Latest / Raising Daughters / I Hate My Body! The History of Body Dissatisfaction In Females
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: Welcome to Raising Daughters, the podcast that helps parents learn
- 0:07Speaker 1: the best ways to support their daughters as they navigate
- 0:09Speaker 1: the high levels of stress, anxiety, pressure, and uncertainties so
- 0:13Speaker 1: pervasive in our culture today. Doctor Tim Jordan is a
- 0:16Speaker 1: developmental and behavioral pediatrician who has specialized in counseling girls
- 0:20Speaker 1: for over thirty years and shed's light on the realities
- 0:23Speaker 1: of today's young women in all facets of their lives.
- 0:26Speaker 1: This is your opportunity to learn how to better support
- 0:29Speaker 1: your daughters, making them feel safe, secure, and truly loved
- 0:33Speaker 1: in the midst of life's ups and downs. Here is
- 0:35Speaker 1: your host, Doctor Tim.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Hello, their friends, stutter. Tim Jordan back here with you
- 0:46Speaker 2: with a brand new podcast. Thank you so much for
- 0:50Speaker 2: stopping in here every week and listening to these and
- 0:52Speaker 2: hopefully you're taking away some good information and some good
- 0:56Speaker 2: tools that you can use when you are parenting your.
- 0:59Speaker 3: Daughter and son.
- 1:02Speaker 2: Today's topic, as often as the case, was triggered by
- 1:07Speaker 2: an experience I had. My wife asked me a lot
- 1:10Speaker 2: of times, how do you get the ideas for these podcasts?
- 1:13Speaker 2: And oftentimes starts with experiencing something in my life. Two
- 1:19Speaker 2: things that I experienced recently that prompted this discussion. And
- 1:23Speaker 2: by the way, the discussion is about body dissatisfaction in
- 1:27Speaker 2: our girls. And the first thing happened recently with our granddaughter.
- 1:33Speaker 2: Our six month old granddaughter was at our house for
- 1:37Speaker 2: about three.
- 1:38Speaker 3: Days visiting, and.
- 1:42Speaker 2: You know, she's so cute. What is cuter than a
- 1:45Speaker 2: six month old little girl, right, But one of the
- 1:48Speaker 2: things that I noticed was we were later on our
- 1:51Speaker 2: tummy because she needs some tummy time, and there's a
- 1:55Speaker 2: there's a little blanket that has a mirror on it,
- 1:59Speaker 2: and so we put her so she could reach for
- 2:01Speaker 2: these little toys and things. But what really grabbed her
- 2:05Speaker 2: attention was doing like a downward dog or a cobra
- 2:10Speaker 2: like a yoga post over the mirror and looking at
- 2:13Speaker 2: herself and just being enamored. She would smile and then
- 2:18Speaker 2: she'd look away, and then she'd go right back to
- 2:20Speaker 2: looking down at her image and smile. And that was
- 2:24Speaker 2: kind of different than when I heard the previous week
- 2:29Speaker 2: at our summer camp where we had twenty five middle
- 2:33Speaker 2: school girls and twenty five high school girls, and in
- 2:37Speaker 2: our learning times with those middle schoolers and high schoolers,
- 2:40Speaker 2: I heard a lot of angst and insecurities about how
- 2:44Speaker 2: they looked when they look in the mirror, most of
- 2:48Speaker 2: what they think about is negative. They look at the
- 2:51Speaker 2: things they don't like versus things that they do like.
- 2:54Speaker 2: I heard a lot of a lot, a lot of
- 2:56Speaker 2: complaints about their friend friends, fat shaming each other, a
- 3:02Speaker 2: lot of comparing with each other unfavorably with how they look.
- 3:06Speaker 2: So I contrasted that with my granddaughter, and so I thought,
- 3:11Speaker 2: what I would do today is talk to you about
- 3:14Speaker 2: the history of body of body dissatisfaction with our girls.
- 3:21Speaker 2: I've seen some data this shows that early on in life,
- 3:25Speaker 2: even by the time girls are three years of age,
- 3:28Speaker 2: they look at people who are overweight differently. I read
- 3:32Speaker 2: one study a while back that showed that when three
- 3:35Speaker 2: to five year olds were presented with dolls of different shapes,
- 3:39Speaker 2: the girls in the study, who at that age again
- 3:42Speaker 2: three to five year olds, constantly and consistently preferred the
- 3:46Speaker 2: thinner version of the dolls. The bigger doll was thought
- 3:50Speaker 2: of as being more sad and tired and having no friends,
- 3:55Speaker 2: and she was also.
- 3:56Speaker 3: That the heavier doll.
- 3:59Speaker 2: The heavier doll was also the least likely to be
- 4:01Speaker 2: chosen to want to be played with. Only about ten
- 4:05Speaker 2: percent of girls wanted to play with the chubby doll.
- 4:08Speaker 2: The thin doll was their clear favorite, and they also
- 4:12Speaker 2: considered that that thinner doll being the prettiest doll. Despite
- 4:16Speaker 2: all three dolls that they showed like a thin one,
- 4:20Speaker 2: a medium sized one, and a chubby one, despite that
- 4:23Speaker 2: all three dolls having the same faces, they clearly favored
- 4:27Speaker 2: the thinner one. They thought she was the prettiest. There's
- 4:31Speaker 2: all kinds of data today that shows that the majority
- 4:34Speaker 2: of girls are unhappy with their bottle, with their bodies,
- 4:38Speaker 2: that a lot of girls expressed the desire to lose weight.
- 4:43Speaker 2: One studies show that forty six percent of nine to
- 4:45Speaker 2: eleven year old girls are sometimes are very often on diets,
- 4:50Speaker 2: and two percent of their families are sometimes are very
- 4:53Speaker 2: often on diets. One other quick statistic I saw in
- 4:59Speaker 2: a study, because I don't want to bore you with stats,
- 5:02Speaker 2: but this is interesting. The number of Americans aged nineteen
- 5:06Speaker 2: and under, so zero to eighteen year old girls who
- 5:11Speaker 2: got injections of botox or similar kind of products rose
- 5:15Speaker 2: seventy five percent from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two,
- 5:20Speaker 2: and that rose again in twenty twenty three. Girls getting
- 5:25Speaker 2: plastic surgery, girls getting botox has gone up and up
- 5:28Speaker 2: and up. So was it always this way? When did
- 5:33Speaker 2: women and girls start to become dissatisfied with their bodies?
- 5:38Speaker 2: Let me give you a historical perspective. I think that's
- 5:41Speaker 2: often really valuable. I hope this is not boring for you.
- 5:44Speaker 2: It's I think it's fascinating. So listen, I'm gonna start
- 5:48Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds. I'm gonna go all the way
- 5:49Speaker 2: till today to talk about what's changed, what's changed in
- 5:53Speaker 2: the culture, and what's changed in our perspective. Back in
- 5:57Speaker 2: the eighteen hundredsiness was fashionable. Women were expected to gain
- 6:03Speaker 2: weight after their pregnancies. That's different today. Right in the
- 6:07Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, the Victorian Age came to be, and then
- 6:12Speaker 2: things started to shift. Good works, character, being of service,
- 6:17Speaker 2: those things are way more important than good looks. Then
- 6:22Speaker 2: courses came into being with the ideal of a more
- 6:25Speaker 2: slim waste. So between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred, things
- 6:29Speaker 2: started to shift a little bit as far as how
- 6:32Speaker 2: we looked at women's bodies. Here's a quote from nineteen
- 6:35Speaker 2: oh five. Nineteen oh five, the modern desire, particularly of
- 6:41Speaker 2: the female of the species is slimness. It is undesirable
- 6:45Speaker 2: to require special clothes, restrict social and recreational activities, and
- 6:50Speaker 2: be the target of jokes. So over one hundred years ago,
- 6:53Speaker 2: we started to worry a little bit about girls being overweight.
- 6:58Speaker 2: What changed in the early nineteen hundreds, more women were
- 7:02Speaker 2: going to high school with their same sex peers. One
- 7:05Speaker 2: reason was they needed to have a high school degree
- 7:08Speaker 2: to become a teacher, and so they started to become
- 7:11Speaker 2: more concerned with how they looked with they can start
- 7:14Speaker 2: comparing waste sizes, their weight, breast size because they were
- 7:18Speaker 2: together with Saint Maid's peers every day all day. Also,
- 7:23Speaker 2: there's a growing interest in athleticism in women and girls.
- 7:27Speaker 2: By the early nineteen hundreds, women could actually start to
- 7:30Speaker 2: ride bikes. It was okay, think about.
- 7:32Speaker 3: That for a moment.
- 7:34Speaker 2: Before that time, women weren't riding bikes. It was considered
- 7:37Speaker 2: to be a man's thing. Here's a big deal that
- 7:41Speaker 2: started happening in the early nineteen hundreds. Bathrooms moved indoors.
- 7:48Speaker 2: So there was a bathroom now, it wasn't an out
- 7:50Speaker 2: house anymore. Bathrooms indoors. There's a sink with a mirror,
- 7:55Speaker 2: and so for the first time, you could see yourself
- 7:58Speaker 2: every day. There was much more attention paid to your
- 8:02Speaker 2: hair and your face, acne in your face, and thus
- 8:06Speaker 2: came out more products for acne and dieting. Whereas running water,
- 8:13Speaker 2: indoors mirrors, electric lights gave women more opportunities for self scrutiny,
- 8:20Speaker 2: and the mirror became this new kind of self reflection.
- 8:23Speaker 2: Before that time, the only time you saw yourself in
- 8:25Speaker 2: a mirror was at a state fair. But elegantia, hundreds
- 8:29Speaker 2: mirrors came into our bathrooms, especially for middle class people
- 8:32Speaker 2: and above. And then not too long after, weighing scales
- 8:38Speaker 2: were now in the homes. And again before that, the
- 8:41Speaker 2: only time you could weigh yourself was at a county
- 8:43Speaker 2: fair or maybe at the local drug store. But now
- 8:45Speaker 2: you could weigh yourself every single day. Those are huge
- 8:50Speaker 2: shifts bathrooms through the indoors, scales, mirrors, and also attitudes.
- 8:58Speaker 2: A slender figure started to be in people having better character,
- 9:04Speaker 2: a better person who made for a better worker, who
- 9:07Speaker 2: was far more employable, and so fat and guilt became intertwined.
- 9:14Speaker 2: There's this new focus on consumerism, sexuality, dieting started becoming
- 9:19Speaker 2: more popular, and it created this self loathing when you
- 9:22Speaker 2: failed of that. So people started to feel bad and
- 9:26Speaker 2: were considered to be lesser people.
- 9:29Speaker 3: If they were overweight. That was new.
- 9:33Speaker 2: Another thing that happened in the early nineteen hundreds was
- 9:36Speaker 2: there's an increase in buying your clothes in a store.
- 9:40Speaker 2: Before that, most of our clothes were homemade, and because
- 9:47Speaker 2: they were homemade, there were no sizes. But store ball
- 9:51Speaker 2: clothes brought sizes because our bodies had to fit into
- 9:56Speaker 2: these predetermined standard sizes, and those became the norm. And
- 10:02Speaker 2: if a girl did not fit into these sizes, they
- 10:04Speaker 2: started to wonder and worry about what's wrong with my body?
- 10:08Speaker 2: They started to have increased self consciousness because of that.
- 10:12Speaker 2: And then of course advertising started to amp up, and
- 10:16Speaker 2: advertising changed from kind of dry and formal ads to
- 10:20Speaker 2: these more emotional appeals evoking better ways of life through
- 10:25Speaker 2: these products that they were selling. And so by nineteen
- 10:29Speaker 2: twenty there was a frenzy of new dieting materials, primarily
- 10:33Speaker 2: directed at girls and women. So a new guilt became
- 10:41Speaker 2: associated with being overweight. Clothing started creating standardized sizes that
- 10:47Speaker 2: if you didn't fit the mold, if you will, you
- 10:50Speaker 2: started to think bad about yourself advertising change and then
- 10:55Speaker 2: also our standard for.
- 10:57Speaker 3: What was beautiful.
- 11:00Speaker 2: One crowned the first Miss America nineteen twenty one, and
- 11:05Speaker 2: Miss America who won in nineteen twenty one, was five
- 11:08Speaker 2: foot one inches tall and she weighed one hundred and
- 11:11Speaker 2: eight pounds with a twenty five inch waist went toweight
- 11:17Speaker 2: twenty five inch waist fast forward. Miss Americans in the
- 11:21Speaker 2: nineteen eighties were at least five to seven if not taller,
- 11:25Speaker 2: with the same weight and with a waist size of
- 11:29Speaker 2: twenty two inches, so at least six to eight inches taller,
- 11:34Speaker 2: same weight, a much smaller waist size. The nineteen twenties
- 11:40Speaker 2: brought some changes also on how we looked at women.
- 11:43Speaker 2: The flappers that we've all heard about, you know, the dance,
- 11:46Speaker 2: the dancing and all. They were more slender, youthful, flat chested,
- 11:51Speaker 2: long limbed. So fashion also started shifting more to giving
- 11:56Speaker 2: attention to women's legs. There's a revolution in women's clothing.
- 12:00Speaker 2: It was closer fitting, more revealing. A lot of times
- 12:04Speaker 2: people worried about that in nineteen twenties, but that became
- 12:06Speaker 2: the norm for our young people. Here's a quote from
- 12:11Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four from Parent magazine, whether a girl is
- 12:17Speaker 2: pretty or plain. There's apt to be a beauty problem
- 12:20Speaker 2: to solve. It must be handled with wisdom, and it
- 12:24Speaker 2: requires the best resources of the beauty business. Wow, that's poignant, right.
- 12:31Speaker 2: The cosmetic industry started to amp up big time, and
- 12:35Speaker 2: it was dominated by American adolescent girls. Advertising became geared
- 12:41Speaker 2: to teen girls anxieties, their insecurity about their looks. There's
- 12:45Speaker 2: much more worrying about what other people were saying and doing.
- 12:49Speaker 2: Here's what won the product advertisements said back in the
- 12:52Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, products can bring you popularity, status, and self confidence.
- 13:00Speaker 2: There's a huge increase investment in products skin care, orthodonics,
- 13:06Speaker 2: weight loss diets, weight loss camps, contact lenses became in vogue.
- 13:11Speaker 2: At some point, plastic surgeries. A nineteen forties Emily Post
- 13:16Speaker 2: etiquette book stated that it is hard for overweight girls
- 13:21Speaker 2: to be dignified. Let me say that again. Nineteen forty
- 13:26Speaker 2: Emily Post Etiquette book shared it is hard for overweight
- 13:30Speaker 2: girls to be dignified again. The attitudes about overweight girls
- 13:36Speaker 2: getting more and more intense. A nineteen fifties quote from
- 13:41Speaker 2: a magazine, you're a doctor and your mom can help,
- 13:45Speaker 2: but you're the only one who can really do this.
- 13:49Speaker 2: You can go on being a fat girl, or you
- 13:51Speaker 2: can follow the diet and get down to a normal
- 13:53Speaker 2: weight that's healthy and attractive again dissing overweight girls.
- 14:00Speaker 3: The nineteen fifties brought some.
- 14:02Speaker 2: More medical data about the harmful effects of being overweight.
- 14:06Speaker 2: Men became first aware and aware I'm sorry, became first
- 14:10Speaker 2: afraid of things like heart attacks, blood pressure, cholesterol, diet
- 14:15Speaker 2: soft drinks came into vogue. Diet foods became more popular.
- 14:19Speaker 2: Dieting became a visible measure of a person's discipline and
- 14:23Speaker 2: their character, just like being overweight was a measure of
- 14:26Speaker 2: a person's discipline and character.
- 14:28Speaker 3: According to the culture, the nineteen.
- 14:32Speaker 2: Sixties, baby boomers came to be fifties and sixties, and
- 14:36Speaker 2: fascists became a little bit more relaxed. It was an
- 14:39Speaker 2: era in the fifties and sixties, the early sixties of
- 14:42Speaker 2: more full figured women, fuller breasts, fuller hips. I think
- 14:48Speaker 2: movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield, Jane Russell, those
- 14:53Speaker 2: were not thin little creatures. Those are more full figured women.
- 14:58Speaker 2: Breast became the focal point, and long legs and high
- 15:01Speaker 2: heels also became popular. Think about that Marilyn Monroe picture
- 15:06Speaker 2: of her standing over that air vent with her short
- 15:09Speaker 2: skirt and her high heels. But then in the sixties
- 15:14Speaker 2: it started to shift again again, shifting, shifting, shifting, So
- 15:19Speaker 2: being thin in the sixties and weight became a much
- 15:22Speaker 2: bigger concern. Models like Twiggy became popular. Girls started to
- 15:28Speaker 2: count their calories and skip meals, and diving became a
- 15:32Speaker 2: normal part of most teen girls' lives. The fashion showed
- 15:37Speaker 2: more legs, more thighs, mid drifts, jeans and mikis and
- 15:41Speaker 2: mini skirts, with an emphasis on the lower body and
- 15:45Speaker 2: the buttocks and the upper thighs. Then a phrase came
- 15:49Speaker 2: to be called thunder thighs that emerged in the nineteen
- 15:53Speaker 2: seventies and eighties. Concerned about sayalite liposunction became popular in
- 15:57Speaker 2: the eighties and beyond. But it was thin that was
- 16:01Speaker 2: the model in the sixties, that was what was beautiful
- 16:04Speaker 2: girls who were thin, like Twiggy. It was also as
- 16:09Speaker 2: interesting a push to have younger girls start wearing trainer bras,
- 16:14Speaker 2: so the earlier sexualization of our young girls. We started
- 16:19Speaker 2: dressing little girls in bras and bikinis. It implied this
- 16:22Speaker 2: adult look, and it marked girls as sexual objects. That
- 16:27Speaker 2: sexual objection of objectification became much more prevalent in the
- 16:31Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. The other thing is because of the
- 16:35Speaker 2: sexual revolution. In the sixties, acceptance of women's sexuality and
- 16:40Speaker 2: the need to be sexually attractive became much more in vogue.
- 16:44Speaker 2: By the sixties, women were told they need to be
- 16:46Speaker 2: thin and sexy and acceptable in bed. So more acceptance
- 16:52Speaker 2: of sexuality brought a new shift in how I need
- 16:56Speaker 2: to look in order to be sexually sexy and to
- 16:58Speaker 2: be sexual. Nineteen seventies nineteen eighties brought a fitness craze.
- 17:05Speaker 2: Jazzer size, a lean tone body became valued. I think
- 17:09Speaker 2: Jane found of workouts. The need to fight fat remained
- 17:15Speaker 2: a matter of demonstrating character and self control in an
- 17:18Speaker 2: air of excess. In the seventies and eighties, there was
- 17:22Speaker 2: a way to show virtue when our culture seemed to
- 17:26Speaker 2: be more virtue less. And if you look back in history,
- 17:30Speaker 2: there's been historical intensifications with concern about weight occurring in
- 17:35Speaker 2: times of greater prosperity, So in prosperity, more excess. Trying
- 17:43Speaker 2: to balance that with shame and guilt and especially shame
- 17:47Speaker 2: and guilt about bodies and thinness and weight. Then the
- 17:52Speaker 2: nineties brought a new ideal of lean, muscular, taught bodies
- 17:56Speaker 2: with buns and abs of steel, shaped arms, shape legs.
- 18:00Speaker 2: Once again, it shifted not because of some new new
- 18:04Speaker 2: incredible study from the medical community, because of the fashion industry.
- 18:08Speaker 2: People wanted to make more money. It's also interesting, starting
- 18:13Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties, girls started to become more independent,
- 18:17Speaker 2: and girls were dating without supervision. Let's throw it back
- 18:20Speaker 2: in the thirties and forties, but really intensified telephone in
- 18:24Speaker 2: our homes, cars, driving movies. Everybody was in high school.
- 18:29Speaker 2: The movies became more sexualized. Magazines, comic books and all
- 18:34Speaker 2: those things shifted attention to women's visual image, and that
- 18:38Speaker 2: again intensified body dissatisfaction because we didn't look like those
- 18:43Speaker 2: images in the magazines, and we didn't look like the
- 18:45Speaker 2: movie stars. Today's girls are constantly worried about their weight,
- 18:53Speaker 2: about their body, about their food intake, about dieting, working
- 18:58Speaker 2: on their body, comparing their to everybody, their peers, and
- 19:02Speaker 2: social media images around the world, so they never feel okay,
- 19:07Speaker 2: they never feel content. There's this constant dissatisfaction with how
- 19:11Speaker 2: they look, and advertisers and marketers play to these anxieties
- 19:16Speaker 2: and insecurities. That has led to today's girls and women
- 19:29Speaker 2: who view their body image I either size, their weight,
- 19:33Speaker 2: it becomes the most important, the most noticed, and the
- 19:36Speaker 2: defining aspect of their identity. I hear that over and
- 19:41Speaker 2: over and over in my retreats, in my camps, in
- 19:44Speaker 2: my circle times. It's change the way girls come of age.
- 19:50Speaker 2: Girls they have more freedom, more opportunities and choice, but
- 19:54Speaker 2: they're still being constrained by standards, conditioning, and pressures to
- 19:59Speaker 2: look a certain way. It's also true today that girls
- 20:04Speaker 2: their body, their sensuality. That became their primary currency to
- 20:08Speaker 2: get attention, to get status, notoriety, to get love. It
- 20:13Speaker 2: becomes their identity. It's the only capital that girls think
- 20:16Speaker 2: they possess. I am my body, I am my weight,
- 20:21Speaker 2: I am my sexual appeal. And they so undervalue much
- 20:25Speaker 2: more important qualities and aspects of themselves, things like their courage,
- 20:29Speaker 2: things like their problem solving, their intelligence, their athleticism, their kindness,
- 20:34Speaker 2: their empathy. There's so many more important things, but the
- 20:38Speaker 2: focus is on their looks, and not just their looks,
- 20:41Speaker 2: but how their looks compares to everybody.
- 20:44Speaker 3: Else on the planet.
- 20:47Speaker 2: With social media, exhibitionism, perfectionism, lookism, consumerism, all those things
- 20:55Speaker 2: causes girls and women to be obsessed with their weight,
- 20:59Speaker 2: their body, their fashion, how they dress, being sexy, being attractive.
- 21:06Speaker 2: One of the things I teach girls in my retreats
- 21:08Speaker 2: in my camps is it might be more important. What
- 21:13Speaker 2: might be more important than being attractive to a guy
- 21:17Speaker 2: is to know what you want to attract. That's a switch, right.
- 21:27Speaker 2: I think gross bodies are constantly discussed, analyzed, displayed, harassed
- 21:33Speaker 2: as early as late grade school, middle school, and high school, groped.
- 21:39Speaker 2: It's hard for girls to make sense of their body
- 21:41Speaker 2: and sexuality as it's changing. They need safe, sacred spaces
- 21:46Speaker 2: to grow and develop their identities, and it's hard to
- 21:50Speaker 2: find that today in our culture because they're constantly bombarded
- 21:56Speaker 2: with images and advertising and media messages. They're so unhealthy.
- 22:03Speaker 2: I'm going to do a podcast in the near future
- 22:05Speaker 2: with some of my campers from this past summer. We're
- 22:08Speaker 2: talking about this issue in some of our circles, and
- 22:11Speaker 2: I was so fascinating to hear their points of view
- 22:13Speaker 2: about their looks, about makeup, about body image, and The
- 22:19Speaker 2: unfortunate thing is girls' bodies are changing, and they're going
- 22:23Speaker 2: through puberty much earlier than the past, so they look
- 22:27Speaker 2: older than their their chronological age. They look older than
- 22:31Speaker 2: their emotional age. They look older than their brain maturation age,
- 22:36Speaker 2: so they don't have the wisdom and the impost control.
- 22:39Speaker 2: They don't have a mature prefrontal cortex, meaning they don't
- 22:42Speaker 2: have the perspective to understand and resist pressures and the
- 22:46Speaker 2: temptations of our sexualized culture. They become so externally focused,
- 22:51Speaker 2: so outer focused, and needing affirmation about their attractiveness and
- 22:57Speaker 2: my pretty enough and my desirable We've got to do
- 23:02Speaker 2: a much better job of treating our girls like their
- 23:05Speaker 2: chronological age and their emotional age versus how they look.
- 23:16Speaker 2: Another interesting point historically, this is about African American girls.
- 23:23Speaker 2: The preoccupation with weight and dieting didn't really catch on
- 23:27Speaker 2: so much among African American women. African American teen girls
- 23:32Speaker 2: in surveys worried less about their bodies. Large African American
- 23:37Speaker 2: women are held to be more emotionally stable, less preoccupied
- 23:41Speaker 2: with all the superficial issues and things. It reflects the
- 23:45Speaker 2: power position women have held in African American families and
- 23:50Speaker 2: their economy. African American women have always worked, and so
- 23:55Speaker 2: size and strength were an advantage, and that's carried over
- 23:58Speaker 2: the African American unity. It tends to be matriarchal, so
- 24:02Speaker 2: cultural prestige from motherhood still persists. That's an interesting difference.
- 24:13Speaker 2: The shifting cultural standards for how women are supposed to look,
- 24:16Speaker 2: and how they're supposed to judge themselves and other people,
- 24:19Speaker 2: how they should eat their weight, all those things have
- 24:22Speaker 2: been a moving target for years, a moving target of standards, ideals, expectations.
- 24:36Speaker 2: So it's no wonder that girls are confused about their
- 24:40Speaker 2: looks and their appearance. Makes sense why they start looking
- 24:45Speaker 2: outside themselves for am I Okay, there's so many images
- 24:48Speaker 2: out there for them to compare themselves to. It's so
- 24:51Speaker 2: confusing and so stressful. We've got to do a much
- 24:55Speaker 2: better job of teaching girls about images that they see.
- 25:00Speaker 2: Media savvy and this is something we need to teach them.
- 25:03Speaker 2: I've done some previous podcasts on that. Also, they need
- 25:08Speaker 2: to understand this historical perspective, because how they're supposed to
- 25:12Speaker 2: look today was not how they were supposed to look
- 25:14Speaker 2: twenty years ago, thirty years ago, fifty years ago, one
- 25:18Speaker 2: hundred years ago. It keeps changing and shifting based upon money, basically,
- 25:24Speaker 2: on advertising, on consumerism. It's not about anything that's real.
- 25:30Speaker 2: It's about unreal standards, unreal ideals, unreal expectations, and they
- 25:38Speaker 2: don't know that. Even the brightest girls who I work with,
- 25:41Speaker 2: who quote unquote know better, still tell me they get
- 25:45Speaker 2: caught up and looking at images online and they worry
- 25:47Speaker 2: about how they look, and they compare themselves unfavorably, even
- 25:50Speaker 2: though they know in their best mind that it's all
- 25:55Speaker 2: a facade, that nobody looks that way, that those images
- 25:58Speaker 2: aren't real, they're fabricated, they're fixed, all those things, but
- 26:03Speaker 2: they don't have the most emotional maturity to oftentimes resist that.
- 26:07Speaker 2: It's hard, it's hard for women to do that. So
- 26:12Speaker 2: give them a historical perspective, remind them to start being
- 26:16Speaker 2: more internally directed and to not worry so much about
- 26:22Speaker 2: how they look. That's so easy to say, but that's
- 26:26Speaker 2: something that all girls need to grow into. But I
- 26:28Speaker 2: think them understanding about why the standards and ideals are
- 26:33Speaker 2: out there, I think that might be helpful for them
- 26:36Speaker 2: to have a more realistic standard for what they're going
- 26:38Speaker 2: to judge themselves by so that when they look in
- 26:41Speaker 2: the mirror, like my granddaughter, they will smile and be
- 26:46Speaker 2: satisfied as opposed to what they get today, which is hatred, dissatisfaction,
- 26:52Speaker 2: et cetera. I hope this has been interesting and helpful
- 26:57Speaker 2: to go back in time one hundred and twenty years
- 27:01Speaker 2: to understand why we are where we are today and
- 27:04Speaker 2: what's going on in the last one hundred and twenty
- 27:07Speaker 2: years that's brought us there. Take good care of yourself,
- 27:11Speaker 2: Give your daughters more information. Haven't listened to this podcast.
- 27:15Speaker 2: I am going to post on my links a couple
- 27:20Speaker 2: of podcasts I did about body image in the past.
- 27:23Speaker 2: One of them was about six months ago when I
- 27:26Speaker 2: interviewed to authors about the influence that moms have with
- 27:30Speaker 2: their daughter's body image. That's a really good one. The
- 27:33Speaker 2: other one was about when and why body image dissatisfaction begins. Also,
- 27:42Speaker 2: I wrote a book about probably about ten years ago,
- 27:44Speaker 2: called Sleeping Beauties Awakened Women Guiding the Transformation of Adolescent Girls.
- 27:51Speaker 2: That's about how girls emotional lives shift and change. There's
- 27:57Speaker 2: what kind of needs they have emotionally cycled logically in
- 28:00Speaker 2: their adolescent years, How we can best support them through
- 28:03Speaker 2: that process of growing up. Lots of great information in
- 28:07Speaker 2: that book it's called Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women Guiding the
- 28:10Speaker 2: Transformation of Adlescent Girls up with that link for that
- 28:12Speaker 2: book also on the website. I'm sorry on my show notes.
- 28:16Speaker 2: And the last thing is there's a book I read,
- 28:19Speaker 2: oh several years ago. It's called Fat History by Peter Stearns,
- 28:25Speaker 2: and I'll put that in my show notes as well.
- 28:27Speaker 2: Really interesting book. And I think if you enjoyed this
- 28:29Speaker 2: podcast and you want to learn more and read Peter
- 28:32Speaker 2: Sterearn's book. And once again, as I always say at
- 28:36Speaker 2: the end of my podcast, you have questions comments, write
- 28:40Speaker 2: me through my wife's email and a N N E
- 28:43Speaker 2: at d R tim Jordan dot com. I'm open to
- 28:48Speaker 2: your suggestions for future podcasts, things that you may be
- 28:52Speaker 2: concerned about want more information about, So write me an
- 28:55Speaker 2: email through that and I've also put that email also
- 29:00Speaker 2: in my show notes. Thank you so much for listening
- 29:03Speaker 2: into this podcast. I hope it's been helpful. I'll be
- 29:06Speaker 2: back in a week with something brand new for you.
- 29:09Speaker 2: Thanks so much for stopping by.
- 29:18Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Raising Daughters.
- 29:21Speaker 1: Hopefully you've learned something useful about girls and young women
- 29:24Speaker 1: and how to help them navigate the pressures, challenges, and
- 29:27Speaker 1: opportunities of modern life. If you want to become a
- 29:30Speaker 1: more effective parent, keep listening to the show at doctor
- 29:33Speaker 1: Tim Jordan dot com and let the conversations shape you.
- 29:37Speaker 1: Build that one of a kind connection with your daughters
- 29:39Speaker 1: in the most profound and meaningful ways possible, shaping them
- 29:43Speaker 1: into strong, confident women of the future. That's all for now.
- 29:47Speaker 1: See you next week for another episode of Raising Daughters.