Getting through to the 20-Year-Olds
My baby cousin, who I should not call my baby cousin because she is twenty years old and that is pretty much an adult, is just beautiful. She used to be a pretty little girl, but she has grown up into a spectacular woman–smart and funny and generous, but she also lucked out physically. She’s got gorgeous skin, gorgeous hair, a smile like a supernova and twice as dangerous. Like all the women in my family, she has what she considers a weight problem. She is normal-sized and perfect. But she thinks she is fat.
Of course she does. She is twenty years old, reads Cosmo, has listened to her mother go on for years about both of their bodies and what’s wrong with them. She thinks she is enormous and unattractive. She thinks she has to be on a diet.
No you’re not, no, you’re beautiful, no, you are so gorgeous, I tell her, but unsurprisingly, she’s not listening. She just texted me that she is “doing acacia berry,” which you drink every day and makes you lose weight. I have deleted half a dozen responses from the horrified and shouty to the carefully considered, all of which will make her either ignore me, or bristle up and stop talking to me, and I don’t want her to stop talking to me about it.
She is me, when I was her age. I was normal-sized and thought I was terrible and terribly wrong. I didn’t have anyone in the world I could talk to about it, because I was ashamed of being my size. I also didn’t have the links I just sent her, the resources that you guys created–How do I love myself, the followup, and ways to be a body positivity advocate. Information and encouragement I wish I had had when I was her age.
I want my baby cousin to grow up to be as strong and confident and proud a woman as she can possibly be, happy and perfectly at ease in her body, as best as she can, and I hope I just nudged her a few steps on her way.
Posted by jenfu
Filed under: Advocacy, Feminism, Health, Kids, Media, Personal
I hope your cousin learns to love herself for who she is! I’m glad that I’ve accepted who I am and learned what my good attributes are at such a young age. I wish every girl would do the same.
It’s funny how ready “beauty” magazines makes everyone feel ugly.
I sometimes wonder what it would have taken to get through to me at that age or younger. So much so that I sometimes think to myself, “What would I say to the 7-year-old me going on her first diet?” I don’t think that the love and self-acceptance idea would have gone over well. I wouldn’t have believed it.
What might have worked was a real intellectual exercise (I mean, not at 7, but later) showing that diets not only fail but also, in general, make people fatter in the long run. The other day I reread Sandy’s post on the Minnesota Starvation Study (http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html) and thought to myself how much I wish that I had known that before I embarked on years of soul- (and metabolism-)crushing dieting.
I guess in the end it comes down to getting at the acceptance from the practicality side: You’d better learn to love yourself and the body you’ve got–and take good care of it, if that’s important to you–because it’s the one you get. Anything you do to try radically change it is likely to result in not only frustration but also probably harm.
But, what is the definition of “normal-sized”?
I started believing in size acceptance when I was around 18, even though I had the occasional urge to diet and negative body thoughts. One of the things that has really stopped me from ever dieting again is learning the huge failure rate of diets and how many people gain back even more than their start weight. I decided I’ll just be healthy and not mess with my body. (I’m 22 now, just for referrence). I know this is similar to what Nicole said, I just thought I’d add my support to that method of convincing your cousin.
Oh my…
The only thing I’ve seen almost sorta get through to friends who feel that way is when I tell them how I look back at pictures of myself in high school, and think “How pretty I was! How skinny I was! And I thought I was a hideous huge horror! Someday I’ll look back at pictures of myself now and think the same thing. So dammit, I’m going to enjoy what I have now, and recognize the value that I have.” I think a lot of people can relate to that experience.
Might I suggest a book?
It’s called “Life doesn’t begin 5 pounds from now,” the author’s last name is Weiner (giggle!). This book truly changed how I see myself and how I think about my weight…it’s written almost like a cosmo quiz, but skips the “yay!” mentality of self-help books. It goes into the “language of fat” and makes the reader aware of their own views and prejudices, but in a really non-lecturing way.
Oh, I so hear you. That was me at 20 as well and it’s so sad to see others suffer the same way. She sounds so brainwashed… like I used to be – like many of us did.
At least you can say that you tried to plant the seeds of acceptance and sanity. Whether they take root or not is up to your cousin and maybe a bit of luck.
I can suggest a book as well. :) “Intuitive Eating”… you may be familiar with it. But, what I think it is more likely to speak to people on the verge of acceptance or toying with the idea, because it still puts a fairly large focus on nutrition and health…. rather than putting a huge focus on acceptance which scares many people away at first.
I’m wishing you and your cousin all the best.
If you want to be subtle, you can also start exposing her to beautiful fat images; take her to a museum or send her a poster of classic art to decorate her dorm. I’d also go with nuts and bolts info about dieting and HAES; particularly I’d find that study that showed girls who take up HAES are healthier and less likely to gain weight than girls who diet.
i really wish i had someone to talk to in my teens. Even internet connection was not all that common while i was growing up, so i was pretty much isolated… i’m 26 now and when i see older photos, i realise i wasn’t all that fat.. just a little on the chubbier side but everyone from my parents to cousins to friends would badger me with things like ‘you are so pretty, if only you were a little thin’…. and now i actually have a major weight problem, i really wish that i had someone to confide in and maybe my life choices might have been alot different
I also recommend the Intuitive Eating book!
If you figure this one out, please share! I have a sixteen year old daughter and believe me, battling the media, peer pressure, and all the other crap that tells women everyday how imperfect they are just sucks. I talk to my daughter about accepting yourself, about how people are built to be different sizes, about how every image you see (practically) is airbrushed and women don’t really “look like that” I try to set the best example I can of accepting myself and everything else, but still those insidious little thoughts sometimes get to her. I see her friends and nearly everyone of them has a distorted body image – and a couple have serious eating disorders. It’s heartbreaking at times. I tell myself that I have to just keep at it. I have to practice what I preach. I have to keep showing them examples of beautiful women in all sizes, shapes, colors, etc. I hope someday if we all keep at it, we’ll make it happen – just like a big ol’ glacier slowly carving the grand canyon!
Maybe, just maybe, coming to terms with your own body image is a HAES rite of passage. I’m having my own “Eureka” moments now at the age of 26.
It’s hard to watch loved ones suffer in the same ways that you did, but I’m with Jamie on the “rite of passage” possibility – this might all be part of the journey she has to go through to become strong and wise and reach these conclusions on her own. As much as we wish the young people in our lives could learn from our mistakes, they’re not any more likely to than we were at that age to learn from the much wiser and well-meaning adults in our lives. Unless she’s physically harming herself, intervening in her personal journey could ultimately do more harm than good. It’s just something she has to go through.
That being said, it’s no reason you can’t model healthy behavior and confidence for her and be a mentor in her life. You might buy her the latest issue of Real Simple – it has a fantastic article this month about how diets are useless and about learning how to listen to your body’s signals and feed it accordingly. After a few days of her berry juice fast she might be more inclined to heed its advice.
Personally I am a fan of the fake-clueless “OMG, guess what I just found out?!” approach – I know you can call me a sneaky bastard now, but I like to think that if you present facts such as “dieters usually end up fatter than before” in a way that makes the listener think you’re just as shocked as they would be, they are more likely to believe you. Of course that doesn’t work if they already know you as a size acceptance activist. ;)
Good on Ya! I am 28 and I wish I could say that I have fully accepted and love my body for what it is, but the truth is that I still have occasional moments of body panic despite the lust/adoration of a guy that is phenomenal. I hope your cousin can look in the mirror and see what other people see, at least 80% of the time:)
Everyone I knew at that age was insecure about something. I used to think I had a really weirdly shaped and ugly face as well as being fat – my body image was something like a little goblin. Completely bonkers.
What helped me first was a drawing class – to draw people accurately you have to look objectively and each individual quirk becomes beautiful after spending so much time getting it right. Then we drew a self portrait, and I realised that applied to me too.
The second thing was realising that if I judged my friend’s appearances as harshly as I judged my own, I’d be a complete bitch. Some of them were fatter then me, or with quirkier faces, yet I thought all of them attractive, valuable and deserving their partners, if they wanted them.
I realised I was being a hypocrite if I had such high standards of myself and no-one else. If I had such contempt for myself then deep down I must have contempt for them too – and it was best to let it all go. And if I haven’t been able to do it perfectly I’m still trying – and I shouldn’t castigate myself over that either.
The second thing was realising that if I judged my friend’s appearances as harshly as I judged my own, I’d be a complete bitch. Some of them were fatter then me, or with quirkier faces, yet I thought all of them attractive, valuable and deserving their partners, if they wanted them.