Last July, Laurie met a woman who worked for Planned Parenthood and taught sex ed in Bay Area schools. She said that she now teaches in junior high school and high school but that she wanted to be teaching in elementary schools as well. She said the puberty beginning at 7 was not uncommon. Laurie was probably more surprised than maybe she should have been, and did some research about it. We included it as part of our conversation at the Kids and Body Image Panel at BlogHer
The fact that puberty is starting significantly earlier for girls and boys is not new news. The quotes below are from a study done about 10 years ago.
There are new guidelines for pediatricians that are guaranteed to shock: girls who start to develop breasts and pubic hair at age six or seven are not necessarily "abnormal." (Kaplowitz, et al., 1999).
....Results found that in their seventh year, 27% of African-American girls and 7% of white girls had begun breast development and/or had pubic hair. Between ages eight and nine, those numbers had increased to 48% of African-American girls and 15% of white girls. National Research Center for Women and Families
A new report by the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society (LWPES), a nationwide network of physicians headquartered in Stanford, California, suggests that it is normal for white girls as young as 7 and black girls as young as 6 to start developing breasts. This conclusion was based on a study of 17,000 girls between the ages of 3 and 12 conducted by the Pediatric Research in Office Settings (PROS) network of 1,500 pediatricians nationwide.
And we're also talking about boys.
The early sexual development of girls has received tremendous media attention, but there has been no similar attention to boys. A new study of signs of puberty among boys between 8 and 19 may change that, because it shows that early puberty is also happening among boys.
I'm surprised, as is Tracee Sioux at Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me, that this has not been in major public discussion. (In spite of what the CNN quote above says.)
This raises a number of questions for me. These are just a few of them.
One prime characteristic of childhood is that it's the time we deal with the world before the surge of adolescent hormones. What are the effects of a shortened childhood development?
What are the implications of "hot" clothes for girl tweens and cool adult clothes for boy tweens when they have adolescent bodies as opposed to children's bodies?
How does raunch clothing on young girls relate to this? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
What are the effects of adolescent hormones on children who are still playing with toys?
We worry about pedophiles harming children; what about men who are attracted to nubile or developed bodies, and would not be attracted to 7 to 10-year-olds with child bodies?
When we're talking about early puberty, what changes in the implications of the ways society permits or encourages boys to have a more intense adolescent sexuality than we do for girls?
And finally how do we help parents and children to deal with this effectively?
]]>The New York Times is discussing a new trend in bridesmaid gifts:
for bridesmaids as young-looking and beautiful as your dreams, you, the
lovely blushing bride, can easily provide everything from tit jobs to
Botox:
The New York Times is discussing a new trend in bridesmaid gifts:
for bridesmaids as young-looking and beautiful as your dreams, you, the
lovely blushing bride, can easily provide everything from tit jobs to
Botox:
“Giving them something for themselves — as opposed to something that they’ll never wear again — is more meaningful.”
Some brides pick up the tab for their attendants, replacing the
pillbox inscribed with the wedding date with a well-earned squirt
between the eyes. In other cases, bridesmaids — who may quietly seethe
about unflattering dresses — are surprisingly willing to pay for
cosmetic enhancements.
Becky Lee, 39, a Manhattan photographer, declined when a friend
asked her — and five other attendants — to have their breasts enhanced.
“We’re all Asian and didn’t have a whole lot of cleavage, and she found
a doctor in L.A. who was willing to do four for the price of two,” said
Ms. Lee, who wore a push-up bra instead.
Most of the tone of the article is about how brides view this as a
gracious gift, or at least a welcome opportunity, but the selfish "my
wedding is all about me" story seeps through both in Becky Lee's
quotation above and in this little anecdote:
A bride asked her attendants to get professionally spray-tanned for a Hawaiian-theme reception.
Alas, two women were claustrophobic and couldn’t bear standing in a
tanning capsule. "They asked the bride if they could use regular
tanning cream from a salon," [the wedding planner] said. The bride
refused; she wanted everyone to be the same shade. The women ultimately
declined to be bridesmaids. "Friendships of 20-plus years gone over a
spray tan?"
In a completely different context, U.S. Olympic softball star Jennie Finch appeared on Fox News. No sooner had she walked off screen than co-host Jon Scott described her value as an Olympic athlete:
"A great representative: blond, blue-eyed, and extremely talented."
Pardon us for being naive, but we thought her talent was the point,
not her hair and eyes. Apparently an equally talented player of Greek,
or Jewish, or Asian, or African heritage wouldn't be such a great
representative. We also thought that the friendships were the point for
bridesmaids.
At least three things are going on here. First, always, racism. In
this case, it's disturbingly close to the Aryan-ideal, master-race kind
of racism that wants young blond blue-eyed Olympic athletes. With the
bridesmaids, it's a somewhat more contemporary "Western ideal of
beauty." Tough to attain if you're Asian, but clearly some people think
it's worth the effort.
Second, always, money. If and when she goes pro, Jennie Finch will
get a lot more commercial opportunities than a woman of color on her
team would. Remember Kristi Yamaguchi,
who won America's heart, but not the endorsements? "People like Kristi
Yamaguchi don't represent, at least with marketers, the wholesome
all-American image," as one Asian-American marketer is quoted as saying
on Wikipedia. And no one gets rich encouraging brides to choose the
women they love as bridesmaids and tell them how beautiful they are
without changing anything.
Third, as the Times article reminds us in the headlines,
we're living in a skin-deep world. How you look--and by extension how
your bridesmaids, your family, and your sports stars look--is more
important than what you can do, what you have done, and what you might
do: in sports, in weddings, in job interviews, walking down the street.
Unless, of course, you want a joyful wedding--or a good life.
This is why this post is so important. The overwhelming message is "tell women what they should look like" but belledame222 has a better idea:
Have other women's backs.
"Well, I think she looks great. And even if I didn't, so the hell
what? What the hell business is it of yours? Who asked you? (if one
wishes to be combative) You're no spring onion yourself. And besides,
what does this have to do with (her experience of assault/her
leadership ability/her position on campaign finance reform/the
brilliant novel she wrote/her research in nuclear physics/anything
else)? No, I said: it's not cute and I'm not amused, and I won't hear
this." Read the whole post.
Lynn Kendall pointed us to the bridesmaid article.
]]>Fitness Magazine is not where one would usually look for positive body image articles, but this one. which centers on BlogHer and quotes Laurie, is both good and interesting. (Of course, we would prefer that it wasn't surrounded on all sides by swimsuit models with muscular navels.)
]]>Fitness Magazine is not where one would usually look for positive body image articles, but this one. which centers on BlogHer and quotes Laurie, is both good and interesting. (Of course, we would prefer that it wasn't surrounded on all sides by swimsuit models with muscular navels.)
BlogHer.com has seen an explosion of interest on the topic of body image. "Since July 2007, we've added 151 new blogs to our site relating to women's bodies," says [Lisa] Stone [co-founder of BlogHer]. "Ten years ago, you'd read an occasional comment on a message board in reaction to a model's photo in a magazine: 'Am I the only one who thinks real women don't look like this?' But garnering critical mass was difficult. The expansion of the Internet makes it easy to share these feelings." Think of the Web as a virtual watercooler: In a country where 64 million people are obese, as many as 10 million suffer from eating disorders, and untold others feel inadequate every time they drive past another airbrushed model on a highway billboard, it was high time there was an outlet for the emotions surrounding women and body-image issues.
The perceived anonymity of the Web -- even when sharing something as intimate as a photo of your body -- has allowed thousands of women the safety to say what they really think. As the trend grows, body-image Web sites have become more specialized. In 2006, Bonnie Crowder, 30, launched The Shape of a Mother, uploading an image of her post-baby body -- stretch marks, folds, and all -- in an effort to support other women who'd recently given birth. "The post-pregnancy body is one of society's greatest secrets," Crowder wrote on her Web site. "Sure, we all talk about sagging boobs, but no one ever sees them. It is my dream to create a Web site where women of all ages, shapes, and sizes can share images of their bodies so it will no longer be secret."
[picture not available]
We're all for body pride, but really, who the heck has the guts (or exhibitionist urge) to post a picture of herself in her birthday suit online for the whole world to see? "The answer I get the most -- and it resonates with me personally -- is, 'I am tired of feeling embarrassed about the way I look,'" says Suzanne Reisman [pictured above], 32, founder of a blog about feminism and other topics. "Women feel under assault from images that don't look anything like them, and the online community offers an opportunity to say, 'There is nothing wrong with having an average body.'"
Here's an example we found just searching on Flickr. Notice from the caption that model/student Beckie Jones considers this to be an "unattractive" photo, and she posted it anyway. (We would disagree with her assessment.)
The article makes a passing mention of the body image panel which Laurie moderated at last year's BlogHer conference. The same eagerness--even hunger--which the Fitness article describes was evident at that panel. Laurie will be moderating a related panel at this year's conference in San Francisco. The more we are bombarded with images of improbably and impossibly perfect bodies, the more of us feel disenfranchised and invisible. And the web provides the means to (using a phrase Laurie has long used about her work) make the invisible visible.
]]>In 1870, not long after the end of the horrifyingly bloody and destructive U.S. Civil War, anti-war activist Julia Ward Howe called for an international Mother's Day holiday. In her declaration, she said:
]]>In 1870, not long after the end of the horrifyingly bloody and destructive U.S. Civil War, anti-war activist Julia Ward Howe called for an international Mother's Day holiday. In her declaration, she said:
We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
and
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Although Howe failed to get this international day off the ground, the holiday we celebrate today can be traced to her initial efforts through the public work of Anna Jarvis and her mother (also Anna Jarvis).
Howe's declaration is as apt today as it was 138 years ago. When a theoretically democratic country is engaged in a bloody, senseless, and extremely expensive war that more than 70% of its population opposes, Ward's idea of "solemnly [taking] counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace..." deserves attention and remembrance.
***
NBC's America's Favorite Mom campaign looks a great deal more like Hallmark than it does like Julia Ward Howe. But we'd be happy to just let it go if it didn't have a category called "The Non-mom Mom." ("Grandparent, stepmom, or mom to adopted children, each one raising and loving a child. A priceless gift for everybody.")
Hello, these women are not non-moms ... they're mothers. Anyone who mothers a child is a mother. And any child lucky enough to have someone loving mothering them will know that they have a mom, not a "non-mom." Get a clue, NBC!
***
Finally, Laurie will be moderating a panel at BlogHer on moms, children, and body issues, called "Mirrors: Ours, The Media's, Our Culture's, and Our Kids'. She wrote about her thoughts on the topic here. Mother's Day is an excellent time to reflect on how moms (and dads and aunts and uncles and teachers and whoever) model body image for the kids in our lives.
Often we’re trying to deal with the negative stuff [our kids] bring home. “You’re ugly, you’re too fat, your eyes are wrong, your color is icky” etc. We want to help our kids to feel good about themselves.
Sometimes it’s really hard to do if we don’t feel good about our own bodies. Sometimes they’ll pick up the wrong messages from us. And it doesn’t help that we live in a world that markets the “super model” look to 9 year old girls.
Children of all races, sizes, ages, and body types deserve to feel good about themselves: how they look, and how their bodies feel.
Thanks to Carol Kennedy, mom, for the NBC link.
]]>
I’m going to be moderating a panel at this summer’s BlogHer conference how we blog/feel about our kids and their and our body image. There is a tentative panel description at the end of this blog.
This description is where my thinking is right now, but there’s time for lots of thought.
]]>I’m going to be moderating a panel at this summer’s BlogHer conference how we blog/feel about our kids and their and our body image. There is a tentative panel description at the end of this blog.
This description is where my thinking is right now, but there’s time for lots of thought.
I know that in raising my daughters, I was in a constant dialogue with the television and other media, saying “that’s wrong”, “real people don’t look like that” etc, etc. We’d talk about how kids got treated at school. We’d talk about how it was different for black, Latino, or Asian friends or for that matter thin blue-eyed blond friends. We’d talk about how it was different and sometimes the same for boys and girls. And we talked about how outside pressures from the culture shaped this. It was one of our important on-going discussions throughout their childhoods, and we’re still having those conversations now.
I’m lucky that I didn’t have a lot of body hatred to share. I see friends who really wanted their kids to feel good about themselves, but talk about their own bodies in ways that got quickly reflected by their children. And I did have to watch how I talked about my body and other peoples’ bodies with some care.
I could help my daughters to develop good armor but the world will still be throwing spears at them.
My daughters are 10 years apart. I watched the standards of thinness get smaller and smaller as time passed. My younger daughter grew up in much more obsessionally thin times and that’s only gotten worse. They both grew up when harassment of teen age girls, especially young teen age girls, about their bodies was considered “normal” boyish behavior.
Some things have changed for the better. If you look for it, there is good body-positive information out there - whether it’s size positive, trans positive, color positive etc. No kid with web access needs to feel like they’re “the only one like them”.
They also grew up before the intense sexualization of children. Nine year olds didn’t wear tee shirts that said “hot babe inside” and young boys clothes didn’t have to have a cool manly styling. No one thought that children should be “buffed”.
Media meant movies, TV and print. It seemed like an endless barrage then, and those constant pressures have only increased with the multi-media world of the web. And the other side of access is that kids can find pro-anorexia sites.
On the other hand, the support of an extended web community of individuals was just starting to form when my younger daughter was growing up. One of the things I love about blogging and the feminist bloggers’ world is how much we talk to each other usefully. I love that mommybloggers can find shared communities of ideas outside of their physical neighborhoods. I’m interested in how much difference this can make.
Anyway these are some of the things I’m thinking about. I’m curious about folks’ ideas and experiences - either as kids or moms or all the other varied relationships we have with children. (I learned a lot from my teen age belly dance students.)
=======================================
We blog about our kids’ self-images a lot, and much of it is how they feel about their bodies and the ones around them. And often we’re trying to deal with the negative stuff they bring home. “You’re ugly, you’re too fat, your eyes are wrong, your color is icky” etc. We want to help our kids to feel good about themselves. We blog to share our experiences and help each other to do this better.
Sometimes it’s really hard to do if we don’t feel good about our own bodies. Sometimes they’ll pick up the wrong messages from us. And it doesn’t help that we live in a world that markets the “super model” look to 9 year old girls.
Children of all races, sizes, ages, and body types deserve to feel good about themselves: how they look, and how their bodies feel. On this panel Mommybloggers and other Moms will discuss helping our kids to like themselves as they are.
]]>