Jenna Bush Hager really loves her mama, Laura Bush. She's opened up about her special relationship with the former first lady before. But Jenna just shared something that her mother did while she was growing up that Jenna found extraordinarily important.
On Today With Hoda & Jenna, the 40-year-old mom opened up about how her mother never, ever talked about weight in their home while she and her sister were growing up.
Jenna says it was incredibly impactful.
Jenna's gratitude came into clear view during a recent grocery store trip with her daughters — Mila, 8, and Poppy, 6. The girls saw a magazine cover featuring their mom and a headline about weight.
Mila "yells, 'What are lbs.?' And I go, 'Oh Mila, nothing,'" Jenna told her cohost.
"You know what I love? She didn't know what 'lbs.' are," Hoda replied. "You don't bring it up." Jenna replied that that's the plan. She never plans to bring up weight in her home, the same as her mother.
"I will never. And I had a mother that never [did], and I still felt like a chubby child. But it wasn't because of her; I think it was because I was chubby," she said.
It wasn't just about weight, either, Jenna shared. Her mom simply didn't talk negatively about her appearance. "She never said things like, 'Gosh, my hair looks terrible. Or, 'I look terrible.' Or 'This dress looks bad on me,'" Jenna explained.
"And somebody [once] said, 'Well I can't believe she never had that talk to herself.' And I said, 'No, I'm sure she said it to herself, but she never said it out loud in front of her girls.'"
That body positivity really stayed with Jenna. By not hearing her mother talk negatively about her own body, it instilled in Jenna that she was more than just numbers on a scale. Still, we all need reminders sometimes.
She revealed in January that her mom offered that reminder to her recently when she was beginning to kick up her workouts. "She said, 'Yeah, of course you look like that now, Hal's two-and-a-half. It's right about time. Give yourself that grace.'"
"I had three babies, so [my body is] going to look this way. And would I choose perfect abs or them?"
