Daniela Dröscher: ‘A fat body doesn’t fit the idea of bettering oneself to move up in society, so it’s a provocation’

It took Daniella Dröscher 45 years to dare to tell the story of her childhood in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany. That childhood was dominated by her mother’s body: “Ever since I learned to write, I knew I wanted to share this story, but it took me a long time to decide how to do it, until I realized it had to be [told] from the girl’s perspective.” The result, Lies about My Mother, is a tragicomic autofiction in which fatphobia, power relations, caretaking and misogyny are intertwined and influence everything. “I think when you read the novel you can see that there is a lot experienced inside it. The drama of my childhood was the drama of this maternal body that was supposedly too big. I had no choice, that had to be the focus.”

Question. In the book there is a particularly difficult scene, in which the protagonist begins to feel ashamed of her mother. How does growing up with these stereotypes affect a girl who is forming her view of the world?

Answer. At first, she is quite innocent and doesn’t see the weight problem, as children often do. She doesn’t understand what her mother is doing wrong, but she is learning. In such circumstances, a girl internalizes [the notion] that the female body is never enough, it is never right, it will always be valued and judged from the outside. I tried to understand this mechanism in order to do a kind of exorcism through my writing.

Q. Why do you think that fat bodies, particularly women’s fat bodies, generate so much hatred?

A. One reason is the constant demand for performance. A fat body doesn’t fit the idea of wanting to improve oneself, to better oneself in order to move up in society, so it’s a provocation. In addition, in Germany there is still an idea of the body that was shaped by Nazi ideology, a rigid and almost military vision of discipline; a person who is not slim is always suspected of being despicably lazy.

Q. What surprised you most in going back to the 1980s, the period in which the story is set?

A. I think that the saddest thing was seeing that there were no role models, not in the music world, not in the movies... there wasn’t a fat, self-confident woman saying “this is me” on stage. That’s why the mother feels so alone. I also found it interesting to see that nothing was known about the harm women were doing to themselves with those diets. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the yo-yo effect and how damaging it is to the body began to be understood. I have the feeling that in the 1980s all women kept calorie counts in their drawers.

Q. Now there are some more role models...

A. Yes, but we also have the countercurrent of the optimized, super slim figure that appears on Instagram daily. It seems to be about who shouts the loudest. Which of the two ideas is going to prevail: [body] diversity or the same patriarchal norms [we’ve ]always [had]? How we raise our own sons and daughters has a lot to do with that.

Q. You point out that capitalism has an interest in female insecurity: “If every woman in the world woke up tomorrow feeling at ease with her figure, the world economy would collapse.” Is it even possible to open one’s eyes to the situation when the system makes one hate one’s own body?

A. Yes, but we need to create networks for empowerment. I was in Iceland recently, and all the women there, almost 90% of them, went on strike in 1975. It’s about looking for collective moments and not singling out or separating oneself so one does not feel alone or isolated. One could even think about a beauty or diet strike.

Q. One does not usually speak of collective action when discussing bodies.

A. But dieting is not an individual or personal matter… [It’s] a very effective and malicious tool for the subjugation of women.

Q. In Daddy Issues, writer Katherine Angel points out that the father, a fundamental figure in power structures, is left out of the fourth wave of feminism. But you don’t flinch at condemning your own. Was it difficult?

A. I realized that many feminists draw a line in the sand [in regard to] talking about their fathers: you can criticize the patriarchy, but never dad. It’s super painful to watch a person you loved, and love, do horrible things, but I think it’s important. Because this doesn’t all work without analyzing the father himself, because the father classically represents power. And if we want to go further in developing ideas about power, if we want to understand power as responsibility, we have to analyze and dissect our father and his gaze in the gaze that has been inscribed in us.

Q. The intersections of body and class hover over your story. Would having money have changed things?

A. Time and money definitely play a role in all body politics. And yet, [the issue] cannot be approached from a white feminism that delegates care work to poorer migrant women, establishing a chain. It’s not about having someone else do the work; it’s about paying well [for it] and valuing this kind of care, that’s where the fight should be. It is tragic, but I also needed to include the moment when the mother receives an inheritance to [show] that there comes a point [when] it is no longer just a financial issue: she has the money to leave, but she has not even learned to have a right to do [so].

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