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Kids and the City

Self-esteem and Seattle’s Girls: What Can We (as moms) Do?

By Carrie ⋅ December 2, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

“Does my butt look fat in these jeans?” She asks as she looks at herself in the mirrored closet doors. She turns her body to see as much of her backside as she can and is faced with an uneasy feeling of dread. She’s proud of the fact that she can fit into these boot-cut, Gap, size 8s after giving birth to two children, but still, not good enough.
She takes the jeans off, lovingly folds them, and places them on the highest shelf of her closet, vowing one day to lose enough weight to wear them comfortably and feel good about it.
In high school, I weighed no more than 110 pounds, at my heaviest.  I am 5′6″.  I was so tiny that the small-waisted jeans with the zippers on the legs (come on, we allhad them!) were way too short because, in theory, they were proportioned for a girl at least 4 inches shorter than me.  Although at the time, you could have called me a “waif” and I would not have believed you.  I would have pulled my International News sweatshirt lower to cover my “fat ass” and turned in the other direction, glancing at my Swatch watch, walking as fast as my unlaced Keds could take me.
Oh yes, I was that girl.
Not much has changed since then, besides my weight.  I’ve gone up and I’ve gone down.  I’ve rested comfortably in between.  But never, ever have I ever looked in the mirror - even after fitting into size 8’s after squeezing a nearly 10 pound baby from my nether regions, and been happy  with what I saw. 
Never.

I’ve never had an identifiable eating disorder, although I’ve wished for one on many occasion. I even considered just how much weight I could lose if I did, wondering if you can catch an eating disorder from watching too much Project Runway or the new 90210 as I took another bite of Chunky Monkey.  If I’m lucky enough to catch a stomach virus that my kids have brought home from school, my first thought is not “I hope I get over this soon,” it is “I wonder how much weight I can lose from getting sick?”

Houston, we have a problem.

My story is typical.  I am not unlike most of the female population in that I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable in my skin.  The only moments when I praise my size are in retrospect, when I look at my image in photographs that are many years old and I wonder why it was that I thought I was so horribly overweight?  I know this about myself and that is why I so desperately want to avoid passing this on to my children, especially my daughter.

Seattle-area girls are not immune to the national epidemic of not loving their bodies either.  According to  “Real Girls, Real Pressure:  A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem:”

  • Two thirds of girls (67%) in Seattle believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with friends and family members
  • 62% of teen girls in Seattle reported engaging in negative activities, such as disordered eating, cutting, bullying,smoking, or drinking, when feeling badly about themselves
  • The self-esteem tipping point happens during the transition to teenage years, resulting in loss of trust and communication with adults
  • Parents’ words and actions play a pivotal role in fostering positive self-esteem in girls:  The top wish among girls in Seattle is for their parents to communicate better with them, which includes more frequent and more open conversations, as well as discussions about what is happening in their own lives.

There you have it.  Now, what do we do about it?  For the past several years, I’ve seen the commercials, I’ve seen the ads in magazines, and read about the amazing, empowering and important work of the Dove Self-Esteem Project and The Campaign for Real Beauty.  Thankfully, this group has been gaining momentum, doing outreach for girls all over the country and conducting self-esteem workshops for women nation wide (there is one coming up December 16th, in Seattle, click here for a link to more details).

They’ve released yet another eye-opening video about the state of our girls - remember the one about beauty?  Take a peek by clicking HERE - it will take you to the videos.  There are four, including the one where the model morphs from a regular woman into a print ad.  Please watch the video titled “Onslaught.”

We can’t control the media, even though we can influence it if we try hard enough.  We can control how we communicate with our daughters.  We can be better role models and show them how to love themselves, their bodies, no matter what their size.  We can encourage them to be healthy, strong and beautiful all at the same time.  Educating ourselves, attending workshops, and communicating, with the help of companies like Dove, I really believe our daughters will be in a much better place than we ever were.

Carrie can be found most days at Stop Screaming I’m Driving where she chronicles her life as mother to three active children, wife of one busy fire fighter, constant doer of laundry, and picker upper of Legos.  She takes offers of free babysitting and bribes of lattes (vanilla, extra foam) very seriously.  Feel free to reach her at carrieb[at]seattlemomblogs[dot]com.

Head on over to Stop Screaming I’m Driving to enter for a chance to win Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters:  How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women, by Courtney E. Martin.

 

 

* cross - posted at Stop Screaming I’m Driving 

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Discussion

One comment for “Self-esteem and Seattle’s Girls: What Can We (as moms) Do?”

  1. Excellent blog. You are right this is a serious problem and one I think about often as I am raising my own daughter. Open communication is so powerful, talking to our daughters about the images we see, and not only our daughters but our sons, our husbands, our friends, our family. Voicing the problem takes away the control it can have. I think also simple things like sitting with our children while they watch tv or choosing to not watch it at all, being healthy instead of dieting, addressing our own insecurities and getting help, celebrating who we are and who they are, and also not avoiding the topic of what is beautiful inside and out.

    Posted by Laura | December 3, 2008, 2:54 pm

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