Posts Tagged ‘Fat Talk Free Week’

 I am the eldest of three children, the younger two being boys, making me the only girl. My father, however, raised us under the pretenses he had three sons. I didn’t take ballet lessons, I played soccer. It wasn’t that I was encouraged to be ‘un-girly’, it is just that when we were little, I was treated no differently than my brothers. Together, the three of us were suburban hoodlums. In my family there was never focus on me being pretty or looking a certain way….the focus was on how fast I could run or how hard I could kick a ball. 

Sports has been a part of my life since, well, ever. I’ve been sailing since I was neo-natal. My soccer career began when I was three. Sprinkle in some softball, volleyball, flag football, basketball, and yes, even cheerleading….I was a very active, very busy kid and teen.  My dad spent as much time as he could with me growing up, even though he traveled a lot for work and later started his own business. There is no point in trying to count the hours he spent teaching me to sail. He attended nearly all of my high school soccer games, and many of my jr high softball and volleyball games. He would show up for my basketball games even though I rarely left the bench. And for non-sport related activities, like band or choir recitals, he would compliment my outfit, but his advice was always on giving a good performance. 

My dad never treated me “girly”. He never had a tea party with me, never sat in my room and offer to hold one of my dolls while I tended to my ‘orphans’. He did, however, allow us to grab him out of the car as soon as he pulled into the driveway after work and drag him into the backyard to play baseball, soccer, ‘touch’ football, or our all-time favorite, Base Runner. When I punched my brothers or they punched me, there was no talk of  ’don’t hit girls’. We just got, “Don’t smack each other!”.  When our ‘touch’ football games led to full on tackles, my dad never told my brothers to take it easy on me because I was a girl. He would tell us to lead with the shoulder and tuck your chin. I was never once told to go inside to help prepare dinner. I was told to shake it off and get back in the huddle. I very quickly learned that it didn’t matter what I looked like, it mattered what I could do. And that I had better learn to hold my own. 

  My childhood and my playtime was focused on what the body could do: running, hopping, skipping, climbing, leaping, kicking, swinging, jumping, and swimming. 

My junior high and teen years were spent being very competitive in sports. I was never the best on any of my teams, but I sure worked my ass off in practice. 

The focus of my years growing up was not on how I looked, it was on what I could do. 

What a wonderful message to grow with as a girl. 

The girl who grows up unconcerned about how her body looks…. 

is free to be the girl who can focus on all the amazing things her body can do.

I realized yesterday that the women in my family have given me an incredible legacy. It is something I have always known, but not until yesterday did I really get it.  You see, I was doing a trunk show for Pigtail Pals (awesome empowering products for girls, go buy some!) at a local women’s expo. On my table I also had some postcards for the Fat Talk Free Week sponsored by Tri Delta sorority. Several women would pick it up and ask what it was about. I would explain what Fat Talk is, and why we as mothers needed to be careful what legacy we leave our daugthers.

And then they would cry.

Every single one of the women would tear up, and say, “Oh, that is beautiful,” and “Oh, thank you so much for what you do.”

I tried to give them examples of what Fat Talk is, and as I did so, I realized, I do not have one single memory of my mother, my aunts, my girl cousins, or my grandmothers ever participating in Fat Talk in front of me.

In fact, when I sit here and think back about what the women in my family did talk about, I recall topics like gardening, family heritage, hilarious stories about the men in our family, world events and politics, careers, education, books and movies, etc. But appearances? That was never the topic of conversation. If anything, I remember compliments given to each other on looking nice or wearing a color that was very flattering.

Not once did one of the women in my family berate their weight, their appearance, their beauty, their worth.

Not once. Not that I can ever remember. And that is the legacy of beauty the women in my family left for me.

There is an epidemic going around, not to be an alarmist or anything. But have you noticed how many women’s conversations are dominated by weight? This insane notion that our biggest issue in life and chief concern is the number on the scale or the number on the tag in our jeans. Really? I mean, really?

-70% of young women say they want to look like a character from TV. 69% of TV characters are underweight.

-Celebrity workouts average anywhere from 90 mintues to six hours.

-The average fashion model weighs 23% less than the average American woman. (20yrs ago this was only 8% less)

-54% of women would rather be hit by a truck than be fat. 67% of women would rather be mean or stupid than be fat.

-10 yrs ago we heard tricklings in elementary school of girls saying they are “on a diet” or “need to watch their carbs”. It has now trickled down into kindergarten.

-74% of women choose an ideal body shape that is 10-20% underweight

-90% of all women ages 15-64 (worldwide) would change one aspect of their physical appearance, body weight ranking the highest

-65% of women 15-64yo withdraw from life engaging activities due to feeling badly about their looks.

WHAT!?

WHAT?! Withdraw from life because your healthy, functioning, glorious body doesn’t fit the Beauty Myth ideals sold to us by the fashion and beauty industries?

Ladies, I ain’t buying it.

 COME ON, Girls! 

You’ll hear me say this a lot, but we are the MOST educated, MOST well traveled, MOST accomplished group of women to EVER have walked on this planet, and yet the majority of us spend our days dreaming of lipo and scheming ways to lose that next x number of pounds. Which is why I cannot say we are the ’most empowered’. We are chaining ourselves to the beauty myth, Ladies. We are giving permission to others, others we don’t even know, to tell us how to think about our bodies.

I say this very lovingly, but COME ON.

Dr. Robyn Silverman’s new book, “Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls And How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It” is excellent, and available here. You’ll be hearing more from Dr. Robyn about her new book next week!

Fat Talk Free Week, sponsored by Delta Delta Delta sorority, runs October 18th-22nd and is an international five day campaign to draw attention to the body image issues and the damaging impact of the ‘thin ideal’ on women. Find out more here. We’ll be sharing more with you about this during Fat Talk Free Week.

(our stats above came from TriDelts’s Reflections program.)