TikTok captioned #worstmomever through which she does numerous actions like strolling, studying, and taking part in with child goats—all whereas toting a big bowl of almonds.

Beneath the humor, nonetheless, lies one thing extra sinister: the indisputable fact that even in 2022, throughout a newfound wave of physique positivity, the almond mother mentality is alive and nicely. However even worse is how a lot these dangerous weight-reduction plan fads affect girls, no matter whether or not or not their moms understand it.

“Kids observe extra of what we do than what we are saying, which is why not addressing weight-reduction plan and/or limiting caloric consumption, however nonetheless being obsessive about it whereas within the presence of your children, can have much more of an affect on kids than mother and father are conscious of,” Kiana Shelton, LCSW and girls’s well being professional at Mindpath Well being, instructed Glamour. So even when your almond mother doesn’t or didn’t actively deal with your consuming habits, her problematic habits can nonetheless have dire penalties.