Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
by DeniseFourth grade. It was 1972 and I was nine years old. I went to school at Alice Birney Elementary School, in Charleston Heights, SC. It was the year my education became an experiment. It was the year I discovered boys (and girls.) It was the year I discovered junk food. It was the year that I discovered Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and Seventeen Magazine. It was the year everything changed.
In fourth grade, my little southern school adopted the educational practice known as Individually Guided Education (IGE for short.) There were no letter grades, instead we received pieces of paper marked "All of the time", "Most of the time", "Some of the time", and "Seldom". My class was made up of a group of children in fourth grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade with the idea that students in all of those grade levels could work at the level that best suited them. I thought it was brilliant and while I was still occasionally bored and drove my Spelling teacher insane because she had nothing to offer me above the sixth grade level, what I liked most was that my friends were the more mature kids and not the same old kids I'd been in class with for years.
My best friends became the sixth graders and they opened my eyes to a whole new world.
Instead of spending my after school hours and weekends building forts in the woods or playing street hockey with the younger neighborhood kids, I was just hanging out with the older girls.
We read teen magazines. We talked about boys (and I quietly thought about girls.) I was introduced to the joys of junk food.
We would pool our money, head off on our bikes to the Red & White in front of our subdivision and buy bags of Doritos and bean dip. This is when my affinity for cream horns began - we ate them by the dozen, literally.
I never thought about going on a diet. I didn't worry that I was too fat. But my friends the older girls, many of whom had older sisters (I was the oldest child in my family), did think about diet. They would devour Doritos and cream horns and sodas and then talk about how fat they felt. I would nod my head and laugh or moan but I didn't really get it. It didn't make sense. They were all bigger than I was but they weren't fat, they were just older and thus bigger. Whatever. I went with it because that's what they did.
When Suzanne told me last week about being interviewed in the fourth grade about fat, I wondered what I would have said had I been asked those questions. Would I have played the part and said yes I was dieting? Or talk badly about my body? Or would I have just shrugged and said that some girls I knew were on a diet but I didn't get it? I don't honestly know what I'd have said, but I do know I wasn't on a diet and I didn't feel fat.
Flash forward to 1992 and my oldest daughter was in the fourth grade. She wasn't fat but she thought about fat, as did all of the girls she was friends with. She wasn't on a diet but she knew what dieting was because that's one of the things she and her friends talked about. Not a lot, but it was definitely a topic for discussion. It didn't matter how often I told her and her friends that they weren't fat, their legs were fine, their butts were not too big and they did not need to lose weight - they never really believed me. I was just a mom. A mom they liked but still, just a mom. They preferred to believe the messages they sent to each other and the messages sent to them by boys and by the media that surrounded them.
Flash forward again, this time to 2005, another daughter, another fourth grader. The diet and weight loss and negative body image discussions were constant. RJ was not fat but she was big. She's always been big. She was tall. She was muscular. She swam hours and hours every week on a synchronized swimming team. And yes, she loved food but she did not need to diet or lose weight.
Fourth graders should not be focused on weight loss. On diet. On food. On how attractive they are to their peers. They just shouldn't be. But they are.
The Wall Street Journal revisited the topic addressed way back in 1986 when Suzanne was in fourth grade. The author of the original article talked to some of the women he had interviewed in 1986 and their responses, more than 20 years later are both fascinating and frightening.
Fourth-Graders Who Spoke of Dieting say Girls Now Have it Worse
In fourth grade, Christy Gouletas told me thin models "are sexy, so boys like them." Today, she is a middle-school teacher in Wheeling, Ill. On lunch duty each day, she notices 10 girls who eat nothing. "We make them take a few bites," she says, "but they fight me on it. They say, 'I'm not hungry,' and I tell them, 'You've been here since 8 a.m. Of course you're hungry!' "
She's not exaggerating. I've been in lunchrooms with these girls and this is exactly what happens. Boys, on the other hand, are having an awfully good time at lunch - eating almost everything that is within arm reach.
The question I always ask myself is why... why are my girls so focused on weight loss and fat? Why are Girls so... thinks part of the blame should land on parents.
But I also feel, in many ways, a reason for a child's self-conscious, awkwardom, is influenced by how parents think of their own image. I'd imagine mommies also face insecurities about their own bodies, but maybe this is one of the many things one shouldn't pass down onto their children.
I can't disagree, exactly. I've heard a lot of moms (and dads) sending negative body image messages to their kids. But, that's not always what happens. Look at my own daughters. I've never been on a diet. I haven't ever talked about my big butt or heavy thighs. I'm not sending these signals to my girls, but there they were - in 2nd grade and fourth grade and as grown women, worrying about their bodies.
From the WSJ blog, When the pressure to be thin starts in elementary school, it's only getting worse.
What’s more, researchers have seen a marked increase in children’s concerns about thinness in just the last few years. Between 2000 and 2006, the percentage of girls who believe that they must be thin to be popular rose to 60% from 48%, according to Harris Interactive surveys of 1,059 girls conducted for the advocacy group Girls Inc.
All of this early fixation on size and dieting can result in eating disorders but ED Bits makes a really interesting point about what happens when it doesn't lead to eating disorders.
And these preoccupations can ultimately lead to eating disorders. None of the women in the study, it should be said, developed an eating disorder, although most suffered from body image woes throughout their lives. And maybe that's the really sad part: how many lives have been blunted by these preoccupation of ours, even if it never reaches the point of formal diagnosis.
Even if the dieting and body image angst girls exhibit doesn't turn into full-fledged eating disorders, how does it change them? How does it affect their lives? Girls are thinking about this, worrying over it, expending energy dealing with this. Who would they be and what would they achieve without this anxiety, pain, and fear?
~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings - mom of four girls who have all survived the fourth grade. Thank goodness.
Editor's note: Alice Birney Elementary School became Birney Middle School shortly after my fourth grade year. Charleston Heights, SC became a part of North Charleston, SC shortly afterwards as well. See, fourth grade really was when everything changed for me.
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Comments
4th grade girls and diet
Denise, the last paragraph made me cry. Not just a little, either. I cried for your daughters, the older girls you hung out with, for me and the kids I went to school with, and for all the girls (and women) dealing with this now. The pressure to look exactly right, which means being thin, affects lives so dramatically. I was a little out of it when I was in 4th grade, but when I tuned in, that relentless need to have the right body never left me. Not even now. I've been very overweight, and I've been just the right weight for my body type, but always I am convinced that I am fat. The energy I waste on this stupid concern boggles my mind. I want to stop, but I'm surrounded by images and products that hammer home that anyone with any body flaws is not, as one boy from my school said 23 years ago, normal.
What can we do? I don't know. In some cases, I do think parenting can make a difference, but my parents never, ever bothered me about my weight. (And in fact, when I called my dad today to complain about my "now" photo, he said I was too hard on myself and that he would always love me, no matter what. Crap, water works are flowing again...) There's just so much money to be made by getting people to hate their natural bodies early in life. When Glamour magazine recently ran a picture of a model with a belly, they got more letters than they ever received, praising the woman's beauty and Glamour for their "bravery" in using a size 12 model. Yet the editor didn't see that as a reason to change their every day operations. I don't know that advertisers would be so keen on it.
Anyway, thanks for your beautiful post.
Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Oth
I don't have any answers
I was telling someone earlier whose daughter is beginning to deal with this that I don't have answers. I just know what I've tried to do to off-set whatever it is that causes my daughters to stress over this.
Talk, listen, don't try to ignore that they feel this way, don't assume they'll grow out of it, discuss what they see (which means pointing out messages that they don't even realize are negative body image messages for them) and just keep trying.
That's it. It's all I've got.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
It's great advice
I feel like it is the best advice possible. The only way out of this is real collective action, but it seems unlikely, so these types of individual solutions are the best thing we can do in the meantime. I feel like the effort is incredibly important.
Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Oth
that is fabulous advice
Your second para should be printed off and carried around in the wallets of all parents. And not just those of girls.
Laurie
www.notjustaboutcancer.blogspot.com
I don't remember those conversations
I don't ever remember those conversations. Maybe it was because I was usually told I was "too skinny" and spent most of my childhood being told to eat more. (I was a scrawny kid, all chicken knees and elbows.) Or maybe (most likely?) they were they and I just didn't notice them. (I did tend to have my head stuck in a book an awful lot of the time.) I never did quite fit in with others very well, we were poor and at an early age I stopped bothering to even think about it. I didn't see the point in comparing myself when I didn't have the "right" clothes, etc. I took myself out of the running for popularity. Maybe that took me further than I ever realized. What would I think of my body and myself if I had the same clothes and a basis for comparing myself? I find myself almost shuddering at the thought of it.
Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.
Never told I was too big
I was never told I was too big, or too small. Never encouraged to eat more or eat less. Which is probably why the entire fourth grade look at "fat" didn't make sense to me. I didn't get it. But, I was fairly popular and so I didn't really have to do anything to fit in or be more popular. Had I been unpopular. Been big. Been something other than what I was, I'd have probably been right there reading about the apple cider diet or the Scarsdale diet or something like that.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
a doctor put me on my first diet when i was
nine
I was not fat, merely pubescent.
That doctor had his own issues and, since that time, I have lots, too.
I've never really recovered.
Laurie
www.notjustaboutcancer.blogspot.com
That scares me
It really does. I've heard it before, from a lot of other people. I've had women come to message boards telling me that their doctor recommends X or Y diet for their daughters. Frightening. Really frightening.
Children should not DIET.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
and kids should not be made to feel that
there is anything wrong
with their bodies and the natural changes they will experience.
I think that dieting creates it's own set of problems and it sets up a negative relationship with food. I try (with mixed success) to encourage my kids to make healthy choices, to put healthy food in front of them and not to make too big a deal about the occasional indulgence in junk food.
Laurie
www.notjustaboutcancer.blogspot.com
My fourth grade niece
Has told my mother repeatedly that her GREATEST FEAR is getting fat. I was definitely weight conscious when I was in 4th grade, but I don't remember the extended conversations about it that I hear now.
Not so innocent anymore
That's what worries me. It was one thing for me to have some sixth graders talking about fat and dieting - it's what was in those magazines after all. It's another thing entirely to hear the girls, little tiny 7 year old girls, talking about being fat and using very big words like fear and dead in relation to their body.
It's much worse now and I think it is only getting worse.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
looking where we fail rather than where we
succeed
What is wrong with us humans. Why always looking where we fail rather than looking for where we succeed?
I am sure advertising has a lot to do with it, does it not show where we are wrong so they can sell the product to improve us AND they use peer pressure to hammer the message home even more.
It must be hard for teachers to see young girls not eating and not being able to do anything about it.
I have two girls, one is totally not interested in her image and the other one is and I have no idea how that creeped in. All I can do is keep being me and not harp on about how I look and how getting old makes my skin sag or something. I watch my language.
They can see that I am having a good life, even if I not always look the part. I so hope that in the end they get to see by example what really counts. I do not know what else to do.
Wilma Ham
www.wilmasblog.com
that's interesting
Advertising does always try to sell us something that will make us or our lives bigger better happier sexier. Hmmm, I feel a new discussion coming on around here. ;-)
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
I'm convinced advertising
I'm convinced advertising has a LOT to do with it.
I'll use South Asia as an example since I'm familiar with it. :)
Ever watch a Bollywood or Tamil movie? The female love interest, usually a big star in her own right, is seldom skinny. Slim, at a healthy weight, a little overweight, and even chunky, yes, but not usually skinny to the point of looking anorexic. I've seen Bollywood movies where the lead female is a size 14, wearing a sari or other outfit showing her belly fat, jiggling as she dances to the music numbers. And there are a LOT of music numbers in most Bollywood/Tamil movies - think 10-14 per 3-4 hour movie. And lots of jiggling belly fat. No attempt to cover it up, no attempt to make those women look skinnier than they really are. Other female actresses, of whatever age, are similarly of various sizes and shapes from beanpole to apple. Male actors? Same thing. And I love it!
There's a lot less pressure to be skinny here and a lot less stigma for being fat (doctors offices aside - then it becomes a nightmare). People are more active in general anyway, and getting enough calories can be difficult for the poorer people, so it just hasn't reached the point that it's at in the US/Canada.
But it's heading that way. As Western culture via television and movies, for example, influences the local culture, eating disorders are on the rise, enough so that news reports talk about it on occasion. There's an increase in pressure on actresses/models to be skinnier.
Personally, this is one aspect of American/Canadian culture that I don't want to spread.
Laurie in Sri Lanka
Chilli & Chocolate | A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court | LMAshton on Twitter
Good point
Long live Bollywood! :-)
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
I wonder how much things
I wonder how much things have changed since my childhood. I was in 4th grade in 1988, and girls were on diets all the time. I was the fat kid, and I was teased mercilessly, even physically assaulted. I was also on diets all the time --go ahead and guess where that got me. Sure, magazines and television played some role in damaging my self-esteem, but most of all it was the other children, and sometimes doctors. I remember accompanying my mother to her eye doctor, and every time the doctor saw me, she would loudly say "How come you haven't lost weight yet?!" I went to another doctor once, and the first time he looked at me he said "Whoa! What have they been feeding you?"
Once I filled out a bit, I looked better, but I never stopped getting teased about my weight until I went to college. I see pictures of myself in high school, and I was average-sized and at some times thin! I'll never feel like I'm thin enough, but I have at least accepted that and I just try to focus on health.
Kids can be mean
When I was thinking about writing this post, I tried to remember who the "fat kids" were in 4th grade. This was an exercise that made me super ill. I can only remember one girl and she wasn't really fat, she was big. She was significantly taller than any of the girls and a number of the boys. She had the body that matched her height - she was just big. She was also incredibly shy. Not super smart in that perfect grades sort of way. She had a lot of siblings. She lived on my street, actually. And I did play with her off and on right up until that year. Then, everything changed. (as I mentioned before.)
I know she was teased, I know she was teased all of the way through high school. And it wasn't until high school that I actually talked to her very much after fourth grade. She was still tall, still big, still incredibly shy, not super smart. But she was nice, which was why I ended up talking to her again when our paths crossed at lunch. The popular dieting girls weren't always nice to talk to.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Wow. That is incredible.
Zoe, I am appalled that you were subjected to such insensitive and rude comments by people who are supposed to help you. Sounds to me like the opposite occurred.
As a mother, I would have went through the roof over those statements. Not only would we have left the office, but I would have demanded an apology. I realize that the damage was already done. You know, I would have had many conversations with my daughter, after that.
I am not vindictive, but doctors should be accountable for their actions. Held to higher standards. I feel bad that this happened to you. I do think it is great that you understand that even if you can't see yourself thin, you know that your health is most important. You are focused on the right thing.
http://raisedqueer.squarespace.com
Doctors should be
The patient/doctor relationship should be a heck of a lot better than that, shouldn't it?
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
What really scares me
Is the comments on the article itself, as well as the WSJ blog post about the article. Some of the comments are just trolls doing their troll thing, but others sincerely believe that the fact that girls hate their bodies from a young age is not a problem. Instead, the problem is that kids are fat (not one person cites any stats, though) and that parents are making them fat by letting their offspring gorge on junk food and sit around all day. The comments say it is great that girls worry about getting fat. There's seriously no logical thought or analysis behind larger root causes or acknowledgment that many kids who say they are fat are in fact healthy. That's terrifying.
Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Oth
That's the problem
We can't make this better until the adults in the world believe that it should be better.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
More than that, put our
More than that, put our money where our mouths are. En masse.
Stop buying the fashion magazines, movies, clothes, and whatnot that promote these attitudes. Stop watching the television shows. Stop supporting these attitudes.
And write to television stations, movie studios, producers, advertisers and tell them what you think.
Laurie in Sri Lanka
Chilli & Chocolate | A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court | LMAshton on Twitter
We need to stop criminalizing fat
Of course it's unhealthy, and there is a legitimate concern for the welfare of children. But dieting is horrible, especially for young girls. When I was 20 years old, I realized that I had spent over half of my life on a diet. I stopped immediately, but not for good.
There are fat kids, and kids who eat too much junk food. It's such a huge problem with many different origins that sort of crashed together. It's the food industry, it's the fashion industry, it's technology. I don't have any answers either, but I think that any changes in diet should be focused on health and feelings rather than appearance. Once the weight's gone, there will be something else to hate about yourself.
Modern Poverty
Obesity
Obesity is frightening because the side effects of obesity can be life damaging. That's very true and it makes sense that we as a society are scared. But, fat isn't a health problem. Fat, as defined by much of society.
And of course, cancer is scary and so is heart disease - but people with cancer and people with heart disease aren't belittled, and attacked and discriminated against in the same way that people who are "fat" (particularly women who are fat) are.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Part of the problem here is
Part of the problem here is the generally perceived cause of obesity - sitting on your butt all day and eating nothing but junk food all day, every day.
Yes, that's part of the problem, perhaps even all of the problem, for some people. But for others, it's far more complex.
Last time I checked about a decade ago, there were 52 known medical problems that caused weight gain. How many more have been discovered since then, I don't know. How difficult is it to get diagnosed for those health problems? How difficult is it to get doctors to listen and then to do the necessary following through?
In my experience? Extremely difficult.
How easy is it for doctors to call a patient a hypochondriac or lazy?
In my experience? Extremely easy.
And these are the professionals who are supposed to know better. How surprising is it that others who are not educated about medical matters understand obesity and its causes even less?
Laurie in Sri Lanka
Chilli & Chocolate | A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court | LMAshton on Twitter
By 4th grade I don't think parents have as
much influence
My mother always told me I was "perfect just the way I was", which in a way, made me distrust any kind of blanket statement like that. "It's all going to be okay", etc... "Says who?" is what always came to mind.
Girls compare themselves to the other girls, to magazines, to TV. Have you seen the women playing teens on the new 90210?!
I agree, the thing that makes me the most sad about this kind of "obsession about appearance" is that it takes time away from young women... time they could use to pursue art, academics, sports... things that will ultimately fulfill their lives much more than standing in front of a mirror unhappy.
Losing our authority earlier
I think parents are losing their authority, or their ability to influence kids much earlier. Peers become the most important thing much sooner for kids. Any idea why that is? I have some theories but I can't back any of them up, lol.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Grotesque to think
Really, what a different world we live in. Fourth grade is that awkward time that girls go through as they prepare to develop. I look at pictures of myself and see the pudge, but also see how happy I was. This wasn't too long ago, yet look how the world has changed, forcing girls to think about image before they have the mind and body to support such a weighty topic. Our kids need innocence!
http://www.thecluelesscrafter.com/
Innocence?
Have children really ever been innocent? I think maybe I'm just opposed to the word in general because as I typed that and thought about it, I suppose prior to 4th grade I might have been considered innocent. After that, maybe not so much.
Hmm, I need to think more about this.
~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings
Sexualization of girls and shrinking body
diversity
I wonder whether the apparent increase in body image issues among girls has to do with the seemingly more common sexualization of young girls. For example, it's not uncommon these days for pop singers to get record deals at age 15 and make videos in which they're scantily clad. Think Britney Spears in the late 90s, or Miley Cyrus today. Granted, I've never seen a Miley Cyrus video but I have seen the Annie Liebowitz photos of her. The girls section of department stores sells all sorts of apparel previously regarded as clothes for adult women, for example g-string underwear and so forth. It's almost as though those weird little girl beauty pageants have become the standard at which regular little girls are judged.
Then there's the case of the incredibly shrinking TV and film actresses. I've noticed that several of the shows I like tend to have alarmingly skinny actresses cast in prominent roles ("House," "Scrubs," "Burn Notice," all examples off the top of my head). Granted, there's nothing wrong with their size and they may well just have a very slim body type. But the people in TV Land are completely divorced from reality to the point that suspending disbelief is nearly impossible. Do all women who work in hospitals look like skinny white models? Even in New Jersey? Obviously not.
There's this bizarre idea in American culture that nobody wants to watch a person who isn't beautiful. As the cultural definition of beautiful becomes more and more narrow, the range of people we can watch becomes smaller. I'd much rather watch Quentin Crisp for two hours than that Heidi Montag person for 30 seconds. And I think the latter's vapid pointlessness makes her very ugly indeed.
So I think part of the issue is that Hollywood needs to wake the hell up, and realize that audiences aren't quite as stupid as they think. Advertising to children needs to be toned down somehow, although I'm not sure how. And people need to demand change.
The other half the media message is the audience. We can choose not to buy those magazines, we can watch more BBC, turn off MTV or read a book.
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