What do you do when you discover that your teenage daughter is showing signs of struggling with a negative body image? Here’s what worked for me.
Several weeks ago my 14 1/2 year old daughter, Cara and I were shopping in Walmart. I learned a great deal about myself from the experience. And as a mom I wanted to share my discoveries with you in hopes that if you ever encounter a similar situation with your daughter one day, you’ll be better prepared.
Let me preface this by saying that basically my daughter is a very confident young lady. Unlike me, at her age, she feels good about herself and is assured of her capabilities. In fact, dare I say, she can even be a bit conceited at times. Truth.
As a child growing up, I did not have the foundation necessary to instill those same feelings of confidence and certainty about my body in me. By her age, I had already experienced abuse; both sexual and verbal for many years, and because of those violations, I felt like a puppet who had no sense of ownership or pride about my body.
Thankfully my daughter has gained the full benefit of my years of making a conscious decision to become a better and more informed person and parent. I’ve spent years participating in parenting classes, undergoing 14 years of therapy and all of my coaching and NLP training. That is what is responsible for my confidence and now hers; my willingness to admit and learn from my mistakes. I don’t make any claims to being a parenting expert and I certainly don’t know it all. I’m far from perfect. But I am a mom who adores her kids. I continue to make plenty of mistakes, but I’ve always got my eyes open looking for a better way. This is what I aim to share with you.
The thing that I discovered from this experience with her was that when she exposed a layer of her insecurity, I, was so rattled to my core, because she is usually so confident and comfortable in her body that I blew it all out of proportion. And I remember having a different conversation with a much more insecure version of her.
After giving this considerable thought today after I spoke with her and got her take on the events, realizing that I remembered something that didn’t actually happen, it freaked me out quite a bit.
Later after I calmed down and thought more deeply about it, I attribute my selective memory to the fact that her insecurity stirred my emotions which caused my internal mama bear to work overtime to protect her cub.
At the end of this post, I’ll clarify for you where the distinctions were in our recalls. Here’s my mommy-skewed recollection of our experience bra shopping:
When we reached Walmart’s lingerie section, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get Cara a better fitting bra. It had been a couple of years since we last purchased one together. Lately I had been noticing that she had outgrown the bras she had. When I suggested that we buy one that really fit her, she eagerly agreed.
“Ok, I Goofed…No Use Feeling Guilty, Onto Finding the Solution”
Just a quick note before we continue: For the sake of maintaining my daughter’s privacy, we’ve agreed that I won’t share any specifics regarding her size. Rather I’ll refer to the different bra sizes as small, bigger, etc.
When I checked the label on the back of her bra, and I couldn’t read it because it was worn out, I went on a bit of a guilt trip. A thousand thoughts went flying through my head as I berated myself for being a neglectful mother and I wondered how I could have let that slip past me. Then I realized that I was being too hard on myself and it didn’t do anybody any good for me to continue feeling guilty.
Ok. Now I knew that she was wearing the wrong size bra. The next step was to find one that fit her. I left the fitting room so I could go outside and check the racks bringing back several sizes and styles so that she could try them on and find one that would fit her.
I picked out an armload of “bigger” cup bras, ranging in a variety of band sizes. After she tried on the first one, I noticed the band size fit beautifully around her back, but the cup size was too small. Thinking nothing of it, I suggested that she try the next bigger size as I handed it to her.
“I guess I found my curse.”
I wasn’t prepared for her response. I was shocked and amazed when I saw tears welling up in her eyes and she said, Mom, No. I can’t be this size”
So then my mama bear thoughts started racing as I watched my normally confident daughter show signs of insecurity. I began to relate to my own fears at that age. And I guess it’s my background of being raised with so much of a negative body image that makes me recall her responses as being much more pained and dramatic than they actually were. After all, I am the drama queen in the family, not her.
When I saw the tears welling up in her eyes and I heard Cara say that she felt this was her curse, and she can’t be that size, my frantic mommy mind stirred up some craziness.
“Mom, I don’t want to be thought of like that… Easy. That would be horrible. Then she said, “Do you remember last year when you were writing your book and you asked me what I felt my curse was and I told you I didn’t think that I had one. Well now I guess I’ve found my curse.
I watched as the tears rolled down her cheecks, leaving dark traces of her eyeliner behind. I asked her why she felt it was like a curse to have bigger breasts and she told me ” Because lately it always feels like people are staring at me and I hate that.”
As we sat together on the fitting room bench, we were both crying. I put on my coach cap and realized that what she needed was some fresh perspective. But first I had to ask her a question: “Has anybody touched any part of your body or your breasts in a way that’s made you feel uncomfortable?” She replied with an emphatic, “No,” shaking her head.” “It’s just the way that I feel people look at me.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, I asked her if she wanted to tap, (a simple stress relief process based on acupuncture that works to change negative emotions by tapping gently on the hands, face and under the arms) telling her this is definitely a tappable issue, and you could change the way that you feel by just tapping. She shook her head, “No” I asked her if she wanted me to offer her any other stress relief methods or if she just wanted to handle her upset by talking it through.
With her tears still falling, she agreed to listen to me. Still sitting beside her, I held her and hugged her tightly as I gently stroked her hair. I went for the comparision first, saying, “Do you realize how many women or girls would die to have a figure like yours? I mean people are actually paying money to surgeons to slice up their bodies and insert questionable substances into their chests to inflate their breasts to look like yours do naturally? She nodded in response but I could see that I wasn’t convincing her.
Then I said, let’s address this question of being easy. Just because a woman has bigger breasts doesn’t necessarily mean that she thinks so little of herself that she feels the need to exploit her body and validate her existence by having sex with random people. It doesn’t work that way. There will always be women who feel that their only value is their body, but a lot of others don’t. And I happen to know that you value your intelligence and you have a strong sense of grounding and Girl, heaven knows you’ve got a strong appreciation for boundaries, and besides that you have me as your mother so you learned to respect your privacy and to demand others to respect you as well. So we know that about you.
Having big breasts doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re easy
Okay now let’s think about women who you know who have big breasts and let’s see if what you say is true. Who do we know? After we came up with several examples of female friends, family, and several celebrity others whose reputations demonstrate their body acceptance and values through self esteem, she began questioning her beliefs and realizing that just because you have big breasts doesn’t mean that you’re easy.
Your Body Is Your Gift
Then I went for the big picture saying, “Cara, let me tell you this. You are you. Nobody else will be exactly like you… ever. For whatever reason it chose to, your spirit, your soul has chosen to take this body. It’s your package, your gift that God gave you. The lessons that you learn about loving and living will come to you only because you have this body. So here’s the deal. Think of your body as a house, your house and in order to honor your home, you have to create a sense of comfort and ease for yourself so you’ll enjoy being there. In the same way that you could be described as having lovely shoulder length brunette hair, being 5’3” tall, weighing about 130 pounds, an author, loving your English class and not being so crazy about learning Spanish, being a voracious reader, the boss of your brother and the social butterfly of the century, you could also say that by wearing a smaller bra size that didn’t fit you, you’ve been crushing the “girls” and forcing them to live in a tenament.
When she laughed, I knew her energy shifted. I went on to say, “It’s no wonder that they’ve been trying to breathe and get the hell out of there. They deserve better than you’ve been giving them.” Now let’s think in terms of real estate here. If God gives you a beautiful home– why on earth would you try to crowd and cram all your stuff in one room? Does that make sense to you?
Then she really laughed. I said, “it was the same way when I was trying to squeeze my size 14 thighs into my old size 8 pants. I wasn’t giving myself a home big enough to suit all my gifts.
Choosing Clothes that Fit Now: Finding a House Big Enough
As she laughed again I suggested, “Now how about the two of us go outside and we find a home with space enough that’s worthy of you.” We both laughed as we head back out to comb through the racks. Then we found it, the perfect bra, a stunning turquoise blue – in a larger size. After she tried it on, and realized how much more comfortable it was, I asked her now to put on her old “smaller size” bra and see if she could notice a difference. I was surprised when she told me that she couldn’t.
“When you feel good about yourself, you send out good vibes”
The next morning when she dressed for school, she came out and told me, “Now I can really see and feel the difference. She giggled as she said, “The girls feels good living in their new larger home. Thank you, Mommy.” I asked her, “Honey, do you still feel like people are staring at you?” She said, “No. Not in a bad way. I said, “You’re right. Before since you felt ashamed of your body, you were sending out messages that you weren’t okay, and people were picking up on that, not quite knowing what it was all about, but they were picking up a negative vibe. It’s sort of like smelling something that stinks and wondering where the smell is coming from.
Now that you’re feeling better about yourself and you have an even stronger sense of how wonderful and special you are, you’re smelling sweet, and you’re sending out good vibes. You’re probably noticing that when people look at you, they are seeing and feeling how fabulous you are. And if they’re slime buckets, you’ll know automatically because you’ll sense it, that they’re not even worth a second glance. So you won’t even bother with them and eventually they’ll just disappear, because they won’t be in vibration with you and they won’t pick up your vibe anymore. As far as everybody else goes, remember what you told me? If you look people directly in the eyes, they’ll never notice what you’re wearing? With that said, we hugged and she left for school.
Listen to Your Heart for Guidance
Thinking back on the experience I realized in retrospect, that after we left Walmart that day, I noticed that something so small turned out to be so big. It became clear to me that as a plus size woman, I had a real blind spot and I was unable to understand or relate to my daughter’s pain because I didn’t have any issues with my breasts. But I could relate to her feeling of being cursed.
If you’re familiar with my writing, you know I’ve made no bones about my relationship with my thighs over the years. So my advice to you, Mom is to put yourself in your daughter’s place and as best you can relate to what’s hurting her and be willing to be vulnerable and honest about your own body image struggles. By doing that, listening to your heart and being open to your inner guidance, you’ll find the right words to show her your love and support.
Caution: Objects In Mirror May Seem Larger Than They Appear
As I mentioned before, I was really thrown for a loop when I discovered that I had remembered having a conversation that never took place. After I asked her to read this blog post to verify my information, she told me that we never spoke about being easy. In fact she denied that she was actually as upset by the situation as I remember her to be. She also denied that she ever told me that people stare at her. But she did say that I spoke very passionately about the two different types of modesty; saying that there is a modesty that is based on wanting to keep private things private and there is another type of modesty based on feeling ashamed and wanting to hide one’s body.
When I shared with her my experience of my false memory of what I said, she told me that I was very much present and my talk about modesty really helped her to see some things very differently.
I’ve got to tell you that I really learned a powerful lesson from this:
the mind can’t tell the difference between an imagined thought and reality.
I’ve said this thousands of times but never have I had such a compelling personal experience as this to demonstrate the truth of this fact. I guess to a certain extent we are always balancing our internal reality with our external reality, and when the two worlds collide things get very hazy.
My suggestion to you is to listen carefully to your daughter and check in with yourself and notice if what she is saying triggers any negative or fearful emotions in you. If it does, then before you continue your conversation with her, clear those blocks by using Emotional Freedom Technique or any other stress relief method. Then once you have neutralized your emotional blocks, then you will have a better chance of being more present so that you can actually listen to your daughter.
“Most of all, your daughter needs to be reassured of your love”
And remember just like with bras, one size doesn’t fit all. Keep your eyes and ears open and be aware that your little girl is gradually getting used to her new body home and she needs your reassurance to know that as she moves in, and learns to become more at peace with her body, you’ll be there for her every step of the way.
The Juicy Woman, body image, self esteem, Love Your Body, Lovin’ the Skin You’re In, Andrea Amador,