Fall 2013 in The Feminist Psychologist
Weighed Down
by Jill A. Kuhn, Ph.D.
My oldest will be 14 when this column comes out. I have worked to shield both my daughters from the world around them that focuses on unrealistic beauty ideals and emphasizes lifelong dieting. Hopefully this has helped create a buffer zone that gives them room to critically evaluate the media messages and peer pressure they regularly encounter. For starters, my oldest is familiar with the Dove Evolution* makeover video and campaign and has never heard me say anything negative about my weight or body. Our focus has been on growing, activity via sports or outdoors play, the normalizing of everyone’s body being on a different time clock as it reaches towards adulthood and having its own shape, which is part of our unique beauty. I also emphasize inner beauty and characteristics of love, passion, loyalty, speaking one’s truth, and helping those who don’t have a voice and more.
We have one scale in our house and it rarely comes out of the cupboard. Usually it is used to weigh our luggage before a trip. Several years ago I saw on Facebook that someone had written some thoughts on their scale and I borrowed (if someone knows who wrote these, I’d be happy to give them credit) some of theirs and added my own. At the top of the scale I wrote, “It’s just a number….REALLY.”
Below it I wrote,
The number on this scale will not tell you:
*What a great person you really are.
*How much your friends and family love you.
*That you are kind, smart, funny and amazing in ways numbers can’t define.
*Your own self-worth
And…
**You don’t have to get on the scale.
Advertisements for scales, directed at women, show the weight number hovering somewhere around 120, 115, or 122. We are in essence told that is the weight we should be striving for. Why don’t we see a scale ad for women that registers, 145, 170, etc.,? And more importantly do we really need weight scales in our homes?
Starting with my first pregnancy in 1998, I started asking nurses NOT to tell me my weight anymore. I asked them to let me know if I was gaining too much or not enough, but I didn’t want to know the number. Shortly after my second and last pregnancy in 2004, I started to tell nurses, when they directed me to the scale, that I was skipping that part…waving my hand away at the magical device that somehow captures one’s health with one simple number. I knew a “high” number would stress me out, and I would lie in bed calculating how long it would take to get to the “right” number. I think women should have this right, especially since society focuses on such a small range of acceptable weight for women. I was exercising, weight lifting and eating well, and blood work showed more indicators that I was healthy.
When I take my children to pediatric appointments I have always celebrated the weight they are at with “wow, you are growing.” Same goes for height. My 14 year old is in her “gazelle stage.” She is lithe with long legs. Prior to her growth spurt of over five inches in height in the last 18-months, with no change in her weight, her pediatrician was ready to “counsel” her on her weight “problem.” I had read an article around this time that stated, “woe is the child who sees their pediatrician before they grow taller.” My daughter was not “fat” or “chubby,” but her body did what it has always done, gathered some weight to support a height spurt. When we arrived for this appointment I covertly handed my child’s nurse a note that said, “please do not discuss my daughter’s weight in front of her.” A few minutes later, the pediatrician called me into another room to discuss my daughter’s weight with me. In spite of the fact that my daughter has never had a weight problem, the pediatrician failed to look at the bigger picture, the numerous data points of healthy weight, and that my daughter was clearly entering puberty. Instead, she told me that my daughter was at risk for diabetes, heart attack and the list went on. She told me we should make an appointment for another day and she would counsel my daughter on her weight. She said she did this with other girls in early puberty and most would cry. She said this as if this was some cathartic breakthrough rather than realizing that she was saying words that were hurtful and unnecessary and would forever stay with these girls and replay in their heads. I doubt most of them had weight issues, rather they were simply going through puberty in their own way, out of their control. Of course I understand that there are children who consistently weigh in at an “obese range” (although there is a lot of debate as to how the medical community is calculating these parameters, including the BMI). I never took my daughter back in for “counseling” on her weight and at her next visit she had already grown several inches which took her out of the “problematic zone.” Had she had her physical six months later no one would have given her weight a second thought. Luckily my daughter was oblivious to all of this and never saw herself as having a weight issue.
Is it not enough that they young girls see unrealistic beauty and weight ideals daily in the media, magazines, and social networking sites? That their peers discuss dieting and brag about being a size zero? That they also don’t eat treats or carbs and talk about not liking the feeling of feeling full when they eat or point out all the imagined areas of fat? When my daughter wore her first bikini this summer a close friend said, “no more cookies.” She didn’t say it to be mean. It was part of the internalization of societal messages of what girls must do to look acceptable to others, especially to men. I was relieved when my daughter laughed it off and thought it silly. It breaks my heart that as a society we are doing this to our girls and have been doing so for decades. We don’t need to add their pediatrician’s office as yet another place where they are being unfairly and inaccurately evaluated. Shaming a child never results in weight loss. Obviously the child or teen’s overall weight/height/activity history should be taken into account before overreactions are made. Regardless, we have heightened the anxiety of our girls (and boys) by what seems to be an overreaching by mostly well meaning physicians and healthcare providers to put children on diets and single handedly fix the increase in overall weight our society exhibits (a topic for another time). It’s also true that girls and women’s bodies change throughout their life. Positive discussions about healthy eating, outdoor activity and unplugging from electronics work much better than adding to the damaging messages our girls already receive from society. Parents can lead by example as can schools. Let’s encourage our girls to love their bodies and self-agency, to use their bodies to hike, climb, and dance and see its functionality. This includes a brain to think about their dreams and future, to empower them to have a voice and stand up for themselves and others. That to me is beautiful!
Jill can be reached at kuhngale@earthlink.net