Kamikaze Blogging: A Topic Handed to Me on a Silver Platter

        After three months of hiding out in the blogosphere virtually unnoticed, I begged and pleaded some other bloggers to help me get to 500.  You know that old saying ‘Be careful what you wish for’?  Well, I got my 500 and more! I couldn’t be happier!  As a ploy to sucker everyone in, I promised that my 500th liker would be able to choose my next blog topic.  Monique is the proud winner of no cash and I’m not sure if she’ll like her prize, but here is the topic she chose as her ‘soapbox issue of the morning’...

     “My 6 year old thinks she's fat because she has a normal pooch of baby fat she gets before a growth spurt *grrrrrr society*”

     Why do I say she handed me this on a silver platter?  Two reasons: I have an almost 6 year old who is obsessed with the mirror, and I also struggle minute by minute with my own body issues.  I think most women do.  It’s how we are wired.  So how do we go about raising daughters who are confident, self-assured and completely kick-ass when most of us look in the mirror every day and see nothing but our flaws?

     I do not know, nor have ever met a single woman who is completely satisfied with every part of her body.  For me, my butt’s too big, my tummy’s too flabby and covered in stretch marks, I have dark circles under my eyes and my legs are too short.  Here’s the thing though... I look great in heels, my eyes are a beautiful shade of cornflower blue, when I smile the circles disappear and no man has ever complained about my curves.  I can also sing, write, am a good photographer and take in strays to a fault.  See what I just did there?  That works on paper (or in a motivational blog) but it’s considerably harder in practice.  Which brings me to my point...

     I think our little girls think they aren’t perfect because they see and hear mommy rant about her *insert horrible flaw here*.  They learn from example.  Though some of us are very careful to never let our daughters hear our own negativity, others aren’t.  Worse, other mothers are like my mother and tell their daughters how fat they are.  Then those little girls go to school and tell other little girls how fat they are and here we have our vicious cycle.  

     How do we stop it?  How do we protect our beautiful daughters?  How do we raise them to be completely and supremely bad-ass?  Hell if I know.  I struggle with it every day, but I have a few ideas...

• Stop the negativity!  Don’t let your daughter hear you call yourself *too* anything.  Ever.
• Tell her she’s beautiful and awesome and amazing and a rockstar and super and everything else WAY TOO MUCH - because way too much is still never enough.
• Help her stay healthy by eating right and living an active lifestyle.  Whether she’s naturally thin or not, starting good habits early will give her a great life.
• Lead by example.  Eat right. Exercise. Be kind to yourself.  If your daughter sees you love yourself, she’ll learn that it’s okay to love herself too.

     And when she does come home crying because some nasty little girl whose mom isn’t as cool as you calls her fat, listen to her, love her, tell her she’s beautiful, have her look in the mirror and point out every awesome thing about herself and even more important, have her point out all the awesomeness she can’t see in the mirror - like how she aces all of her math tests or how well she can draw or how kind she is.  You get my point.  Because it’s not just what’s on the outside that makes her beautiful, but what’s on the inside matters a whole lot more.    

     Women are hard wired to believe that our worth lies only in what others can see on the outside.  Let’s try to change that for our daughters.  Pretty please?

She should always know she's absolutely amazing and my favorite thing in the whole wide world.