7 / 6 / 2023

Dear Friends,

We spent a long weekend on a lake in Idaho this past weekend. The kids had a ball, jumping in and out of the freezing cold water, running along the dock, kayaking, etc. At one point, a woman – maybe in her late 60s, early 70s – felt obliged to say my older daughter “Are you a swimmer? Because you have a swimmer’s body, long and lean. I used to have that type of body when I was a swimmer, but not anymore obviously.”

My daughter politely laughed it off, simply saying “It’s not my favorite sport, but I like swimming” and jumped into the lake once more, with her sister by her side.

Watching this exchange, I was fuming. Why do adults feel so emboldened, entitled, even compelled to comment on girls’ bodies? There are a million other things she could have said to my daughter – “I love seeing your joy when you jump in the water!”, “You’re a fantastic swimmer!”, or “Wow, you’re fearless jumping into freezing cold water like that!”

But no, instead, she chose to comment on her body.

Please stop. Words matter. My daughter has a beautiful, strong, athletic body. She does not, nor will she probably ever, have a problem being overweight. But comments like this teach her that her value is in the way her body looks. Implying if and/or when her body changes in some way, that her worth will be called into question. This is what society does to our girls. Even with well-intentioned compliments.

It also tells my other daughter – to whom no comment was said – that there is something ‘lacking’ in her appearance. Omissions speak volumes too. So when a man comments on the hot girl walking down the beach with her friends, his daughter is not only hearing what he’s saying about that girl, she’s also observing that he’s not commenting on the friends with her.

And lastly, when adults speak disparagingly about their own bodies, they are subconsciously teaching our girls that as bodies change with age, they become ‘bad’. Instead of marveling at what these bodies have experienced and accomplished, the focus on what they now look like. Ugh.

Sadly this is nothing new, we’ve all been doing it for so long, most of us don’t even realize it anymore. But when we comment and criticize ourselves, our kids are listening. When we observe (aloud) about others, we are creating questions and comparisons for them. We’ve heard it all before, that all bodies are different, but that cliché that ends in “so love the one you’re in” can be tremendously difficult for kids to hear when they are so often getting the exact opposite message thrown at them by all insecure, unthinking, sheep-like adults around them.

I should have more compassion for these adults – sadly all of us (men and women) were socialized in the same environment, so the cycle perpetuates itself. But it really needs to stop. We can do better than this. We must.