Childhood obesity is a topic I keep coming back to and a topic discussed exhaustively in all forms of media right now. And while some lip service is also given to the super skinny skeletor models and the eating disorder other end of the spectrum, the obesity epidemic is still the most talked about problem. And yes lots of kids are too fat and lazy and eat junk and watch too much TV/play too many video games/never put down their cell phones, but what about the flip side? Especially for girls the message that they aren’t skinny enough is often the strongest and while it’s coming from magazines and TV and all that in a big way, for many girls being critical of your appearance is something they learn at home.
Peggy Orenstein pointed it out in her article in the New York Times magazine recently— while middle class and affluent parents obsess over organic healthy foods especially for their children, there’s also a strong possibility that they are giving them horrible body image issues at the same time. She uses the president and first lady’s public remarks about their daughters’ weights as an example. But it’s not the same for sons, like most things appearance related this seems to be the territory of girls only.
“Daughters understand that early: according to a study of preschool girls published in the journal Pediatrics in 2001, those whose mothers expressed “higher concern” over their daughters’ weights not only reported more negative body images than their peers but also perceived themselves as less smart and less physically capable (paternal “concern” was associated only with the latter). The effect was independent of the child’s actual size.
A 2003 analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, meanwhile, showed that mothers were three times as likely to notice excess weight in daughters than in sons, even though the boys were more likely to be large. That gave me pause. It is so easy for the concern with “health,” however legitimate, to justify a focus on girls’ appearances. For organic-eating, right-living parents whose girls are merely on the fleshy side of average, “health” may also mask a discomfort with how a less-than-perfect daughter reflects on them. “ ‘Good’ parents today are expected to have normal-weight kids,” says Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of the book “The Body Project” and a professor of history and human development at Cornell University. “Having a fat girl is a failure.”
Orenstein’s first solution was to opt out completely and have her husband be responsible for feeding their daughter, which isn’t a solution really—while mothers may pass their negative body image on, fathers and men in general aren’t outside of blame. There’s no question that there’s a huge beauty double standard, but an even bigger fat double standard. Unless a guy gets really big, a few extra pounds here and there are not even blink-worthy on men, let alone cause for most women to reject them. But over and over you hear the “no fat chicks” mentality coming even from fat dudes, helped none by the reinforcement that hot ladies go for slubby guys.
Sidebar: My (15 year old) Little Sister keeps telling me that boys tell her that she must be having sex (she’s not) because she’s gained weight. Where did this flawed biology lesson come from, is this kind of teasing something kids have been doing for a while?
And another thing: Everyone needs to stop with this whole “cougar” and “MILTF” trend; 50 year old women should look 50 not 20, it’s just creepy.
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