Photo: TikTok
Her mom is the real victim here, even if her daughter has been impacted too.
By Hawthorn Martin — Written on May 21, 2023
Family pranks and teasing can often be a harmless way of poking fun and showing affection between close members of the family, but there are times when things can tow the line of bullying.
The line can be thin and can vary from person to person, but one woman recently sparked controversy with the “prank” she and her sister pulled on their mother.
TikTok and Twitter accused the women of perpetuating harm after teasing their “almond mom” by ordering unhealthy foods in front of her.
The teens ordered 'unhealthy' meals their strict mom didn't approve of.
TikTok user Allusik posted a video of herself and her sister out at a restaurant with their mom where they proceeded to pull a “prank” on her by intentionally ordering “unhealthy” options from the menu for themselves.
Photo: TikTok
In the video, she and her sister took care to order specific “unhealthy” foods to the shock of their mother and then laughed as they enjoyed their meals. Their mother ordered her own food at the restaurant, but wouldn’t finish her plate, or try any of the appetizers ordered.
Photo: TikTok
The TikTok was then reposted to Twitter where a discussion then sparked about how “almond moms” can struggle with eating disorders of their own.
For many of us, the memory of food-conscious women on the next trendy diet is a familiar one, and might even include ourselves from time to time. Although dieting and “healthy eating” have certainly been popular in recent years, some people have begun to point out a harmful trend in a particular overlap of obsessive food consciousness and parenting.
The term “almond mom” has gained recent popularity after a video of Yolanda Hadid resurfaced and went viral, a video in which she encouraged her daughter, who was weak with hunger, to just eat a handful of almonds.
'Almond mom' has come to refer to a mother who takes pride in following a restrictive diet, and often encourages her children to view food the same way.
The trend has roots in sweeping diet movements in the 1990s and decades previous that undeniably left profound impacts on the psyches of women across the nation, although many people impacted by the trends don’t see it as the harmful thing it is.
However, a Twitter user pointed out that the public shaming the mother in the initial TikTok was cruel, and insensitive towards the mother’s own clearly tenuous relationship with food.
“Only teenage girls can have eating disorders, after they have children they can only be almond moms and should have their behaviors mocked online,” the user commented sarcastically.
They expressed that they had personally struggled with eating disorders growing up, and were also raised by an almond mom. Although they said that their mother’s relationship with food contributed to their struggles, it would still be devastating to see something like this posted online about them.
“There is a conversation to be had about ‘almond moms’ because the way mothers pass on their neuroses and eating habits to their (usually) daughters is unbearably sad,” the user wrote. “But it’s also sad the way we’re incapable of seeing mothers as individuals with their own problems.”
Others in the thread point out that controlling and shaming kids’ eating habits due to personal self-image issues is a form of abuse, but the writer of the thread argued that even so, there is a time and a place for putting someone’s face on the internet in connection with a struggle of theirs.
It’s a complicated situation for sure, but it’s a reminder that there are two sides to everything.
Hawthorn Martin is a news and entertainment writer living in Texas. They focus on social justice, pop culture, and human interest stories.