Tag Archive for: speaker

Body Image and Girls: 8 Ways to Help Our Daughters Thrive in a Thin-is-in World

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It was 1996, my Freshman year of college, when I came face-to-face with a truth that still follows me today- one unifying concern that almost all girls and women seem to share is that they want to change something about their bodies. I still remember when it happened, as it came as a surprise to me. One of my friends asked me if my thighs touched. This gifted young woman, with big brown eyes, a sharp brain and warm heart worried that how close her thighs were to the other cancelled out her talents, intelligence and overall value.

It stuck with me. I spoke to countless other women and teens along the way who felt similarly. Despite the strengths they had to offer, they felt that “looks” were more important than their other attributes.

In graduate school, I studies body image. In fact, I wrote a qualifying paper and my 167-page dissertation on the topic. As it turns out, even research tells us that despite all that women and girls have to offer this world, 96% of girls and women want to change something about their bodies.

I completed my book, Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession is Messing Up Our Girls & How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It, based on my dissertation work, in 2009 with my newborn baby girl, Tallie, strapped to my chest. The book was published in 2010. It’s 2018– and the issue is just as prevalent today as it was then. But of course, my own mothering love and worry for my now 9-year-old daughter and her beautiful friends, sheds a much more personal light to this prevalent problem.

So, how can we help our girls thrive? Read more

Confidence Comes from Experience

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Someone asked me how to help her child become more confident– especially give that she felt she lacks confidence too.

You can’t will yourself to be confident. There’s no trick. There’s no magic button. In order to become confident you need to do the thing that scares you. You need to look in the face of uncertainty and still keep going.

You need to be louder than doubt. Bigger than the barrier. Bolder than the fear.

Remember when you ??? You know that time when…??? Conjure up those experiences when you kicked insecurity aside and did what you had to do. You can do this. You can do this.

Yes you can. Just do the thing. When you do the thing that scares you, you realize, it’s not so tough. It’s not so bad. It’s not so scary. And along the way, you become better at the thing, don’t you? And becoming better at it often makes us feel more comfortable. Or at least you can say, “well, I’ve already done it once so I can do it again.”

So speak up. Stand up. Try the activity. Get up on stage. Have the conversation. Put yourself out there. Make the call. Plant your feet. Look them in the eye. Walk to the front of the room. Go for that run. Teeter, totter, slip, fall, fail and wipe out. Then get back up. Try again. Go for it. Your confidence depends on it.

xoxo-

The Hidden Message Nobody is Discussing: Sports Illustrated, Cheryl Tiegs and Ashley Graham

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cheryl-tiegs-si-cover-split-tease-today-160226_e6877114c73a7e752a8ccb6930d367f1-today-inline-largeA few days ago, social media was atwitter with comments about the new Sports Illustrated cover featuring plus-model Ashley Graham. Cheryl Tiegs, former SI swimsuit model had criticized the magazine for putting Ashley Graham on the cover. Tiegs, who is now 68 years old, said;

“I don’t like that we’re talking about full-figured women because it’s glamorizing them because your waist should be smaller than 35 (inches)…That’s what Dr. Oz said, and I’m sticking to it. No, I don’t think it’s healthy. Her face is beautiful. Beautiful. But I don’t think it’s healthy in the long run.”

People took sides. Some agreed, while others applauded Sports Illustrated and underscored that health can come in many sizes. But as the media storm showcased the groups that either supported or disputed Cheryl’s words, an unsaid truth laid buried beneath the surface. It was on my professional Facebook page, where we, too, were discussing the new Sports Illustrated model,  that this truth was beautifully stated by a long term personal friend of mine—and I’d like to share it with you:

“I feel like we’re missing the point. In allowing ourselves to get roped into a discussion about which women’s bodies are “healthy” enough to appear mostly naked in a magazine, we are perpetuating the institutionalisation of our own objectification and ensuring that it continues for our daughters’ generation. The fact that the field is widening so that a greater variety of women “get” to be photographed wet and on all fours is not something to celebrate. The day something as archaic as a “swimsuit issue” ceases to exist will be something to celebrate.” (S. Lang)

Yes. ^ THIS. ^

When I’m presenting to audiences on the ten media messages girls receive about themselves each day, objectification and sexualization are two of the most alarming problems that often lead people in the audience to call out in frustration. How is this still possible that women are looked at in the way—and, in fact, in cases such as this swimsuit issue, we argue and tweet and yell so that more women get to be treated in this manner?

Of course we a wider definition of “beautiful.” We want more size acceptance, less criticism, more breaking through glass ceilings and less marginalization. But is this argument—who is hot enough, thin enough, beautiful enough, healthy enough to be photographed wet and on all fours on the cover of Sports Illustrated—a magazine that typically celebrates athletes—the way to do it?

Perhaps this is the real conversation we are meant to have on social media. What do YOU think?