Strollerderby

Starving Daughters: Size Shouldn’t Matter

Posted by on June 10th, 2007 at 11:42 am

Perfect Girls Starving Daughters Courney MartinSize shouldn’t matter. Get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about what size clothes you wear. It shouldn’t matter and it shouldn’t bother us, but if you are like me – it does. And is does because there are books with titles like “Size 12 Isn’t Fat”. Now I completely agree with that statement, depending on your height and body frame. I look good in a 12, but the book title alone suggests that other people think a size 12 is fat and so I should feel bad about myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to look like Nicole Richie or Kate Moss. I think they look kind of gross, but I sure wouldn’t mind looking like the model they kept referring to as “big” on Project Runway. Anyway, I don’t think I am alone. Women my age (and older and younger) are obsessed with weight. In fact, I know I am not alone. Jane Gordon wrote a whole article about it. Courtney Martin wrote a whole book about it.

The book is called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. I haven’t read it  – yet, but that is only because I hadn’t ever heard of it until yesterday. In the book Martin talks about how to teach our daughters to have better body images than we (their mothers) have. We need to feel better about ourselves so that we can teach our daughters by example.

I will lead by example so that my daughter never feels like she has to starve herself or throw up after every meal. For me that is even a better motivator to exercise and eat right than wanting to be thin anyway.

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