My daughter is 4-and-3/4 years old, and she loves her body.

She’s never heard of a good body or a bad body or a nice body or a beach body. She doesn’t yet know many people think fat is bad. She knows people are different shapes and sizes, but no one’s fed her the idea that a certain shape is better, or that anyone’s bigger or smaller because of what they eat or how they live.

And while she knows we don’t feel great if we eat a ton of sugar, she doesn’t know someone might choose not to eat at all, even though they’re hungry.

The specific ways society obsesses over and attempts to control girls’ and women’s bodies feels obvious and often overwhelming to me, but kids aren’t born knowing about it. So far, I’ve worked to keep those messages away from her.

In most ways, I don’t shelter her. We curse and talk about the patriarchy, and racism, and this morning I explained abortion to her and why I’m pro-choice. But when it comes to body image, I want her to love her body. So I try my best to shelter her from societal beauty ideals, and I feel confident I’m making the right choice.

Part of my strategy is to limit and supervise screentime.

In 2000, a study of top children’s movies found, “72% associated thinness with positive character traits such as kindness, and three out of four videos equated obesity with undesirable qualities.” Think the Little Mermaid vs. Ursula the Sea Witch, which I loved as a kid, but my daughter has not seen.

Cartoon females are 4x more likely than male characters to be shown as underweight, and overweight characters are more likely to be depicted as unintelligent and unhappy compared to underweight characters.

I am super-privileged to not have to rely on daily screentime. But many families don’t have that luxury, so I wish media makers were doing more to fix the issue, rather than relying on parents to shield their kids from harmful media portrayals.

Children’s media review website Common Sense Media reviewed dozens of research studies on children’s body image, media, and the effects of body image on self-esteem, and published their findings in a 45-page report.

The findings include chilling statistics:

Nearly half of 3- to 6-year-old girls worry about being fat.

Nearly 1/3 of children ages 5 to 6 choose an ideal body size that is thinner than their current perceived size.

By the age of 7, 25% of kids have engaged in some kind of dieting behavior.

But there is hope!

A study in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology —titled Am I too fat to be a princess? — found that 5- to 8-year-olds who think their moms are dissatisfied with their bodies are more likely to feel dissatisfied with their own bodies.

That sentence had the word dissatisfied in it twice, so let’s flip it around:

5- to 8-year-olds who think their moms are satisfied with their bodies are more likely to feel satisfied with their own bodies.

There is so much power in that finding. If you want to help your kid love their body, you can start by learning to love your own body, or at least act like you do. When we cut out the self-deprecating talk, we boost our children’s body image. You might need to fake it till you make it, but faking it can help you get to a place of self-love as well.

I weigh 50 pounds less now than I did when my daughter was born, so a ton of people have approached me in front of her to congratulate me on my body getting smaller. (Read that phrase a few times and think about how weird it is.)

It takes intention and practice to steer those conversations to a positive place:

“You look amazing. You must’ve lost — ”

“Yeah, I’ve managed to fit yoga in my life almost every day, and I’m feeling so strong lately, and I’m really proud I’ve kept up with that commitment to myself.” I say, all the while making crazy eyes at them to try to communicate that I’d rather them not call me skinny.

The Common Sense Media report includes an infographic with simple suggestions for parents to lead the way toward body acceptance. Their advice in bold:

Ban “fat talk”

Say why you appreciate your own body. I talk about how much I love my strong body that can dance and climb and hug and sing and listen. I talk about how I’m proud of myself when, for instance, I hold a challenging yoga pose. I talk about how I grew my kiddo in this amazing body of mine.

I talk about how much I love my strong body that can dance and climb and hug and sing and listen. I talk about how I’m proud of myself when, for instance, I hold a challenging yoga pose. I talk about how I grew my kiddo in this amazing body of mine. Watch your comments about other people’s bodies and appearance. I try to refrain from commenting on others’ bodies. When my daughter brings up something she observes, my response includes “Yeah, we’re all different, huh?” We can acknowledge physical differences exist without attaching judgments or assumptions to those differences.

I try to refrain from commenting on others’ bodies. When my daughter brings up something she observes, my response includes “Yeah, we’re all different, huh?” We can acknowledge physical differences exist without attaching judgments or assumptions to those differences. Be active and eat well for health, not size. We dance and play and jump and run. We talk about how nourishing foods help kids feel strong and increase the chance we’ll be healthy. We talk about how sometimes foods are fun sometimes, but our bodies feel best when we’re eating a variety of nourishing foods. We’re building a basis of mostly healthy eating, without ever attaching that conversation to conceptions of body shape.

Our words and actions matter, but our kids can’t stay in our loving cocoons forever. The culture still celebrates some bodies over others, though more people are attempting to change the narrative.

Can we protect future generations from repeating the same traumas we went through?

Like every girl I knew, I went through my own starving-myself phases, starting in junior high. So many of my friends were doing it — most of our moms were doing it too — so regardless of our body shapes, eating felt shameful.

Replace your meal with a diet shake. Replace your meal with a bowl of Special K Red Berries: “A bowl for breakfast, another for lunch, and a sensible dinner.” Every day for lunch, I ate a single plain roll (this is before the culture started demonizing bread).

Starving yourself seemed healthy — even moral.

The only way you could admit to eating was if you branded yourself as “one of those people who can eat whatever she wants and not gain weight.”

The messages fluctuated about which foods were the absolute worst, but no one challenged the premises that eating food — any food at all — made you fat, and fat was the worst thing you could be.

Future Leader Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash

The body image problem is about more than just weight.

Kids pick up on the media’s and grown-ups’ prejudices of other physical differences, such as race, gender-nonconformity, perceived class or ability.

Bullies will always find something to attack. When I was a young child, it was my curly hair, my Jewishness, my smallness.

It’s hard for me to imagine anyone picking on my daughter. I mean, it might just be that she’s my special magical babychild, so how could anyone not adore her? Luckily, the same lessons that will help her love herself will also help her be an ally.

In preparation for kindergarten, we’re reading books where characters are mean to each other.

When she was 3, I couldn’t stand these books, but now that she’s almost 5, I understand their purpose.

“Why do you think that kid was being mean?”

“I don’t know!”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“Yes!”

“Well, maybe they’re just trying something out, and they’re not thinking enough about empathy. Maybe the kid heard their parents or another grown-up saying something mean, and they’re repeating it. Maybe the kid being mean is feeling bad about themselves, and they’re not handling it well.”

“Why would their parents say something mean?”

“That’s a good question. Even some grown-ups are still working on empathy. What would you do if you saw a kid being mean to another kid.”

“I would be an ally.”

“Awesome! What would you do?”

“I would say, Quit being mean! and then I would ask the other kid if they wanted to play.”

“I love it. You’re such a good friend!”