Daughter, don’t hate your body…..please?
By: Catherine Shep
Tags: Body Positive, Body Image, Media, Parenting Advice, Parenting

I don’t want to write about this. I’m so done with thinking about the aesthetics of my body and women’s bodies in general. I am tired of envy. I am over diets. I reject binary labels like ‘good body’ vs ‘bad body’. I am done with self-loathing over fictional imperfections. I’ve finally found a relative peace with my body after years of psychological and physical warfare and I want to leave the rubbish behind me and enjoy my hard-fought mental freedom.

But I can’t leave it, because I have a tiny daughter who will one day transform into a woman, with a woman’s body, that is subject to critique and judgement in her culture, community and own head. I want to do whatever I can to make sure she never feels body shame or an obsessive need to change herself to be worthy. The problem is I don’t know how to teach her this because I learnt backwards - I developed all the issues and then found an effective treatment to make them go away. What I need to learn for her sake is how to effectively do prevention.

Like it or not, cultural messages obtained from mass media are a powerful influence on how we see ourselves. Growing up my body-shape was associated with negative things in women’s magazines and mainstream media. I should try to hide my ‘pear-shape’ and get rid of my ‘saddle-bags’. Women with my shape were considered less attractive (‘hourglass’ envy anybody?)and we were told ways to dress to hide our imperfections. Models in clothing catalogues were young, pretty, tall and slim, or ‘sexy curvy’. This is still the trend today for most large retailers of women’s clothing.

What. A. Pile. Of. Shit.

As a vulnerable teenager I internalised these ‘not good enough’ messages and felt disgusting, unattractive and defective. I wasn’t able to talk to other people about it so I took the ‘problem’ into my own hands and thus begun a lifetime of obsession with shrinking myself through dieting and exercise. I am so sad I wasted so much of my brain power on this miserable goal during my teens and twenties. It took a tonne of self-work and actively engaging in the body positivity movement to undo this damage, and old ugly neural pathways still flare back to life occasionally.

Incredibly in the last few years the particular cultural narrative of ‘tall and slim is best’ has started to change, seemingly at random, in a way I never would have dreamed of when I was a teenager being bombarded by images of size 6/8 glamazon models. Big booties are now hot, and my most hated body-part, ‘thunder thighs’ are now considered ‘thicc’ (which is apparently a good thing). ‘Shorties’ are cute. Unfortunately this is just replacing one unhealthy trend with another, leaving a different subset of girls feeling like they don’t measure up (as evidenced by the upward trend in butt implants). I’m glad I wasn’t a young woman when the ‘thigh gap’ bullshit started showing up.

Without getting too feminist about it, the unspoken but powerful message underlying so much of this is “as a female your body should be appealing to the male gaze”. Western media not only lies to women about where their worth is, it then sets an impossible standard for young women to measure up to and it’s making many of them very miserable and sick. Not to mention porn, which I can’t go into here because it’s just too large, scary and heart-breaking.

One benefit of the internet age is that there is so much more diversity in media available. If you look in the right places you can see positive representation of the full array of women’s body types and healthy body image messaging. Clothing retailers are starting to add more ‘plus size’ and ‘curvy’ offerings — penning women into different body categories is a bit problematic of course, but it’s nice to see clothes advertised on women of different shapes and sizes. The pockets are small but they are growing and it’s an exciting time.

Unfortunately the flip side is that now technology allows filtering and editing of images and the use of algorithms to pump dangerous media directly into tween and teen‘s social media feeds and website advertisements, no matter how good your security and filtering systems are. For example, I had an ad pop-up in my Instagram feed today which had a photo of a seductively-posed young women in lace underwear whose body had been photo-shopped beyond natural proportions. The ad was selling a diet drink.

So how do I protect my baby girl (Little One) from the harm media messages can cause to a developing and vulnerable mind? At seven years old she has already been exposed to thousands of pieces of media (including storybooks) that contain both overt and subtle ‘good body’ versus ‘bad body’ messages. Even a simple conversation is peppered with landmines for the amateur body positivity mentor.

When Little One was four we started talking about her body and mine and I didn’t know what language to use and messages to promote; there was no tested and proven script in my head. For example, after Kinder one day we had the following exchange:

Little One: “Mummy, do I have a fat tummy?”

I instantly went in to anxious thinking overdrive: ‘Where the fuck did that come from? What does it mean? I thought I had at least 2–3 years before I had to deal with this shit. Does she have issues already? IS THIS NORMAL??!!.’

Then I ran through the possible responses: ‘I could say “No you don’t?” But would that subtly imply fat is bad? Also her tummy does stick out, so would I be confusing her or falsifying her reality? Would that undermine my future credibility? No, can’t say that. Shit, shit, shit, stall for time.’

Mummy (light and neutral voice): “Why do you ask that Little One?”

Little One (bashful); “No reason.”

So I spun the wheels a bit more: ‘Hmmmm that sounds like a hidden reason. Why is she hiding things from me? What have I done to make her feel she can’t confide in me? Stop over-thinking muppet and answer the kid. Go for honest, age-appropriate and judgement-free.’

Mummy (light and neutral voice): “No Little One, you have a sticky-out tummy because your a little kid and your tummy muscles haven’t grown yet. All little kids have sticky-out tummies.”

Little One smiles and does a happy wiggle.

I breathed a sigh of relief: ‘Fuck yeah, crushed it. Now to kick a mothering field goal and blast away fat stigma straight-up.’

Mummy (wise voice): “Little One you know there’s nothing wrong with having fat on your tummy. Fat is lovely and soft and keeps us warm.”

Little One (glazes over): “Stop talking Mummy.”

So you can see it’s not as simple as it seems. There are resources out there but time to research, read, practice and apply is a huge time commitment. My poor daughter has been the unwitting guinea pig in many a parenting fumble. However, through this research, trial and error I’ve picked up a few strategies that seem to be planting healthy seeds. Here’s my top five:

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Language Basics.

Don’t shit on your own or other people’s bodies in front of the kids. You don’t have to shake your soft bits in their face on the daily shouting ‘I love my body!’, but be mindful of the fact they are always listening and learning and try to curb self-depreciation in their earshot.

Try not to overdo observations and complements given about physical beauty/attractiveness. I’m not saying don’t do it at all, just try to make sure it’s not coming across as the most important thing to measure a girl or woman’s worth, or as a criteria girls and women are compared against. Aside from causing individual self-esteem issues, I also believe comparison and competition are toxic to the development of healthy female peer relationships.

Take time to compliment other positive things(funny, strong, clever) that you see in your child and their potential role-models. e.g. “I like how Barbie is very kind to her little sisters.”

These probably aren’t breaking news to anyone and I know it sounds like preachy ‘St Parentia’ advice, so I will be real with you and admit I’ve found it incredibly difficult to apply the above consistently. Some days I’ve said “I want to lose some stomach weight” in front of my daughter. I also call her cute and beautiful often and I’ve praised her for being the best swimmer in class. As for Barbie…..that one nice comment about her came after several episodes of shitting on her for being a bimbo. It’s hard to change habits of a lifetime, but I think it’s important so I’m working on it.

2. Content Curation — Spot the Lie.

Little One isn’t old enough to be on social media but she still consumes a fair bit in terms of storybooks, cartoons and YouTube videos. I try to keep an eye on it and ban the worst stuff but it’s impossible to curate it all and eliminate undesirable content. One example is Teen Titans, which is for the most part a great kid’s show with strong female characters. However it falls into one of the classic cartoon traps of presenting the female protagonists as conventionally pretty and skinny and even sexualised/objectified in some episodes (i.e. Beast Boy’s obsession with Raven’s legs).

I don’t want to poop the kid’s party by not letting her watch her favourite things so I’ve tried to open up a dialogue that makes her more critically aware of what she is seeing. As such I invented a game called ‘Spot the Lie’ where we spot images where women’s bodies have been illustrated or presented in an unrealistic way, or there is an absence of diversity in how body shapes are presented. Little One is excellent at the game and picks things I don’t even notice — thanks to her I’ve learnt that there is a problem with under-representing body diversity in a lot of storybook illustrations too.

The risk with this game though is that they can accidentally get a ‘skinny is bad’ message because kids tend towards binary thinking and may be too young to understand the nuance. So again, minefield. I’m hoping regular, evolving dialogue as she gets older and sees more light and shade will be the ticket.

3. Tell the story behind the image.

I invented this one out of desperate necessity. Little One randomly mentioned she had seen and liked the Britney Spears Toxic video and I instantly thought of the nude bodysuit + seductive flight attendant + sexual writhing and felt sick. Then super fucking angry. Then desperately powerless. I’ve tried launching into explanation mode before (“Mummy doesn’t like that video because…”) and the typical outcome is a fully glazed child thinking her mum is lame.

So this time I cooled my own jets and started a conversation about Britney Spears the person. We talked about how after she made that song she had a really tough time and some people were bullying her and taking advantage of her. We talked about how she’s doing well now and she is a mummy of two boys. That bit was the most exciting to Little One: “Really?! she’s a Mummy?! “ I don’t know if it helped her, but I felt better for having added some human perspective to supplement what she had seen. And then I made myself feel even better by throat punching the person who showed it to her.*

4. Direct her towards healthy media.

If you fill up on the good then hopefully there will be less room for the bad. This one I struggle with because it requires time, effort and research skills, as well as changing my own behaviour regarding what media I consume.

I’m still training myself to turn away from the media that talks about ‘how to lose 5kgs quickly’ or before and after photos of celebrities who have ‘let themselves go’ and instead turn towards the voices with substance (male and female)that are speaking quietly and eloquently on important topics.

Growing up I didn’t have much access to the stories about great women, nor the stories written by them. I didn’t know what to look for or where to look. Or why it is so important to so do. Five years ago I couldn’t have told you who Maya Angelou was. Today I can tell you that her story and words of wisdom have helped me through the toughest moments in my life.

Thankfully there are websites that have done some of this research work for us. One fantastic resource that makes it easier for me to find good stuff is A Mighty Girl. https://www.amightygirl.com/ .

They’ve introduced me to many amazing female role models, like the bad-ass Night Witches; a Soviet WWII all-female fighting squadron who bombed the shit out of the Nazi’s in rickety old planes.

https://www.history.com/news/meet-the-night-witches-the-daring-female-pilots-who-bombed-nazis-by-night.

5. The ‘Amazing Machine’

This comes from a very wise friend of mine. Celebrate all the wonderful things you and your child can do with the amazing machine that is your body like run, dance, lift, build, contort, hug, pat and so on. Teach them practical skills so they find joy in what they can do with their bodies, helping them to see that bodies have value far beyond just being there for decorative purposes.

This can extend to building a mindset of seeing food as fuel for the amazing machine and a way to talk about making healthy food choices. Having a healthy relationship with food is still very much a work in progress for me so I don’t feel confident talking about it here, but I acknowledge it’s an incredibly important part of this discussion.

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You can see I am still stumbling through the dark trying to find the right language, tools and techniques to protect and foster my daughter’s mental well-being in relation to body image. Maybe I’m over-thinking it and seeing monsters where there are none; after all the stats say rates of eating disorders have remained stable over time for the last twenty years, though age of onset has progressively gotten younger. Maybe all that is needed is to live a life centred around strong values like kindness, compassion, courage, and empathy, and to deal with issues instinctively as they arise. Maybe I was more vulnerable to developing body issues due to my early childhood traumas than the average teen, and my daughter will be much less affected than I was by what she sees in the outside world.

But then I recall an article by another Medium writer recently who talked about how in his high-school the boys developed a classification system of the girls based on their face and body attractiveness. On a podcast yesterday a woman told her story of how when she was 17 her head was photo-shopped onto pornographic pictures and spread on the internet. I still remember a documentary I saw in my twenties, where a young woman had labiaplasty because her sister told all their friends she had a ‘Hanging Hound’. Stories like this are what keeps me up at night. Am I afraid for my daughter and other young girls? Shit yeah. Do I feel equipped to prepare her and them for the possible trials ahead? Fuck no. Do I know what I’m going to say to my daughter if she comes home one day and tells me the boys (or other girls) called her a ‘2’ or just as bad, a ‘10’? Nup. Do I think I can wing it on instinct alone? Hell to the no.

I see a problem in society. I’m working on finding strategies for me and my girl, and it’s a rough work in progress. I want to learn enough so that I can one day also help other girls, especially the most vulnerable ones. However I want to leave this by saying I care about the boys too, and to acknowledge that they are being just as grievously harmed by media and pornography, albeit in different ways.

That is an article I am not qualified to write, but I am looking to read the articles written by people who are so I can understand their world better too. Here’s one piece that I like: https://blog.heartsupport.com/in-search-of-the-perfect-body-1316211ddce5

Thank you for reading.

*Joking.