Oh god it’s started.
Body image and a daughter.
I have struggled with body image my entire life. It’s awful. Negative self-talk can become so consuming that sometimes the battle to fight it off is too hard. Most of the time I’m a warrior, but there are times I’m a prisoner. Due to this, I have been super vigilant, in those moments of “meh”, not to speak negatively about my appearance in front of the kids. Especially my daughter. My Warrior language is the only thing they will ever hear.
Miss Tween mentioned how she hates her pale skin and her hairy legs. I gently empathised how, I too, had always wished that I was tanned. “We can’t change it, so we just have to work with it” was my message. I also shared that I was once told I had skin like peaches and cream and that peaches and cream are delicious. I had never thought to celebrate the fact that being pale can be a beautiful thing until it was pointed out. My answer was to run out and get a fake tan and cover up my paleness. So, with that in mind, my wide eyed girl and I listed all of the glorious pale skinned people we knew, which reinforced that we weren’t alone. As for hairy legs, we talked about how girls are actually allowed to have hairy legs, because we are humans and humans have hair. We can also have hairy armpits too if we choose.. cause once again, we’re humans. However, I’m also a realist and society tells us that women are hairless creatures, so I understand that an 11 year old girl who wants to fit in isn’t likely to buck the system. We aren’t all Greta Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai. I’m not sure where Greta or Malala stand on hair removal, but safe to say they are probably focusing on bigger issues.
Perhaps this is the answer. Perhaps if we focus on more important things than the insignificant things like pale skin, hairy legs, or even thighs, they simply fade into the background. Or do they? This would be an ideal world for me, but we don’t live in one. We live in this world. A world where women are still strapped by the social expectations that we have created and insist upon. The world is changing in this arena for the better though. There are more body positive movements, we see more diversity on our TV screens and social media, and if you carefully navigate your way through, you can feed your brain with mostly healthy positive messages creating a healthy and happy body image. We can block out the thousands of Instagram “influencers” selling their appearance for profit and gain. We can choose to unfollow, delete and unfriend. We can control the shows we watch, the magazines we buy and the friends we have. We can refuse to lap up negative messages like hungry little puppies at dinnertime. We can, in a sense, have our own revolt against the rulers of the beauty matriarchy.
Even if we manage to become warriors of body image wellness, the negativity still seeps in. It comes in whispers. Hundreds and thousands of tiny messages whispered into our ears and our psyche. That’s why we need to shout above the whispers so that our children hear the message that appearance is a bullshit myth of importance. It’s ‘nice to look nice’ and be complimented on that, but when the majority of the compliments you hear are the ones about how you look, it makes appearance equal self worth.
Photo Source: Meg Gaiger/Harpyimages
As a child and teen, I soaked in these whispers like a sponge, and it’s these whispers that I sometimes fight against in my mind as a 44 year old, reasonably well adjusted woman.
We certainly do a lot of things better now, but back when I was growing up things weren’t so fab, so over that time I’ve heard, and also been told, some pretty horrendous stuff…mainly about weight. I have also said a few of these things too, because that’s what I thought was important. So in the vein of Jane Gilmore’s FixedIt , an incredibly powerful message that reminds us about the power of words in a headline, I’ve corrected some of the tripe I’ve heard over the years when it comes to appearance.
If you feel yourself about to say this…..
Say this instead…..
“If she just lost a bit of weight, she would look so much better and maybe get a boyfriend”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“You may be larger, but you always look nice because you ‘know what to wear’”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“You’re lucky your hair isn’t ‘red-red'”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“You’d think she’d put a bit of make-up on”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“You’re not a ‘typically pretty’ girl”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“She should NOT be wearing that”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“She should NOT be eating that”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“She must be a lesbian with armpits like that”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“How did she let herself get that big”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“She needs a spray tan for those legs”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“You move well for a big girl”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“I’m just concerned about her health”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“I’m so fat” says size 10 girl to size 20 girl
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“You’re looking good.. have you lost weight?”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“It’s just calories in vs calories out…it’s not that hard to figure out”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
Mmmm. Yep. I think I fixed it.
M.
