Every month I sit with a group of ladies and discuss the book of the month and, mostly, our lives. We eat chocolate and drink a little wine and sort through all the things that have happened to us in the stretch between the last meeting and this one.
At the most recent meeting, we found ourselves talking about beauty and body image (because we’re women, and this is a big deal to women).
One of my friends is an elementary school teacher. Something disturbing had recently happened at her school. Some first-grade girls were playing on the playground and, because they all took gymnastics, they decided to start a gymnastics club. Another little girl, who did not take gymnastics, wanted to be in their club, too. When she asked permission, however, one of the gymnasts (who is only six or seven, keep in mind) told her, “You have to be skinny to be in the gymnastics club.”
She didn’t say this in a mean way or a judgmental way or a meant-to-be-hurtful way. She said it matter-of-factly, repeating something she’d likely been told or something she’d overheard.
So the other little girl, who was not allowed entry into this playground gymnastics club, went home and asked her mom, who is thin, if her mom could help her be thinner. This little girl is not fat. She’s simply rounder, as many six- and seven-year-olds who have not yet grown into their bodies are. Her mom took the problem to the school, trying to figure out why her daughter, who was way too young to be aware of body image, had come home asking how she could make herself thinner.
The little girls don’t know any better. But the adults in their lives do.
And we should be doing better.
Do you know what a little girl hears when she is six years old and can’t be in some stupid club because she’s not thin enough? She will hear for the rest of her life that she is not thin enough to be in some ridiculous exclusive club.
I know. I was once that little girl.
See, when I was six years old, my parents didn’t have a whole lot of money. But they scrimped up enough to put me in a ballet class—at least before they divorced and my dad was gone. I was a tall girl, awkward—big-boned, my mother called me. When I look back at the pictures of me as a child, I was not a fat little girl, but I was built a little larger than others.
After I had been taking ballet lessons for a couple of months, my mom and the ballet instructor had a quiet talk, during which (I was listening in the doorway, as I had learned to do if I ever wanted to hear important things) the instructor, who had a French accent if my memory is correct, told my mother that I was probably going to be too “large” for ballet and my mom shouldn’t waste her money. She said it matter-of-factly, as though there was no room for argument.
Now. I understand that there are certain body types that will do well with the rigors demanded by ballet, and there are certain body types that make the mechanics of gymnastics easier. But if we are urging our six-year-olds to concern themselves with being thinner just so they can achieve that body type and somehow have some kind of leg up on all the others, then we’re going about it all wrong (fortunately, my mother never took me back to that class, though the words stuck with me for a very long time).
Girls that young should not even be aware of their bodies and what’s wrong with them. We have plenty of time for that awakening later (and the world will make sure we experience The Awakening). Girls that young should be playing out on school playgrounds, enjoying the company of other “gymnasts” in their gymnastics club or twirling around like the “ballerina” they imagine themselves to be, without looking at their bodies and thinking they need to change them.
I know coaches want to win. I know instructors want what is best for their students, and oftentimes what is best is gently pushing those students out of whatever lessons they’re taking, because they’re just not cut out for it. But using the body as a way to push them out? That’s not acceptable.
I’m not saying that every coach is obsessed with winning. Not every coach would tell a little girl she is too fat or too tall or too slow or too whatever to succeed in her sport. Many coaches are loving, supportive mentors to our little girls, and that’s a really amazing thing (thank you, supportive coaches). But until we can say that all of them are, we’ve got a problem on our hands.
I went through my high school, college, and young adult years starving myself, still trying to prove that I was thin enough to be beautiful, thin enough to be a successful journalist, thin enough to be a good dancer, thin enough to be graceful, thin enough to be accepted, and, sure, it wasn’t all because of that ballet instructor, but the early memories of someone commenting negatively on a girl’s body have a way of sinking down deep and festering there. So when we tell our six-year-old girls that they don’t have a thin enough body to do (blank), what we’re doing is handing them a ticket straight to eating disorder hell. Or body hatred hell. Or body dysmorphia hell. Or whatever it becomes in the life of that little girl. It manifests in many different ways. Anxiety, obsession, depression. Those, too.
Stop telling little girls they’re not thin enough.
Stop exalting this ridiculous idea that there is only one body type that is beautiful. Stop ruining girls’ perceptions of themselves. Stop making our little girls hyper-aware of their bodies before they’re even able to properly spell the word “bodies.”
I don’t have a little girl. I don’t get to assure her that she’s beautiful just the way she was made. I don’t get to tell her that she is perfect in every way. I don’t get to explain that, yeah, it’s good to make healthy choices and do good things for our bodies, but it’s never okay to starve ourselves to fit a certain prototype that is applauded above all the others.
But I have nieces. And I will tell them every chance I get:
You are beautiful just the way you are.
You are more than your body. So much more.
Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something just because of the way you look. You are brave and creative and kind and strong and loved and good enough.
Because these are the things I wish someone had told me.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
