Essay: “When Your Mother Says She’s Fat”

Indledning
“When Your Mother Says She’s fat” by Kasey Edwards is a letter written to her mother. She starts the letter by writing about how, she as a child thought that her mother was beautiful. Later her mother begins explaining how Kasey is thin and beautiful and that herself in comparison is fat and ugly.

Kasey then grows up feeling insecure about her own appearance, due to her mother’s self-loathing of her own body. Kasey tells her mother and us about the consequences in her life because of her insecurity.

The author ends the letter by telling her mom, that she will not let her own daughter grow up like she did herself. Self-loathing her own body.

Indholdsfortegnelse
Summary:
Analytic Part:

Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter

Uddrag
“When Your Mother Says She’s Fat” is officially a letter written by the Australian author and columnist Kasey Edwards to her mother. The letter discusses themes such as Body ideals, Self-loathing, insecurity and role models. While the main theme of this letter is the body ideals of our current society.

Kasey express her concerns for the issue of body image and the drive to have the “perfect body”. She tells us about her own consequences due to the self-hatred that both she and her mother went through, due to their insecurity.

While it seems like the genre of this text is a letter, as we can see in the beginning: “Dear Mum” (102, 1) and in the end “Love, Kasey xx” (104, 13). The style of writing is more like an essay or a memoir.

Therefore, it is hard to exactly identify the genre, because while it’s officially a letter where the recipient is Kasey’s mom, the letter’s main recipient is a much bigger audience, a global audience. In addition, towards the end of the letter that instead of saying “I” like Kasey have done most of the letter, she begins saying “we”.