I have to believe that good parents – and good humans – have realized by now that it’s really never ok to comment on how another person’s looks unless you’re genuinely asking after their health.

A parent fat-shaming a child is just abuse. No way around it.

OP grew up with that sort of abuse and the only reason she still sees her father at all is because of her 10yo sister.

I’m 23F. My dad has fat shamed me my whole life. His words used to hurt me a lot as a kid and a teenage girl, and they never once encouraged me to lose weight (ironically, they made me turn to food even more for comfort).

I have a little sister. She’s 10 years old. I don’t live at home anymore, so I don’t know if my dad has ever mentioned weight to her unless he was making a comment about me in front of her.

When he made a similar comment to her about her appearance, OP saw red.

I was visiting for a bit (I only regularly visit for my little sister, if it wasn’t for her I’d never go to that house ever again lmao) and we were watching a movie together. My sister was sitting in between my dad and I on the sofa.

A little bit into the movie, while we were eating some small snacks, he randomly put his hand on my sister’s thigh and said some stupid sh*t, along the lines of, “see that jiggle? you need to start watching what you eat, sweetheart.”

I wanted to throw something at him. I was so unbelievably mad. It’s one thing for him to say shit like that to Me, a grown adult who is used to his comments and jabs and has formed somewhat of a force field against them in all the years he’s done this to me. But to my little sister? A 10 year old girl???

My little sister didn’t say anything, but I could see by the look on her face that she felt awful and uncomfortable. It made me wonder if he has said things like this to her in my absence.

I know that feeling all too well, and it’s 10x worse when you’re a little kid with little to no concept of weight and fatness and diet culture. Some of my core childhood memories are his weight-related comments to me.

All I could think was “how dare he say that to her? how dare he try to plant these insecurities in her at such a young age? how dare he do to her what he did to me?”

She let him have it.

I waited until later when we were alone and my little sister was upstairs in her room and I just blew up at my dad, called him an a—— and a piece of crap for his little comment to my sister, told him he should be ashamed of himself for trying to destroy my sister’s self esteem and self worth the way he destroyed mine.

I told him that the only reason I haven’t completely cut him off is because of my little sister, but now I will not hesitate to cut him off and instead resort to spending time with my sister outside of his home, without seeing him ever.

No one in the family is on her side.

He called me disrespectful, a disgrace, a “poor excuse for a daughter who dares to speak to her father in this way” etc etc etc but I was too angry to care at that moment. I just left to go back to my own apartment.

It’s been a day and a half. I’ve been bombarded with messages from my mother, aunts and cousins etc all telling me that dad informed them of what happened and that I should really apologise for how awful I was.

I’d appreciate outside opinions. Did I overreact? Was my reaction warranted or over the top? Was there a better way to address it and AITA here.

I wonder if Reddit will be.

The top comment says they hope OP can be there for her sister.

They say the whole family sounds like they need help.

Some think OP should go high.

Because he’s definitely trying to manipulate everyone in his orbit.

Those kinds of comments can be tough to shake.

I have to be honest, I saw red too.

I wish there were better ways to protect kids from this kind of abuse.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.