For the Shape of Mother(s) and our daughters

The Shape of Mother blog (connected to the amazing website looking, I mean really looking at the way society engages with the bodies of those who gave birth to us) has asked bloggers to submit an article on children and body issues.


Television, myself and my daughter

The best thing that I have ever done for my bodily self-esteem was giving up reading magazines and watching television. Even though I am constantly bombarded with the bigger than life billboards of air brushed beauty and gym advertisements in the mail, I barely notice them anymore. I truely don't care that one of my boobs is bigger than the other or that I have more stretchmarks than Mid-Atlantic Ridge. I just don't care! Really.

This is pretty remarkable considering that my mother was a model and I struggled with an eating disorder and compulsive exercising for most of my teenage and young adult years.

I didn't stop watching television in order to become comfortable in my own skin. No, I wanted to reclaim time. At first, it was difficult because there were times when I was lonely for an adult voice or for an escape from the doldrums of washing dishes but my husband was adamant that something transformational was happening to him. He felt freer but he didn't clarify exactly how.
Years later when I hardly missed television at all, I realized that I was no longer hung up on the cellulite at the backs of my legs. How did that happen? At the beach I noticed that practically everyone had cellulite or freckles or rolls or stretch marks or liver spots or wrinkles or whatever. All these bodies were as beautiful and imperfect as mature trees. They showed the signs of living. Some showed the signs of an act of creation so commonplace and yet so important: motherhood.

And then I made the connection, I wasn't getting my daily dose of carefully dressed and photographed bodies. I had become freer.

Which brings me to my eldest daughter. She loves both dresses and vicious dinosaurs, the colour purple and telescopes. She wants to be beautiful but knows that we don't use the 'p' (princess) word in our house. It is not because I am no fun but because I recognize the market connection between princesses and the beauty industry. Girls want to be powerful and of course 'beautiful'. We all want to be powerful through our beauty. It is impossible to be beautiful enough so we are powerless.

I explain that I don't want her female role models to be women who are simply admired because of their family connections and their beauty. Now I know the marketers have tried to make princesses more sassy but notice how they are still gorgeous while doing their clever acts.

But there is more. My daughter is beautiful...

... at least according to this time and place.

I would never have imagined having a little girl with waist long stawberry blond hair and clear blue eyes. It's bizarre. Small groups of people wander around after her trying to determine the exact colour of her hair. Older girls tell their mothers that they want hair like hers. Grandmothers proclaim her a good child because she is so lovely.

So despite the fact that she has never watched 'television,' does not know that fashion magazines exist and has a mother who doesn't put on her face in the morning, she knows that one of the things that is valuable about her is that other people think she is beautiful.

What will happen when someone threatens it with a careless comment. What happens when they tell her to suck in her stomach? How do I fortify her against the casual cruelty of a world that has told her that she is beautiful and that this is more powerful than her ability to read or her interest in T-rex.

I have no answers only hope?

Eldest reading the book 'red is best'.