Many years ago I happened to see an episode of Oprah that was about eating disorders in young teenage girls. Oprah interviewed a beautiful young girl (probably around 15 years old) about her problem. She just knew that she was ugly and was desperate to feel beautiful. Oprah said, “But you are beautiful!” She really was. However, that exchange I watched all those years ago really bothered me and still does. Everyone around this girl was trying to convince her that she already was beautiful and didn’t need to destroy her body with eating disorders. I know that they weren’t trying to imply “if you weren’t so pretty you might be justified in being bulimic,” but they kind of did. Even worse than that though, is that whenever we’re trying to reassure an insecure girl, or to fortify a little girl against ever being insecure the only weapon in our arsenal always seems to be to tell them how beautiful they are. What if when that 15 year old girl looked in the mirror and said to her mother/sister/friend/counselor, “I’m not pretty” they said, “So.” ?
What if Mothers stopped saying things like “these pants make me look HUGE.” or “Please don’t take my picture, I hate pictures of myself when I’m this fat.” or “enjoy being young and skinny while you can."? It’d be great if we could stop saying those things all together, but what if we at least stopped saying them in front of our kids, especially daughters?
What if we didn’t tolerate anyone talking about how “hot” certain women/girls are and the specifics of what makes them that way and conversely how “ugly” others are and why?
What if we banned plastic surgery and natural enhancement ads and billboards?
What of instead of telling our kids, “What really matters is what’s on the inside” and then contradicting ourselves by putting unreasonable amounts of time and energy and money into what’s on the outside -- instead we insisted that we all dress appropriately, modestly, allowing for attractiveness and personal style but beyond that just really didn’t make a fuss about appearance?
What if, as members of the Church, we didn’t use our doctrines regarding being healthy and to “…be ye therefore perfect…” as justifications to be obsessed with looking perfect?
What if being pretty or skinny were just some of many adjectives not nearly as desirable as being called kind, gracious, intelligent, creative etc.?
What do you think?
5 comments:
I think Amen amen amen!!!! I think I want to go march in a parade for your (and my) cause and give my next born to you. seriously, incredibly moving and incredibly true! This makes me want to be so much better at this especially for my kids.
Wow, Ange. I'm with Eliza! What wonderful wisdom, expressed so beautifully and movingly. Your girls will be very blessed by it, and hopefully your boys will internalize it as well.
I love your thoughts. I want to hire graffiti artists to write "love yourself" across all of the plastic surgery billboards and there are a lot of them. What you wrote is a reminder to me also to be more careful around my daughters and to let them know what is really important.
LOVE this! I'm a believer that it's impossible to be the best person you can be (and who God intends you to be) if you're self-disparaging. It's hard not to fall into that trap, but I get so very sad when I hear friends talk about their wacky diets and their plastic surgeries (a new thing when I moved here), and their time spent at the tanning and hair salons and spas. I KNOW it will affect their daughters (and sons) negatively, and hate that I'm not surprised when I find out that yet another girl in Young Women's with me has a eating disorder, or is seeking attention in the wrong way from the young men around them. It has to stop!
I totally agree. I've really had to stress around our house what a terrible word "fat" is. L, when just 7, started asking if she was. It was so hard to hear, especially after seeing people I care so much about suffer with eating disorders, to the point of near death. I've tried so hard to stress "healthy" (eating good, and being active) as the adjective we want to use. I've really worked hard to lead by example and have had to correct some of the language used by friends/sis's on this topic saying that we don't obsess with our weight, or ever use the "fat" word or anything else that implies it or even talk about the need to loose weight in the presence of my daughters.
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