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Esther Kane, MSW,
Registered Clinical Counsellor, is the author of It’s
Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide To Making Peace with Food
and Our Bodies and Dump
That Chump, and What
Your Mama Can’t or Won’t Teach You. Check out her free
monthly e-zine, Women’s
Community Counselor, to uplift and inspire women.
 Thanks
to Twitter, I’ve been able to connect with some amazing
women who also have as their goal helping women love and appreciate
their bodies exactly as they are. One of my new friends is
Dara Chadwick, author of You’d Be So Pretty If…Teaching
Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies—Even When We Don’t
Love Our Own.
She kindly sent me a copy of her book and I devoured it with
gusto. In fact, in a phone conversation we had, I told her
that I wished that I had written this book because it’s
exactly what I try to teach mothers about raising their daughters
to be whole, healthy and self-confident people. If you are
a mother of one or more girls, you must buy this book and
read it cover-to-cover. There is so much wisdom contained
within.
Dara is herself, the mother of a ‘tween and shares hilarious
and heart-rending stories of how she is learning to change
how she talks about her own body in front of her daughter,
thus helping her feel good in her own skin. When I work with
teens with disordered eating, I always bring mothers into
therapy because, unfortunately, they are often teaching their
daughter(s) (often unconsciously) to dislike the size and
shape of their bodies. Upon further examination, I almost
always discover that my client’s mother was taught to
dislike her body by her own mother. Thus, the multigenerational
transmission process continues down through generations of
girls and women…
The good news is that it only takes one generation to change
the pattern for good. By teaching mothers and daughters to
stop waging war on their bodies, we can consciously create
a whole new breed of empowered women who flourish in self-love
and self-acceptance. We, as women, whether we’re mothers,
aunts, sisters, grandmothers or friends, have the power to
stop deadly eating disorders in their tracks. That’s
no small feat.
I’d like to leave you with some tips from Dara.
• Change your tune: If you’re usually harsh
or critical about your appearance in front of your daughter,
make sure she hears you say at least one positive thing about
yourself each day. A simple, “I like the way my hair
looks today” or “I like the cut of these pants”
is a great first step toward creating a more positive body
image.
• Don’t do comedy: Humor can be a defense mechanism
when you don’t feel good about yourself, but your jokes
about your body aren’t fooling here. It’s OK to
laugh together—even about your bodies, occasionally—but
don’t make your butt the “butt” of every joke.
• Corral your compliments: Resist the urge to focus
on weight when doling out compliments to friends and family.
Let your daughter hear you tell a friend she looks fantastic
or healthy or happy without it being about having lost weight.
• Examine your example: Don’t refuse to wear
a bathing suit or dance at a wedding because you think you’re
too big or don’t look right. You’ll be teaching
her that only "perfect" people get to have fun in
life. Do what you can to look your best, then forget it. Be
bold when you need to, and show her that it’s good to
speak your mind, take your place and be noticed.
• Skip the mirror: No one’s advocating leaving
the house without a glance at yourself. But once you’ve
done that, resist the urge to constantly re-check your look
in mirrors, store windows or any other reflective surface.
You know you look fine, so just let the obsession go.
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