Body Image

Here’s looking at you, kid

You stand in front of the mirror and see only your faults. And so that is what your daughter learns to do too. How do you hand on a good body image, when you hate your own muffin top. Author and mother SINÉAD MORIARTY finds out.

When First Lady Michelle Obama kicked off her campaign to eliminate childhood obesity, she admitted to putting her daughters on a diet when they had put on weight. There was uproar. She was accused of potentially harming her girls by making them paranoid about putting on a few pounds and giving them a negative body image.

The reaction was so strong and so passionate that it made me wonder if it was, in fact, driven by fear. Mothers worry all the time about their own weight, so it’s natural that we worry about our children’s weight and especially that of our daughters. One recent study showed that mums are three times more likely to notice excess weight in their daughters than in their sons.

“In today’s society, ‘good’ parents are expected to have normal weight kids,” says Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of history and human development at Cornell University. “Having a fat daughter is a failure.”

We all want the best for our daughters and we know how cruel other children can be. You want your child to fit in, be one of the gang, not be laughed at or mocked for being fat. But, how do you instil a positive body image in your daughter if you’ve never had a particularly good one yourself?

Let’s be honest here, how many of us look in the mirror and think, Wow? We look in the mirror and all we see are flaws. Being self-critical is in our DNA. Most of us at some time or another have asked, “Do I look fat in this?” But this seemingly innocent question can be damaging to our daughters – no one wants to pass on their insecurities.

I’m lucky in that my mother had a very healthy relationship with food, but I have many friends whose mothers’ were constantly on fad diets or used food as an emotional crutch. Their mothers’ dysfunctional eating affected them, some of them very badly. I have one friend whose mother put her on a diet aged eleven because she was “too chubby”. Five years later this girl weighed five stone and ended up in hospital being fed by a tube. Weight has always been and continues to be an emotional mine-field.

According to new research from beauty brand Dove, it’s a subject mothers are having trouble talking about with their daughters. The survey revealed that while 98 per cent of mums believe it’s important to talk freely about body image, in reality, over ten per cent find it easier to talk about drugs and boys. Forty-two per cent of girls say they believe their mothers are uncomfortable discussing appearance with them, while 65 per cent of nine to sixteen-year-old girls say they hide their feelings about their appearance from their mums.

But the messages teenage girls are being bombarded with about food and their bodies are very confusing. They need help understanding and resisting the pressures and media images to develop strong body images and we mums need to be on hand to advise them.

I recently heard a friend’s teenage daughter say, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. We live in a culture where thinner means better, happier, successful, more glamorous. Size zero is the holy grail. Plastic surgery is faster, cheaper and more accessible. You can get Botox or a lip enhancement on your lunch break. How can we make our daughters realise that beauty is not all about appearance?

Author and psychotherapist Susie Orbach says,  “In today’s image-obsessed society, girls have a very different relationship with, and attitude to, their body than their mothers did when they were growing up. It’s hard for mums to understand the enormity of the cultural shift that has taken place, where girls grow up under inordinate pressure to be ‘perfect’. However, it is clear how crucial mothers are in influencing their daughter’s feelings about beauty and body image, and how mothers want to play a role in influencing their daughters positively without passing on their own insecurities.”

Eighteen months ago I had a baby girl, after two sons. What joy. What excitement. Pink in the house. Dolls, pretty clothes, socks with frills on them, bonnets. Initially, I was in seventh heaven. I knew exactly what to do with a girl. I knew what toys to buy, songs to sing, games to play. She’d grow up and we’d go shopping together and go for coffees and be the best of friends.

But the happiness gave way to an overwhelming sense of fear. What if I messed her up? Boys are simple – you feed them, bring them to the park to burn off their endless energy and tell them they’re great. But girls are different. They’re sensitive and prickly and very, very emotional. If you say the wrong thing to a girl you could scar her for life. What if I made some flippant remark about my weight and my little girl became paranoid about hers? Recent research has found that girls as young as six think they are “fat”, so it seems that we need to start protecting our daughters from day one. How do we do that?

Susie Orbach has some advice for mothers, “Go through old photo albums together looking at pictures of yourself when you were her age. Celebrate your physical similarities and give her a positive image of them. Avoid dropping casual negative comments about your own body. Instead, try to talk about the positive things about your body. Make it a habit to talk about people’s attributes other than their looks. This will identify the values you hold rather than those in the media.”

But how do we censor what we say all the time? It’s not realistic to think you can go through 20 years without commenting on your fat bum or wobbly thighs at some point with your daughter present.

“In an ideal world, mothers should avoid all comments about weight,” says Ruth ní Eidhin, communications officer at Bodywhys, the Eating Disorder Association of Ireland, “but we know that’s not realistic. So we encourage mothers to try to moderate what they say. If you see your daughter looking at you when you comment on your weight, talk to her about it. Communication is key, talk to your children about body diversity and the ways bodies change over time with age.”

As I began to wonder how to gag myself for the next 17 years, ní Eidhin explains that the majority of girls suffering from eating disorders are affected by other outside issues. “It is very rare that a child will develop an eating disorder based solely on media images or the fact that her or his mother grumbled that she looked fat in her jeans,” she says. I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

I know that over the next two decades, no matter how careful I try to be, I am bound to make many negative comments about my “muffin top” in front of my daughter. It is reassuring to learn that the odd throwaway remarks won’t give her an eating disorder, but it is sobering to know that I must watch my tongue and make sure I tell my baby girl how beautiful she is no matter what size or shape she turns out to be. I want her to grow up thinking she’s as perfect as I do when I look down at her sleeping in her cot – so small, so fragile, so innocent and vulnerable. I want to do everything in my power to make sure she has a happy life, full of love and laughter. Not one that is ruled by weighing scales and silly diets.