“Why is my belly button so big?”
“Maybe because your stomach is so big.”
A US and Canadian research study published last August found that “boys and girls [as young as] 10 and 11 aren’t always happy with their bodies, even if they’re normal weight.”
My immediate response? Oh, the unhappiness begins far earlier, believe me.
A September 2009 WSJ Online article revisited women who’d been polled as fourth graders in 1986: “Are you on a diet?” The WSJ reporter had been seeking counterpoints to a UCSF study that claimed 80% of fourth grade girls were actively dieting, and the answers he received “ended up mirroring the study’s results.”
Earlier than fourth grade? You betcha – and not just based on my personal anecdotal experience. Via Dr. Robyn Silverman at Kiss My Assets, I discovered an Australian study that covered body image issues of preschoolers:
“Young children are picking up a potentially dangerous message that fat is bad and muscle is good before they have even started school, a study of Australian preschoolers has revealed.
Parents and teachers of preschoolers are making little girls weight conscious and little boys want more muscle, according to the research showing kids form an image of “perfect body” ideals very early in life.
The study of four-year-olds by Melbourne researchers has found adults are unintentionally sending these negative messages in how they talk about their own and the child’s body, said lead researcher Marita McCabe, a professor of psychology at Deakin University.”
I’d be horrified, except that I recall I proposed to my parents that I go on a diet when I was four years old.
Naturally, I try to be very careful about what I say about my children’s bodies – particularly avoiding any sort of negative comparison between them – and what I say about my own body. Having three kids has done a number on my body (which was never naturally thin or athletic to start with), so I’ve chosen to emphasize what my body can do rather than how it looks. Plus, finishing sprint triathlons ahead of younger and more slender women helps remind me that I’m not just blowing smoke up my own ass either. I’m not just talking about what I can do; I’m doing it.
My daughter plays soccer and swims. We tried ballet, but mostly she lay on the floor with her chin in her hands or pirouetted off into a corner and licked the mirror. She is a sporty little girl, and I can’t help but admire her drive and self-confidence.
So when I pat my daughter’s leg and remark on how strong she is, and her response is “Maybe I’m just fat,” it makes me want to shriek, “Who put that idea in your head?!”
“Listen, fat ass…”
I don’t know. I can’t blame it on any individual factor, and I expect that it’s not attributable as such. She watches TV, she goes to movies, she sees magazines, she goes to school, she visits friends, she visits family – all of these external variables exist which I cannot control. I can’t even let myself off the hook; I may not refer to myself as “fat”, but even an offhand comment like “This dress doesn’t look very good on me; I think I’ll change into something else” conveys personal dissatisfaction on some level.
But Kyle and I do our best. We set good examples with our own activity and healthy eating. We tell her that we’re glad she played hard and had fun on the soccer field, that we’re proud of how well she paid attention to her swim coach, that she has beautiful eyes and her hair smells good. We work hard to create a foundation that serves as a defense against thoughtless and cruel comments from friends: “My mom said you’re a little fat and should work out more.”
(To my daughter’s credit, she pressed the girl – “Your mom didn’t really say that,” in a you’ve-got-to-be-joking voice – who admitted she’d lied.)
But they’re only in second grade. None of them are even approaching puberty yet (knock wood). I shudder to think of what my daughter will hear – and worse, how she will feel – as she and her peers grow and change. No amount of foundation-building is going to prevent those comments from flying; all we can do is help her steel herself against them, no matter what size she is. A classmate of mine, diagnosed with anorexia, was taunted by sidewalk graffiti long ago: “_____ is fat!” Thanks to its inescapable sting, the f-word is an equal opportunity insult.
“Are you going to be too fat to be commissioned?”
Would I ever say such a thing to my daughter? Never. Will I teach my daughter that these words say more about the speaker than they do about her? Absolutely.
What’s the worst thing anyone ever said to you about your body? When do you first remember a sense of dissatisfaction with your body?
Yeah, it’s something to be concerned about. I attended a professional ballet boarding school from the age of 9 until graduation and was then in the ballet world for six years. I spent my entire adolescence dieting (or starving and binging), and then developed anorexia in my last year of school. When I turned professional, one of my colleagues taught me bulimia, and so began a ten year struggle with that disease.
What was the worst thing anyone ever said about my body? Oddly, it was all the raves about my body that made me feel that my entire self-worth hinged on how I looked, and thus the most important thing became controlling my weight. How much I have lost out on in life because I was unable to enjoy any activity for its own sake. The only thing that mattered was how I looked. In t his regard, it seems you are creating a very healthy environment for your daughter. She knows what she likes, and she pursues it wholeheartedly. If she becomes uninterested in doing things, introverted, or unduly self-critical, I would become concerned — self-absorption can be a sign of an eating disorder, as well as weight changes.
Of course the dance world is fraught with eating disorders, but in my life long struggle trying to come to terms with my body and to acquire healthy eating habits, I have realized that my problem started well before I went to ballet school. My mom was a chubby girl and she was teased about it relentlessly by her three brothers. I only realized it about 10 years ago, but she had an eating disorder and still does — one that has never been diagnosed, and which, sadly, she passed on to all but one of her kids — the starve/binge cycle. She got very thin before marrying and ever since she has struggled with fairly significant weight fluctuation. While I was growing up, she never ate much at meals, preparing them mainly for my father, but she gorged between meals on things like plain butter and mayo, habits, unbelievably, that we all picked up. And she never prepared enough food for her kids, so we also tended to gorge ourselves, whether or not we were hungry, whenever the opportunity presented.
Upshot of all this experience and struggle? I am very attuned to recognizing a wide range of eating disorders and I think they’re rampant among families. One thing I see a lot is heavy parents perpetuating bad eating habits in their children — their kids have no appetite for healthy foods and so they give them junk food because they won’t otherwise eat anything. And then there is the newly coined ED — orthorexia, where parents are so controlling of every bite of food their children eat that they prevent them from socializing in the world outside the home and plant pathological fears about eating the “wrong” food in their mind (this is what my sister does). So I recommend trying to model healthy eating for children, but not trying to control them unduly.
Gotta run, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to subscribe to comments on your blog? I’ve subscribed to your blog, but have to check it all the time for follow up discussion. Thanks
But what can we expect? Food is such a fundamental
I clearly remember my mom being about my age now (I was 16 when she was 40), and being unhappy with her body, although she tried not to let us see her unhappiness and I don’t recall it changing the food we had in the house (whole milk, butter, treats, veggies, fruits—the whole gamut, so to speak).
I try SO so so so hard to not discuss my weight negatively with the kids, but worry that my “shredding” and/or posting pictures of my ‘before/after’ body are sending the wrong message. I am NOT athletic but do talk about exercise as a way to strengthen my heart and bones and never, ever talk about my weight in a negative way. We eat everything from organic veggies and beef ,to cookies and ice cream. I never make them clean their plates and “dessert” on weekdays is a piece of fruit.
I strongly believe that girls look at their moms first and foremost for body image cues. If we are crying about being “fat” and “disgusting”; if we are eating nothing unless we’re alone in the dark; if we are exercising even though we are tired or sick=I do think they see this and learn.
Of course, time will tell. I had an eating disorder that I think I “picked up” from a college roommate, but I think that the reason I overcame it was b/c I had a good foundation of how to eat and behave from my mom—I wonder if her being from Europe and growing up on a farm gave her a much healthier relationship with food than what we see in the US.
Oh god, I didn’t even answer your question—-one thing I clearly remember hearing over and over was that I was such a “Big Girl”. I was soooo tall early on, and I HATED being called BIG, especially in relationship to my much smaller (and thinner) younger sister. When I developed an eating disorder, I remember being so proud when I weighed as much as her. Sick.
So, here I am with my oldest who stands so much taller than her tiny little sister and they look to be a carbon copy of my sister and I. So, whenever ANYONE says, that Belly is BIG, I say, “Yes, she is TALL” b/c “Big” is just way too loaded a word IMO.
Sadly, if anyone calls me “tiny” even today, I glow. I wish it weren’t true.
I think I’m the odd man out because the first time I ever felt dissatisfied with my body, I was about two weeks postpartum. I felt like I just had rolls and rolls of excess skin and fat hanging around my midsection and I was tired of not having my pre-pregnancy (or hell, even my pregnant) body back. About a week later, when someone first thought that I wasn’t the mother because I didn’t look like I’d just had a baby, it all vanished.
Whatever my mother did when she was raising me, I readily admit that she did it right. I cannot speak for my sisters, but I was always happy with my body and comfortable in my skin. I hope I do half as well with my daughter.
I was always called “shrimp” because I tended to be the smallest child in any group. Thankfully, I quickly learned to shrug it off, although I’m not sure how–maybe because I knew it was nothing I could change (short of dangling from the swingset, Peter Brady-style) or because I decided it was good to have a distinguishing characteristic.
I feel like this area is such a mine field! One slightly wrong comment or something taken the wrong way, my child(ren) could internalize it and develop serious body image problems! It makes me so nervous. I’m afraid that what I recently have talked about might affect her: I talked to family about buying her size 4T (she’s 2.5) to fit her waist when it had gotten a little big, as it does prior to growth spurts, but then she went through her growth spurt and it “thinned out” so all the clothes are too big on her. I keep questioning my word choices and even discussing it, but I bought a bunch of clothes that are too big and it’s frustrating cause the store is too far for an easy exchange.
Like Sarah, I somehow escaped the negative body image issues. Even now, when my post-pardum body still doesn’t fit into most of my clothes, the only thing that annoys me is that I don’t have enough clothes to wear to work! And maybe that what I’m wearing for ease of breastfeeding makes me look a bit big in pictures. But I know that it’s a temporary state, therefore I’m not obsessing. I don’t know how I ended up without real issues, but I’m trying to figure it out so I can do the same for my kids.
I do remember when I was a teenager a couple guy friends were joking about how big my feet were and said I was shaped like an “L”. That sucked. My feet aren’t that huge, it’s just that I’m 5′2″, so they just look a big on me. And I have great shoes, so there, stupid boys!
@Fairly Odd Mother – Thanks for writing about the big vs. tall. My daughter has been in the 97% for height since she was born, and we are hoping that she never becomes self-conscious of how tall she is. We hope she revels in it! It helps to know that we should never say “big” and that “tall” is an okay word to use.
Great subject.
My first impressions about my body are not specific but an overall impression. I remember being told I was “big-boned” and that it would be likely I would be a “bigger” person and I remember going to my grandparents’ for a week long visit and coming home unable to fit into my clothes. At the same time, I was the star of my soccer team, called “big foot” and felt like although I was bigger, I was also athletic.
Really, though, I was not bigger. I am not big-boned. My parents ate because they liked food. We ate because we liked food. It was social, it was what we did. It was how we ordered our life.
Turn this around and when I was 13 yo, I lost 40 lb, went from a size 11 to a size 3. I screwed up my metabolism. As a 40 yo woman, I still battle it. The running? A way to control myself and my eating. Yes, it does make me very proud of what my body can do and I have finally accepted it for it and for the wonderful qualities. It has taken me my entire life to reach this equilibrium. I finally feel that it is not precarious, that I am leaps and bounds away from being fat and that if I ate two Oreos, my life will not end. Food does not define me. My weight does not define me. I define myself.
Now, so far, it has been easy with my little girl. I tell her she is gorgeous and funny and sweet and it is all true. It is my son whom I have found myself harder on, mostly because my IL’s have told me for years that my dh was skinny and scrawny as a child and that my son would be, too. He is not. At nearly 8 yo, he weighs 80 lb. He is solid, he is strong, he is tall and he is very athletic. But he is not skinny. He likes to eat – good food and junk food.
I’m sure this wasn’t the worst, but it was the most resonant: My father told me to be careful or I’d end up with a big ass like my mother’s.
I was 12. I was a dancer, tthin as a rail, and one of the shortest kids in class.
He was angry about the divorce. But it stayed with me.
Worst part is, turns out he was right. Dammit.
Hmmm, I can’t put my finger on why the bad self esteem fairy didn’t visit me, but I was always pretty confident about the way I looked and still am. Ah, wait, the one time I was conscious was when I ballooned to 200 lbs by the end of my pregnancy, but when it all melted off two weeks post partum, so did my self consciousness.
I was always rail-thin throughout high school, and played soccer in college, so was definitely active and fit and not self-conscious about my body at all. But I’ll never forget the time this one douchebag, named Bret, during my senior year olf college, told me I had “saddle bags”.
I recall only one thing bad from my parents (who have been on and off diets as long as I can remember), but there were probably more. When I was in maybe 8th grade they said that if I could turn my fat into muscle I’d be a good football player, or that I could get into a military academy. That was one of the weirdest conversations I can recall, because I’m so not into either of those things.
I don’t remember too much other stuff from when I was young…the worst comment I can recall happened in college. We were all sitting around studying, and one of the muscly guys told me if I took off my shirt it would be a “flabalanche.” It’s a pretty mild comment (taken from Saturday Night Live), but it sure did suck to be on the receiving end.
I’m hoping I’m teaching my kids good stuff. They know I go to Weight Watchers meetings (they’ve gone to a couple), and I tell them that I’m learning how to eat well. That sometimes it’s hard not to eat too much junk, and WW teaches me how to eat good foods instead. Stuff like that. As for all my exercise, we refer to that as “getting energy out,” because that’s what we call it when they run around.