Below is an email I just received from a good friend of mine. Having two daughters and currently obsessed with losing my baby weight, it somewhat jolted me back to reality and I will be far more careful about comments I make about my own quest to fit into normal jeans again...
“The essence of our findings are that while there are many factors that help determine how a girl feels about herself when she looks in the mirror - everything from the media to peer pressure to perfect body messages - there is one indisputable fact: mothers matter the most to a daughter's developing sense of her body and herself. A mother needs to take a good look at herself and her own ideas about body image because, as her daughter's primary female role model, everything she says and does is absorbed into her daughter's female DNA. Even if she has a different body type, if she's adopted or her parents are of different races, her mother is the main influence on her ability to develop a positive connection to her body. A mother needs to realize that when she is worrying about her three-year-old's chubby thighs, her daughter is hearing her and in ten short years those thighs will become her daughter's her main obsession."
This is from a book I have, “You Have to Say I'm Pretty, You're My Mother" by Stephanie Pierson and Phyllis Cohen.
Here is a link to an article they wrote that may be of interest to you: http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/body/youhaveto.html
Love, K
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I couldn't agree more. I spent a year talking to mothers, daughters and experts -- and reflecting on my own body image legacy (the one I got from my mom, as well as the one I'm creating for my own 13-year-old daughter)-- while writing my book, "You'd Be So Pretty If.."
ReplyDeleteMoms matter...a lot.
If you want your daughter to feel good about her body, the best thing you can do is speak positively about your own and treat it well.