Yet another reason to be glad I will never be a mother, of girls or otherwise
From today's "Ask Amy" column, which I read in the Philly Inquirer, but is carried in plenty of other papers:
Dear Amy: I am the nanny of two 10-year-old girls this summer, and I am concerned with comments they have made about their looks.
Both are normal-size, healthy girls with regular bodies, but I have heard them say how fat they think they are at least five or six times. One time one girl complained about her "big belly," and the other said, "I need to work out soooo bad. I'm so fat."
Amy, these girls are 10!
After they say these things, I always tell them that they aren't fat, that they are a healthy size and beautiful girls.
I am wondering if this is the proper way to handle this, or what I could possibly do to make these girls believe that they are healthy and not fat.
I do not want them to suffer the same self-esteem issues so many women (including myself) face.
- Wondering in Illinois
Dear Wondering: You are right to be concerned, and you are responding just as you should. You can help further by exposing them to positive girl role models, rather than the stick-insect pop tarts and cultural "icons" in vogue.
If your summer charges haven't yet started the Harry Potter books, now would be a good time to read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998, Scholastic) with them. The Hermione character is one that any 10-year-old girl should emulate. On TV lately, I'm enjoying Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide on Nickelodeon. The character Moze is a girl who is tough, savvy and funny.
Girls should be encouraged to be smart and creative problem-solvers, not miniature workout queens.
Obviously, let a parent know what you're observing. Unfortunately, the girls might be re-creating talk they hear at home. You would be doing these young girls a service to let them know that the content of their character is always going to be the most important thing to you. They're watching and learning from you.
Honest to God, you could not pay me any amount of money to be the mother of a girl. Clothing companies trying to sell you string bikinis for your 18-month-old. Ten-year-olds who talk about going on a diet.* Ads selling chips in one commercial and selling low-cut jeans in another, without telling girls you can't have unending quantities of both. "It's just oral, it's not sex." Makes me want to hide under the bed just thinking about it.
*Disclosure: I first signed up for Weight Watchers with my mom in the spring of 1985, which would have made me 13. I seem to recall actually being overweight for my age at the time though.