- Fueled by diet culture, I spent decades dealing with disordered eating.
- I'm raising my children to be body positive but a comment from my daughter reminded me of my shame.
In the summer of 1987, I was 7 years old. My friend and I sat on the community-pool deck, dangling our feet into the water and counting down the minutes until the adult swim ended so we could resume our underwater handstand contests.
My friend looked down at her legs and then looked at mine. She poked at my body, giggled, and declared, "Fat thighs." I was actually a thin little kid who just happened to be bigger than her. Regardless of my size, this was the first time I can recall anyone talking about my body. I had never really given it a lot of thought before this comment, but it marked a shift and started me down a road of body struggles that would continue for decades.
Of course, other factors played a role. Being a teenager in the 1990s — an era when diet culture thrived and body-shaming was the norm in pop culture — didn't do my body image any favors. As a competitive equestrian in those days, being fat was pretty much a cardinal sin. As a result, I was hell-bent on staying thin. While working at "People" magazine in my 20s, I continued to be critical of my body. For months at a time, I'd subsist on a highly restrictive, low-calorie diet and work out twice daily. Thinness was a prize and I was determined to win.
Despite my parenting, my daughter internalized negative body standards
Fast-forward to 2019: I was a mom to two little girls, ages 3 and 6, and I had discovered the body-acceptance movement, Health at Every Size, and the practice of intuitive eating. Over the next few years, I would put a lot of work into healing my body-image issues and disordered eating.
I never wanted my daughters to feel about their own bodies the way I did about mine or to be focused on trying to change their bodies to fit a cultural standard. I'm raising them to understand that bodies come in all shapes and sizes and that their weight and appearance have nothing to do with their worth.
One day, while out grocery shopping with my 6-year-old, a great song played in the store. I did a little shimmy and was met with a horrified expression on my kid's face. I figured I'd embarrassed her by dancing in public — a rite of passage as a mom. But this was something more.
"Mommy," she said, eyes wide. "Something is jiggling."
My knee-jerk reaction was to feel ashamed and embarrassed. I'd done so much work on my body image to this point, and it was something I was mostly able to keep in the background. A jarring comment like this one made me hyper-focused on my appearance for a moment. But this was also one of those teachable moments as a parent and I wanted to capitalize on it.
"There's nothing wrong with jiggling!" I told her. She shrugged and we moved on, but I couldn't help wondering where this idea had come from, since I'd always been so careful not to speak negatively about my body in front of her. I decided to table the conversation with her until I had more information.
Back home, I did some research, which suggested that even preschool children are internalizing our culture's message that thin is good and fat is bad. My second grader had long since been indoctrinated into society's anti-fat bias.
I was inspired to write a book about body positivity
This research inspired me to begin having conversations about body acceptance and anti-fat bias with both of my daughters and write my first picture book, "B Is for Bellies: A Celebration of Every Body." I think we're starting the conversation about body acceptance with children too late. I wondered what would happen if kids grew up thinking that all bodies are good bodies, just as they are.
When I got the idea for the book, I jotted down a couple of mantras:
J is for jiggle, bodies bounce when they move. When you're dancing, parts wiggle. Get into the groove!
M is for muscles, like those in your thighs. They're for power and shape, whatever their size.
Twenty-four more little poems followed, one for each letter of the alphabet. I wanted to cover all the ways humans can be different that kids often home in on: race, ethnicity, ability, and gender expression. My hope was to subtly remind young readers — and the adults reading aloud to them — that all bodies deserve respect and that we are more than just our bodies.
Since "B Is for Bellies" went on sale in July, I've received some truly fulfilling feedback. Parents tell me their kids want to read it over and over, and that it sparks conversations about body-positive thinking. I've even met teary-eyed adults at my readings who say how much they wished they had this book as a child but are thrilled to have it now.
Thanks to this book's wonderful illustrator, I hope children will see themselves on our pages.
So when kids today hear a comment about their thighs, skin color, or the fact that they are differently abled, I hope they'll think back on the mantras in this book. Maybe, by planting those body positivity seeds early on, our kids will grow into people who celebrate themselves — exactly as they are.