I noticed Jillian Michaels, my nemesis, staring at me from the cover of Ladies Home Journal this month (no, of course I don’t subscribe, I was at the library). The caption:
Lose Weight Faster: The Biggest Loser Tips and Tricks.
Doesn’t anyone remember what “You’re the biggest loser” used to mean? It was not something you would want to brag about on national tv. But never mind, mission accomplished LHJ, you got my attention.
Reading further, the next teaser on the magazine cover was:
Raise a Girl with Body Confidence.
(Rule #1: Don’t let her catch you reading diet tips from Jillian Michaels?)
Amazed by the incredibly twisted placement but nevertheless hooked, I turned to the purported body confidence article. Only to find, not an article, but a useless excerpt from Peggy Orenstein’s latest book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter.
I say useless because Peggy’s main advice (?) was this: Hope that your daughter is genetically blessed with society’s ideal size and shape. That’s her only hope.
I know you think I’m joking, exaggerating, or making this up. But I’m not. Peggy writes that she’s glad that her daughter isn’t heavy, because life sure is harder for people who are bigger than society’s ideal. Unlike Peggy’s friend’s daughter who is slightly larger than society’s ideal, for whom Peggy predicts a sad life of dieting, disappointment, and self-hate.
I have a prediction to make, too: Peggy Orenstein’s daughter is going to struggle with her self-esteem. Why wouldn’t she? Her mom has no reason to help her daughter form a good body image, because apparently that comes naturally when you’re pretty. (Somehow I missed that memo.) She’s not willing to challenge society’s unrealistic expectations in her own head, how could she possibly teach her daughter to do so? And knowing that your mom judges and pities people who do not meet her limited standards of acceptability and weight is not going to help matters.
Peggy, you are part of the problem. You look with sadness at your friend’s daughter, worried that she won’t have a good self esteem, but that lucky girl has a mother who teaches her to accept herself as is and that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. I wish she was the one who had written a book.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Janet Zimmerman, Marci Anderson. Marci Anderson said: If you care about #bodyimage, read this article by fab #RD Jessica Setnick. Peggy Orenstein Ate My Self-Esteem Part 1. http://bit.ly/hFTx7X [...]
Jessica, You are simply the best.
Peggy Orenstein may be sucking self-esteems into her bilious, ignorant and judgemental craw, but you are there to salvage them. Unfortunately, damage repair is so difficult!!
awesome! keep it up
Soooo true.
You are so right on Jessica, as usual. Love your comments and I am just stumped and can’t believe that stuff was even published to start with.
Jess, Thank you so much for the blog post. Self-esteem is not connected to size. When 78% of all girls are unhappy with their body size by the time they reach 17, it is obvious that it is not only size that contributes, it is so much more than that. Peggy’s assumption that an average or “normal” body size is all that is required for self-esteem and happiness lacks depth, focus and an understanding of what our children really need. Thanks for putting it in perspective!
This is very interesting. Thank you for writing it and for bringing to light something I did not recognize. I heard P.Orenstein on NPR and was actually interested and pleasantly surprised by what I thought her book was about. Without reading any excerpts, I guess I imagined it was a book about how we, as females, need to instill greater self esteem into our daughters. Thank you for this post, and also for reminding me that I need to do my research before forming conclusions from a brief radio interview. Always learning…
Thanks again!