Insecurity is something most women deal with from a small age. I remember sizing myself up from the young age of 14. I already started picking myself a part and compared myself to other little girls and even fully grown women. No one ever told me I wasn’t good enough or anything, it was just something I did on my own.
Thinking about that now makes me sad and honestly I miss that teen pre-baby body, because now my insecurities have grown ten-fold. It makes me sad because I think about my daughter and how she will see herself. My family was always supportive. I always had both a mother and father present, my dad always told me he loved me, and my family frequently complimented me on my appearance. So why did I have these insecurities!?
Studies show that 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies and that’s alarming. When I was young cell phones weren’t a thing, google wasn’t a place we went to for every answer and social media felt like something out of a scifi movie about the world in 2150. If my insecurities were so bad at a young age without all the tech we have today what will my daughter go through!?
I think mothers (and fathers) are the answer to this serious situation. I am constantly talking about how fat I am, how I hate my nose, and the embarrassment of my post-baby body (i.e. stretchmarks and loose skin). We need to take a step back as mothers and remember that our children are watching. Yes, children as in our daughters AND our sons. We’re teaching our daughters to pick themselves a part and find each flaw. We’re teaching our sons that women need to be perfect and how vein we are.
I get that it’s unrealistic to say we all need to wake up tomorrow and love everything about ourselves because honestly I am never going to love certain things about myself, however I can change the way my children see me. We can be positive about ourselves and keep our negativity away from them. We can be sure to always tell our daughters how beautiful they are to help keep their self esteem up. We can teach our boys what a “real” body looks like, which isn’t what they see on TV. Fathers, this is very important, need to tell their daughters AND wives how much they love them and comment on their beauty consistently. This is a positive example for our boys to learn how to treat women and gives the girls the love and confidence they need in their life.
I have heard many conflicting things about this topic including how we should omit telling our kids anything about their beauty altogether so they don’t “value” that, however I don’t feel that’s entirely realistic. Everything in our world has to do with beauty. Look at the movies your kids watch, including Disney and Nickelodeon. Take a listen to their music, how we explain the beauty of the earth and nature, or even simply how “pretty” their coloring job is. We are surrounded with beauty, so instead of removing the word “beauty” from our vocabulary lets embrace it and teach them what true beauty is including inside and out. Let’s raise our kids with confidence in the body God gave them and teach them how to love the beauty in others. The sad thing is if we as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles don’t do what’s needed, the world is going to try to and that always ends negatively.
Love for all the women out there and the body struggles they go through; womanhood is hard. Let’s change the world one child at a time.
With love,
Jackie
