My 17-month-old daughter, Vivi, loves my belly. Several times a day, she toddles over, tugs my shirt up until my bare, decidedly non-washboard stomach is exposed, and plunges both hands into it. She beams as she kneads the soft, pliant dough that is my mama stomach and babbles sweet nothings into my bellybutton. No matter what my mood, Vivi’s belly ritual always makes me laugh and serves as a blatant reminder to just get over myself when it comes to my fear and loathing of my tummy. Note to self: Savor every minute of the belly bumping while it lasts. Because before I know it, Vivi’s sheer exuberance over her body and mine may soon go the way of Size 3 Pampers Cruisers and crocheted baby booties.
The feelings of negative body image and self-loathing that have long been part and parcel of normal teenage angst is now claiming increasingly younger girl victims. Girl Power!, a public education campaign from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reports that 70 percent of sixth grade girls surveyed said that they first became concerned about weight between the ages of 9 and 11. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders estimates that of the 7 million women in the United States currently suffer from an eating disorder, 33 percent develop the onset of the disorder between ages 11 and 15, and 10 percent at age 10 or younger.
“I do think this awareness of body image begins very young, even before elementary school,” says Andrea Vazzana, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and a specialist in eating disorders and weight management. “Studies have shown that by age 5, girls have begun to be dissatisfied with their bodies or to notice things like thinness.”
Courtney E. Martin, whose 2007 book, “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body,” chronicles the epidemic of eating disorders in today’s society, has spoken with parents about this trend. “In speaking with parenting organizations and some non-profits, I’ve encountered a lot of mothers who have told me, ‘My daughter is 6 and just asked me if she looks fat,’” she says. “It’s so deeply ingrained in our society that by the age of 4 or 5, kids are already using the word ‘fat’ and are already aware that it’s a negative thing.”
New York City mothers confirm this early body awareness with their own elementary school-aged daughters. “The first time I heard my daughter say anything about her own body that wasn’t complimentary was when she was 7,” says Jessica, a SoHo mom of Ava, now 9 years old. “She said that a friend told her she was fat.” “A year or so ago, my daughter said that she was fat,” says Susannah, who lives in Battery Park City and is mother to Grace, age 9. “It came out of the blue to me, and I was not able to find out what prompted it. Grace was very upset about it.”
Cynthia, a mother of three girls, ages 13, 11, and 8, who used to live in Manhattan and now lives on Long Island, thinks that her two older daughters first became aware of body image in the fifth grade. “They started noticing their bodies were changing. They just became more concerned about how they looked,” she remembers. She goes on to describe how one of her oldest daughter’s closest friends was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa in the fifth grade. “Her mom told me that once she learned how to read a label, she just went through everything in the house and was not eating anything with fat in it,” she says. “She was in the hospital. She almost died.”
Seven-year-olds worrying that they’re fat? Fifth-graders being hospitalized for starving themselves? What is causing younger and younger girls to become so wrapped up in negative ideas about their own little bodies? As most experts will agree, the reasons are a complicated tangle of biological, psychological, and social components, but one thing is for certain: Mothers play an inescapably significant role in how their daughters feel about their bodies.
“Mothers who tend to be dissatisfied with their own bodies and speak to that, especially in front of their children, whether it has to do with feeling like their pants are too tight or feeling like their stomach isn’t as taut as it ought to be…children pick up on that,” says Vazzana.
“You can’t get away from mothers,” agrees Martin. “It’s what every young woman I interviewed eventually went back to, even if she started somewhere else. There’s always a mother at the center of each story. That’s not always a negative thing. There were a lot of inspiring mothers too, but clearly mothers play the biggest role.”
Stephanie Klein, author of the new book, “Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp,” who started seeing a “fat doctor” at age 8 and attended “fat camp” for five consecutive summers beginning when she was 13, describes her “trim, fit, and active” mother as “look[ing] at herself in the mirror with disgust…and putting herself down constantly.”
Says SoHo mom Jessica, “I can talk for two hours with my daughter about food, but then if I say that I’m only going to have salad for lunch because I want to lose weight, she’s going to do that. I’ve seen how my daughter mimics me in ways that I never anticipated.”
Fathers, too, play an incredibly important role in how their daughters view themselves, but are often overlooked. “Fathers are a daughter’s first modeling of what to expect from men,” says Martin. “If a little girl who’s observing the world and figuring out gender roles and how everything works sees a father criticizing a mother’s body, the message is loud and clear that men are going to evaluate you based on your physicality and that attraction is based on thinness.”
Klein’s father was even more direct. “My father would puff out his cheeks at the dinner table if I’d lean in for seconds and say, ‘Nobody likes the fat girl,’” she recalls.
Just as young girls cannot help but be influenced by their parents, they cannot escape the pervasiveness of the media. “Cultural standards for beauty are definitely played out in the media,” says Vazzana. “Airbrushing has a huge impact on children’s body dissatisfaction, especially as America is becoming more obese. The ideal body is becoming thinner through technology and through all the different ways they can tweak an actual picture in magazines and on billboards.”
“There is absolutely a dearth of the media showcasing very talented, curvy, imperfect-bodied women,” says Klein. “If you just look at a mannequin in a store, that fact that the clothes need to be pinned on because even a size 0 on the mannequin doesn’t fit, that sends a signal to our girls.”
But Martin, while acknowledging that the media is influential, is more skeptical of its impact. “Mothers in particular are so much more comfortable at pointing at the media as the culprit rather than healing their own relationships with their own bodies,” she says. “It’s an easy thing for us to externalize the causes and not deal with our own role in them.”
So what are parents to do? How can we monitor our own messages about body image that we directly and indirectly send to our daughters, as well as engage them in healthy dialogues to ensure that they grow up empowered, strong, and bursting with self-confidence and acceptance for their own bodies? First and foremost, parents should focus on the non-physical, encouraging their daughters’ interests and nurturing their strengths. “The emphasis should be on moving in ways that make you feel happy, which is something little girls really understand,” says Martin. “Their intuition is to move around and have fun and let their bodies do things that feel good which, unfortunately, the rest of us have totally gotten away from into these hyper-regimented exercise plans.”
Klein, who has 17-month-old boy-and-girl twins, says, “Instead of focusing at a young age on my eating habits, I think my parents should have been directing me to put more of my attention and energy into exploring my talents. Emphasizing the good qualities that [a daughter] has is key, too, as is doing activities that bring out her strengths so that she realizes that her self-worth is not only about her looks. Health is important, but if a child is focused on achieving goals, she’s going to think less about the way they look.”
Vazzana stresses the importance of talking to daughters about how people come in different body sizes and have value aside from their weight. “Sure, a person might be overweight,” she says. “But they’re also very generous and very thoughtful. Talk about the positive parts of a person, and try to deemphasize the weight.”
The other thing that parents can do is to set their daughters on a course of healthy eating. “Things like not skipping meals is really important,” says Vazzana. “Having family dinners together in which there’s a balanced meal is something that can be encouraged. Really try to focus more on the nutrients rather than the calories.”
Right now the only conversation about food I’m doing with Vivi is to gently scold her for upending her bowl of spaghetti with bright red, stainable marinara sauce over her head—a walk in the park compared to what we’ll both face together not too far down the road.
“Hiiiiiii, babyyyyyyyy,” Vivi squeals very time she happens to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, so delighted and surprised is she to have found such an amiable and adorable companion in herself. I think I’m going to try that next time.
Looking Good!
Resources to help kids with body image problems
• Dads and Daughters: An education and advocacy group that promotes strong, positive relationships between daughters and their fathers as a means of helping girls improve their self-esteem (dadsanddaughters.org).
• Girls Inc.: A national nonprofit youth organization dedicated to inspiring girls to be strong, smart, and bold while preparing them to lead successful and fulfilling lives (girlsinc.org).
• Girl Power!: A national public education campaign sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help encourage and motivate 9- to 13-year-old girls make the most of their lives (girlshealth.gov).
• “Full of Ourselves: Advancing Girl Power, Health, and Leadership,” co-authored by Catherine Steiner-Adair, Ed.D., and Lisa Sjostrom, Ed.M.: A program promoting healthy body image and self-esteem and the prevention of eating disorders for girls in grades 3-8 (catherinesteineradair.com/full-of-ourselves.php).
