talking about bodies, body-image and more...

I really love this post from This Woman's Work where the author talks to her daughter and friends about being round, body-image, health and more... Check it out.Recently Madison had two friends over and they were chit-chatting away over tea and she said something (I didn’t catch it) about me being fat and one of her friends was horrified because she knows fat is supposed to be an insult.Thank you for your post, and what a gift you gave that little girl who now has a safe place and a safe grown-up who is sending her another kind of message about body-image...The other day, M was watching some horrible cartoon from the 80's on Netflix (no commercials at least...) and the evil guy is the only fat one and someone was telling him he had to get in shape and lose some weight. I talked to M about how silly it was, that you can have different body shapes and be healthy. I didn't go into the whole spiel about dieting, but I know I will likely have to soon. I told her that she will hear things about bodies and weight and silly stuff about diets and she should talk to me if she has any questions. She said, "Yeah, 'cus grown-ups are always right, right Mom?" This broke my heart, because I know that grown-ups she trusts and looks up to, like teachers and family probably, will talk about "obesity" and being "fat" and how horrible it is and how you can not be fat if you just stop eating junk food or diet, and she will believe them (see essay excerpts from grade-schoolers,) and I'll have to work really hard to be an example and to talk.