Moms and Teenage Girls, what a time to be alive if you’re fat! If you got a little junk in the trunk, today’s culture calls it “thicc”. That skinny “Twiggy” who took the fashion world by storm in the late 60’s, with her boyishly thin figure, wouldn’t stand a chance. Big booties, and even the tummy “pooch”, are praised, celebrated, revered.
Lizzo takes the stage wearing a sparkling thong, showing off her over-300 lb physique, playing her flute beautifully between voicing edgy song lyrics. She gyrates, and the audience eats it up. She posts online, and the audience praises her for pioneering a “any size should fit all” cultural movement.
Social media would have you believe that guys like “thicc” girls. Magazine publishers would have you believe “it’s time” for plus-sized fashion archetypes and full-figured Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. Justice Warriors would have you believe it’s wrong to do anything other than praise and appreciate the curvaceous, the voluptuous…the overweight.
Poor skinny girls. The world is leaving you behind. Do you even have a place? Is anyone glorifying your attempt at health? Are there justice leagues fighting against harsh words that might hurt your feelings?
Moms and Teenage Girls, listen to me. Get your head on straight. It’s time we promote and celebrate HEALTH.
Moms and Teenage Girls, listen to me. Watch your mouth. It’s time we STOP with the comments.
Moms and Teenage Girls, listen to me. Call out body-image nonsense. It’s time we LOVE our kids and everybody else’s.
The health of our kids should be our highest priority (only slightly second to protecting their precious souls). If we, as moms, cultivate a home culture of respect for our bodies, we have laid the foundation on which to teach our girls to respect their own.
What we say to our kids about health and their bodies (or even our own) create that culture. Incessant harping on weight, scant eating, and maintaining a body ideal creates anxiety and the potential for eating disorders. Lack of concern for binge eating and super-sizing creates a formula for difficulty in sports, excessive sweating, and low self-esteem.
How we love our kids – AND EVERYBODY ELSE’S – is key. Raising teenagers is already an effort in walking on egg shells across the shiny, thin thread of a spider web, so we must approach our kids lovingly with solid information, sound advice, and arms-wide-open support.
The picture I posted here…it illustrates the thoughts of a skinny girl. She leaves her warm, Christian, very healthy home, and goes out into a world that tells her on the daily…
“You need a hamburger.” (Yes, an adult told her this. A mom.)
“Girl, you need to eat.”
“Why are you so thin?”
Y’all, she’s beautiful. She’s smart and talented. Her heart is huge. She has hopes. She loves fashion, trendy styles, and unique looks. Her make-up is cleverly done and precise, yet minimal and just enough to accentuate her blue eyes. She is graceful and funny. Her grades are high, and so are her standards. She is a good friend.
Then somebody’s MOM tells her she needs a hamburger. School brats tell her she needs to eat. The world tells her she’s too skinny and she ain’t got that “thicc”. Her mind tells her that maybe they’re right, and she needs to E A T M O R E.
Y’all, I actually kind of like Lizzo and her crazy mess. You can say a lot about the woman, but she plays a mean flute, and her songs are catchy. And you know what, she’s her weight, and that’s that. It’s not my business, and I don’t have an opinion (and if I did, who cares about my opinion?).
I do know this…I worry about my own child’s sense of self. I watch her eating habits, I see her weight fluctuate. I hear her love herself one minute and hate herself the next. She traipses out looking amazing in a bikini in the summer, then fall comes, and she wears as many layers as possible to cover her “fat”.
I also know that I will go to bat faster than my scale can go from 0 to 200 when another person – especially A MOTHER, for crying out loud – makes an inappropriate comment to a teenager about her body. If I had been there myself, you might have heard the sonic boom from your house.
Get your head on straight. Watch your mouth. And call out body-shaming nonsense. Please. “Thicc” or thin.
Amanda Herring, Writer 