“I’m so fat!”

This blog post quotes from and uses pictures from a great article found here.  Thank you, beautyredefined.net, I appreciate what you’re trying to do!

“I’m so fat!”

Definitely not something I wanted to hear from my nine year old daughter. For one thing, she most definitely is NOT fat, not by my standards anyway, so what she said is totally not true and, as a rule, I don’t want her believing things that aren’t true.

Also. It was clear from the self-depreciating tone in her voice that she thought being fat was something to hate about herself — so again, there’s that pesky true vs. false issue coming into play.

I would whine right back here, saying, “I have no idea where she learned this,” because it isn’t something I have ever had a problem with
— in fact, I’m on the other end of the spectrum entirely.  If anything I’ve been whining lately about needing to gain weight… so… yeah.  —
but none of us are really surprised, are we?  Where could a nine-year-old girl in America pick up on that fat-phobic, skinny-worshiping ideology?

Hm.

Has she ever gone to the mall, or shopping for clothes anywhere?  Seen the sick, sick cover of magazines at our local grocery store? (There are some things I do miss, Utah…) Or how about Disney Princess movies?

‘nuf said.

Two problems, then: going down.  

Problem One: She’s thinking “Oh no! I’m fat!” just because she HAS some fat somewhere.

Problem Two: She’s thinking that her worth as a person is based on her body shape.

Okay. My role as her mother is not to try to somehow convince her she isn’t fat – although I certainly would prefer she look in the mirror and see what’s really there!  I definitely want to nip this one in the bud.

My role as her mother is to love her and teach her to love herself & God — and just in case you need a reminder, “being skinny” is not a prereq for being lovable.  Any newborn could tell you that!

Well, actually, they can’t really tell you.  But only because they can’t talk.  If they could, I betcha all of them would agree with me here.  They like soft, squishy, round mommies to snuggle into.  

The “OK!” magazine disagrees with me, apparently, but what do they know? I bet Kourtney Kardashian’s baby loved his mommy with her post-partum-pouch, and hopefully grew nice and plump himself because his mommy had some loving he could nurse off. Is it totally backward of me to have no idea who she is?  Hm.  Great pictures anyway, thanks again BeautyRedefined.

What’s a mom to do?

Pray, then think.

I wanted to reveal the wicked ol’ adversary here for what he really is and what is really going on in our unhealthy, skinny-worshiping society.  Even the camera on my phone came with a “beauty” setting built in.  No, really, it did.

Plain Jane normal selfie:

I want my daughter to be free to love herself and her peers and her mother and her mothers friends and people in general, regardless of appearances.

Selfie with the camera using the “beauty” setting:

Good bye freckles, hello plastic-skin!

 I want her to be happy

– in her own skin, being female with fat, freckles, stretch-marks and wrinkles included.

I know that without being proactive in pointing out the “man behind the curtain” on this one, it won’t matter how much I want it – The world will teach her otherwise.

In 15 short years she could easily end up pinning “100 ways to lose weight without even trying” and (photoshopped) pictures of people who do nothing but work out – – and dislike herself if she doesn’t look like that.

But speaking of pinterest, that’s actually where I turned.

I went and dug up that one pin I saw way back when about photoshopping and the media… where was it again?… oh yes, here it is, thank you, mommacrocodile, I love your board…

No, I didn’t have her read the article; she’s only nine.  She doesn’t need to.  The pictures were worth 1,000 words anyway.

I had her squinch her innocent little eyes shut while I scrolled down, found the right picture, and covered up the “skinny,” photoshopped half. We looked at the model or celebrity in their un-photoshopped glory;

I even made a point to give a shout out to those hips/thighs and the thick torso, too.  Take a good look at her womanly figure, kid – or what’s left of it after starving herself to get that thin.

Then I revealed the more photoshopped, magazine-cover or ad look.

She could easily see, in that context, how bizarre it was.  How abnormal.  How… yick.  Weird. Then I’d have her close her eyes and we’d do it again, all down that article.

I loved telling her about Kelly Clarkson.
Not because I’m a Kelly fan.  American Idol is… well, not the point of this post, clearly!…

But I loved some of her quotes.  We read those together while I once again hid the magazine cover from her view.  We talked about how self-assured she was and how awesome it is that she could feel that way about herself even with all the pressure from people in the music industry.

“When people talk about my weight, I’m like, ‘You seem to have a problem with it; I don’t. I’m fine!’ I’ve never felt uncomfortable on the red carpet or anything.” I mean, wow!  If she can really feel that way… Good for her, and I mean it.  I know women who don’t feel that way about simply going to church or the grocery store, so yeah.  Rock on, sister!  You go girl!

Then the punchline.  I was excited for this one.  It’s my favorite.

So.  What do you think?

My first thought was, Wow.  That’s beautiful.  Everything about this picture draws your eyes up to her flawless, airbrushed face, with the natural-looking makeup & hair job that probably took a professional at least on hour, probably more like two.

The nine year old, though, saw right through it.  Did you?

“She could be a little bigger, actually,” said the girl who yesterday complained about being “fat.”

HA!  Thattagirl!  My brilliant, beautiful daughter.  I love her so much.

“Exactly,” I agreed and explained, “With shoulders that wide, she really should have bigger hips & thighs, and tummy too.  It’s probably been photo-shopped that way.”

Mission: Accomplished

Well, okay.  Mission: BEGUN, is more like it.  This battle won’t ever be over, will it sisters.  It’s hard to be in the world but not of it.

We had only looked at a few of these real life vs. pop-culture horrors and she could tell something was off, even with that one.  She knew.  She’s seen women every day of her life.  Real women.  The kind with or without makeup.

She’s seen her beautiful grandmothers and aunties.  She’s seen teachers at school and church, her friends’ mommies, and the other beautiful women in this beautiful world in which she lives. She could tell that real women aren’t shaped like that.

But that ad was made after Ralph Lauren had enough moxie to reportedly say,

“After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.”

Boy, I’m glad they’re taking precautions now because the ad they put together before said quote… wow… It’s… yeah.  You’ll just have to see for yourself.

Before I showed it to my daughter I had to preface the great unveiling with saying, “This really is the same model, k… Brace yourself…” You should have seen her reaction.  It was classic.

“Blech!” she cried,

“That’s so gross!  It doesn’t even look like a real person!  It looks like… animation!  You know that style where they have great big heads and teeny tiny bodies?  She looks like…. like a manikin with a real person’s head!” Exactly what I was going for.  Can you see it now, too?  Are we really supposed to achieve THAT kind of figure before we are worthy of love?  I sure hope not, because people who really do have that figure are not modeling – they’re in hospitals.  Or they should be. Or they’re starving in 3rd world countries.

Besides, your worth is not determined by what you look like.

You’d think that being “pretty” is all there is to life, the way so many of us fall in to the trap of wanting to fit that impossible mold.

Sheesh. How shallow can we be?

Speaking of the super-skinny, though, this brave woman fits that mold and is overcoming severe trials: Lizzie Velasquez has a rare syndrome that keeps her body from storing fats.  So there you go.  Proof positive, being skinny is not always what it’s cracked up to be.
When I feel the need to whine about needing another 10 pounds, I shall look her up again.  What is it with this rotten world and whining, anyway?  Geeze.
If you want to be inspired about how to take a trial and turn it into something powerfully good, go read her story.

I loved her reply to a question about how she remained so positive through difficult circumstances.  Her secret, she said, when she got down about something was to simply find a bright side.

“Okay, this is something bad, BUT, this <other thing> is something good.”

Thank you, Lizzie, for creating something wonderful out of a difficult situation.

Makes me feel pretty immature for complaining about my little trials – how ’bout you?

Reminds me of another modern hero I’m sure you’ve heard of, Stephanie Nielson, whose life was transformed by a tragic accident, but who is now another testament that you can find faith, hope, love and even joy as you follow the Lord in faith -no matter what you look like- and that furthermore,  your worth is not determined by what’s on your outsides.

That’s the point of all this writing here. Truly, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Can we teach to our daughters what we don’t believe ourselves? I don’t think so.  They’ll see right through us.

So, to my daughter and her lovely little friends,
Love your fat,  kids; don’t hate it.  You’re young.  You have a LOT of growing to do and you need that fat.  It’s healthy.

To my own peers, 

You can love yourself, too!  Sure, shed some of it if you have too much fat. Exercise and eat well, with gratitude for the miraculous blessing that is your physical body, but do it  because you want to be healthy – not because you “need” to be skinny.

If your daughters see you whining about having to buy pants a size bigger, they’ll whine about it, too, even if they’re moving from 3T to 4T.  

Loving yourself allows for self-improvement – but not self-depreciation.

And then there’s the “Cartoon” setting selfie.  Fun times.  

My favorite is still the Plain Jane normal one.

Tagged as: body image