For now, I’m wanting to add a bit more to the problem young girls face when they become more aware of their adolescent bodies and their own sexuality. Soon enough, I’d like to see how boys are given their due as well in the mass media since they are affected by images of the bulging pecs, the washboard abs, the broad shoulders, yadda yadda yadda. But at this moment, this article last year on cnn.com reminded us why we still need to talk about it:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/03/15/BK.girls.body.image/index.html
What I found refreshing was the idea to provide an antidote to our young girls’ delusions on what is sexy and what isn’t……and the antidote provided in the article was to have a strong father or male role model that recognizes the girls strengths that had nothing to do with how she looked in a swimsuit. What I didn’t like was that girls will notice that yet another adult is ignoring her body and how it looks, and that the girl will continue to look for beauty standards somewhere else.
Moms are very guilty of this, too. It’s something I’ve noticed in the mindsets of how to deal with the problem of teenaged girls and body image – and it amounts to swinging the pendulum wildly in the opposite direction where the body is never even discussed, and if it is, a girl is inundated with platitudes of how Hollywood stars and Barbie dolls are ruining body image every day. This does nothing but leave body image in the abstract, and a young girl is still trying to discover exactly how she is beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong proponent of pointing out a girl’s strength in her mind, in her spirit, and in her goals and achievements. However, we simply can’t brush aside letting her know how beautiful she looks because we are afraid of pressuring her into worrying about her looks. Trust me, the girl is already worried about her looks. She’s also worried about how smart she is, how if she has friends to have fun with and who like her, how her parents get along, and on and on. Yes, we parents are totally neurotic with how we appear either too harsh or too overprotective…..but the answer isn’t to “refocus” our rhetoric into giving our daughters recognition in one area and not another.
She will read into it well, and realize that she’s STILL not considered a whole person in the eyes of her mentors. She’s a brain and an achiever, but she’s not beautiful. And that potentially can be just as devastating.
My daughter is turning 10 in less than a week, and she is starting to see how her hormones are leading her into the dawn of womanhood. Right now, we’re just seeing the twilight just before the sun begins to peek through, but she has recently become a little modest about her body. A few months ago, after helping her shop for her first bra, she was walking around the house with her arms wrapped around her chest. I asked her why she was doing that, and she said that she didn’t want anybody looking at her breasts. I didn’t panic, but said what came naturally to me as a Sacred Whore:
“I don’t know why, sweetheart. I think they’re beautiful. And they’re just as beautiful as everything else about you – your elbows, your eyes, and that really smart brain you have. So go ahead and be proud of them.”
Her tension was gone after I said that, and she was in a better mood. I haven’t seen her worry about her breasts since. But I guess we’ll see if in 10 years she’s sitting on a therapists couch relaying how I ruined her life with a comment that made her feel pressured to have beautiful breasts. LOL
You know - it’s just as silly trying to categorize a woman and a girl by a singular component in her brain as it is in a singular body part. Nice rack? Nice ass? Nice teeth? Or nice career? Works with a team well? Scores high on aptitude tests? Jeez………when can we just say that she is beautiful – simply because she is confident and true to herself?
In my mind, there is nothing more attractive than a strong, confident woman who flaunts her stuff AND speaks her mind. Not either/or….but both. She mesmerizes with her eyes AND doesn’t shy away from giving her opinion. This is what I want to introduce to young girls, and that is beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, and that it first comes from her own discerning eye. I want to introduce to young girls and teens to pay NO attention to what others say – her peers, TV ads, or test scores. Look in the mirror and decide how you’re physically beautiful and a bombshell, then show it without hesitation. Look in the mirror and decide how you’re amazingly intelligent, and then show it without hesitation. Look in the mirror and decide how you’re gifted and skilled, and then show it without hesitation. Truthfully, I’d prefer to say that there is no time like the present to give a young girl the opportunity to discover every single part of her that is magnificent – and on her own terms and nobody else’s.
To this day, one of my favorite quotes is by Marianne Williamson, and I’ll let her do the talking from here on out today:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”