Challenges to Being a Mother
Spending much of my on & off work hours helping parents raise children in a body conscious world, I was heartened to read Peggy Orenstein’s article, The Fat Trap, in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. She uses herself as a fine example of how important it is for mothers, in particular, to acknowledge their own body image issues and restrain themselves from giving out loud expression to them for the sake of our children.
Mothers are often shocked to learn that their self-denigration targeting their own body’s weight and size filters down to their daughters, sending them indirect messaging about the need to be anxious about their own body. When adults limit on our own negative self-talk, we limit how much negative referencing will flow to our daughters, nieces and cousins. When we enforce a commitment to eating “as though I didn’t live via a diet mentality,” we then model normal, healthy eating patterns for our kids.
These are the best inoculators for protecting our children from the onslaught of media messaging that encourages them to constantly compare themselves to others with a conclusion of not measuring up. We know that the result is being at risk to turn against our bodies and ourselves. Read on……..
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18fob-wwln-t.html?emc=eta1
excerpt from the article:
“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.”
By the time my own daughter was born, I realized that avoiding conversations about food, health and body image would be impossible: what I didn’t say would speak as loudly as anything I did. So rather than opt out, I decided to actively model something different, something saner. I’ve tried to forget all I once knew about calories, carbs, fat and protein; I haven’t stepped on a scale in seven years. At dinner I pointedly enjoy what I eat, whether it’s steamed broccoli or pecan pie. I don’t fetishize food or indulge in foodieism. I exercise because it feels good, and I never, ever talk about weight. Honestly? It feels entirely unnatural, this studied unconcern, and it forces me to be more vigilant than ever about what goes in and what comes out of my mouth. Maybe my daughter senses that, but this conscious antidiet is the best I can do.
Still, my daughter lives in the world. She watches Disney movies. She plays with Barbies. So although I was saddened, I was hardly surprised one day when, at 6 years old, she looked at me, frowned and said, “Mama, don’t get f-a-t, O.K.?”
At least, I thought, she didn’t hear it from me.”
Here’s another article about a mother who is creating a documentary as a way of coping with grief from her daughter’s death at 18 from bulimia:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/fashion/22Melissa.html?emc=eta1
the film’s producer — Judy Avrin, Melissa’s mother, who decided to make a documentary about her daughter’s life and, ultimately, her death.
People deal with grief in their own ways, and those who have been spared the loss of a daughter or a son can only imagine how they would choose to try to cope. For Ms. Avrin, coping meant confronting her anguish and trying to make something good come out of i
The film, called “Someday Melissa” and now in the editing stages, has become for Ms. Avrin salve, distraction and cause — a way to get the word out to other families grappling with eating disorders that they are not alone; to sound the alarm that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness; to help make sense of the senseless event that was losing her teenage daughter.