Being a Body-Image Role Model
Q U E S T I O N
I have a little girl and struggle with knowing how to talk to her about her body, self image, and what’s appropriate for me as a parent to say or not say about my own body in her presence so that she doesn’t internalize it in a negative way. Any ideas?
— Rachel
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A N S W E R
This is such a good question, and while I am so happy you are asking it, I also know how hard it is to answer. I have struggled with my body image for most of my life, and it has always been really important to me to help my kids feel confident in their bodies, rather than having the same insecurities I faced. But now that I’m a mom, I see how hard it is to control that (or control anything, right?!).
But there are a couple easy and important things we can do to help our kids develop healthy relationships with their bodies.
1) Be a good role model. Our kids are watching and absorbing every little thing we say and do. I know it seems like they aren’t listening half the time – my kids certainly roll their eyes enough to let me know that they don’t want to be listening – but they are soaking in everything we say and do. We need to trust that our modeling is influential. The way you talk about your body, and the way you treat your body, is important. When you are shopping or trying on clothes, do you look in the mirror and say “Wow, I really like this color blue!” or do you look in the mirror, touch your stomach with disappointment and say “Ugh.”? When you are going out for date night, are you asking your husband if he likes your outfit or are you asking if he thinks you look good in the outfit? Are you constantly on a diet or talking about the food you are eating or not eating? Is your exercise plan based on health or weight loss? And after you’ve had a chance to answer these questions…. think about this: how would your kids answer these questions about you?
(Before I get too far in to this, here's a note to my own mom: THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOU. We get our body image stuff from a lot of places. We're all just doing the best we can as moms, and I love you.)
It’s perfectly okay for us to care about what we eat and how we exercise, want to look nice in our clothes, and want our friends or husbands to think we look good. But the way we talk about those things models how our kids will talk about their own bodies. So, actions steps:
ACTION STEP 1
Reflect on how you talk about these things.
Try and stop yourself in the moment and think about the words you are using.
ACTION STEP 2
Try asking about your clothes rather than your body. Try talking about food that fuels your body rather than calories or fat intake. Try talking about exercise as being important for your mental health and not just weight-loss. Let your children see and hear you modeling your own positive body image. To take it one step farther – this goes for how you talk about other people’s bodies, too. Do your kids overhear you and your girlfriends talking about other people’s bodies? Even if you are positively talking about a friend who has recently started a new exercise plan or lost weight, your kids will still internalize the fact you were talking about other people’s bodies and start to put more emphasis on their own bodies (or what you think about their own bodies).
2) Y’all know I love to have "strategically spontaneous" discussions with my kids, right? I might rewind a commercial just so I can watch it with my kids and say “Oh yeah, watching this just now reminds me that we need to talk about…” (Never mind that I was searching for a commercial that would trigger that conversation and practiced that segue for a day!) So, let’s start using that strategy when talking about bodies.
Our culture has a tendency to only talk about our bodies in terms of weight and attractiveness. Our kids are bombarded with messages to be more attractive, or more fit. And even if we think our world is getting better at this, if we pay attention to advertising, or take a look at the magazine covers as we’re checking out at Target, we still notice the predominant message that being thin and pretty is what gets the world’s attention.
And at some point, our kids just naturally start noticing the differences between their bodies and their peers’ bodies. They start to notice that some people are developing faster than others, some people look different in clothes, etc. So it is impossible to shelter our kids from these kinds of messages about their body.
But if we pay attention to the fact that the majority of those messages are about weight and attractiveness, we can start to add to the dialogue by talking about our body’s purpose. Remember how we talk about what it means to raise a “sexually healthy” child? Part of being sexually healthy is knowing and understanding your body, and appreciating your body. We want to help our kids understand what their bodies are for and what they are not for.
So, one thing we can start doing is strategically and spontaneously start mentioning how strong our bodies are, or how smart our bodies are. We can send messages so our kids start to see their bodies as being tools, rather than objects for display. We want our kids to start recognizing that their bodies do some pretty cool things! When our kids play sports, we can mention how awesome it is that their body moves or bends the way it does, or that their body instinctively knows what to do or where to go, or that their body has been trained to do certain skills. When cooking dinner, we can talk about how amazing it is that our hands and arms have the control to carefully dice those tomatoes, and the strength and dexterity to do so safely. When our kids are falling asleep, we can talk about how amazing it is that our body knows that it is time to wind down, that our body is craving rest so that it can do all of the things it needs to do the next day. When we get our period, as much as we might want to curse it, we can also send our kids (boys and girls!) a simple message that it’s pretty cool our body is doing what it’s doing. It might feel gross at times, but it’s also sort of amazing. We can even be so specific with our body talk to spontaneously, but strategically, say “You know what I was just thinking? It’s amazing that our heart beats all by itself, without us having to tell it to do so. It keeps our whole body going and I don’t have to turn it on or tell it what to do. Our body just does some amazing things!”
And as long as we are being strategically spontaneous… don’t forget to use your child’s favorite TV shows as a way in to these conversations! When your daughter is watching her favorite show on Netflix, call attention to the characters you see who are exhibiting self-confidence. Say “You know what I love about that girl, she just seems to really know and understand herself. She’s so strong and I love that.” Or, ask your daughter who her favorite characters are and why… see if that gives you any insight into how she’s relating to these characters. Perhaps she is identifying with characters who are struggling with their own body image, or she’s identifying with characters who feel different than everyone else. These are great entry points for bigger conversations!
Final thought
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You don’t need to sit down and have a big conversation at dinner tonight about how the whole family needs to talk about their bodies differently. You can just start making some of these comments throughout the day. And when you regularly and consistently start using these kinds of phrases or start calling attention to the function and purpose of our bodies, our kids will pick up on the message that their body is more than what it looks like. And they will start appreciating their bodies in a different and healthy way.
While the rest of the world wants to talk to our kids about what their bodies look like, let’s start focusing on talking to our kids about what their body is doing. And let’s stop talking about what our own bodies look like. I know it’s hard, and it’s okay to care about what our bodies look like, but our kids already get enough of that from everywhere and everyone else. Who knows, in addition to helping our kids build healthier body images, maybe we’ll improve our own body image as well!
~ Dr. Heidi