“Every person has a shape.  I am a star,” says my 4-year-old at dinner.  She’s perched naked before a meal of raspberry yogurt and noodles with butter.

“That’s wonderful, honey, you ARE a star, ” I say, thrilled by her uninhibited confidence, her peculiar imagination.  “What shape are you, C?” 

But her little sister has her mouth full, feasting on a spread of chicken sausage, rice pilaf, avocado, carrots dipped in hummus, and cut-up hot-dog with ketchup–all served in separate dishes.  This child loves food and always has. 

 ”Carmen is an oval,” announces A.  It’s true.  Soft yet sturdy, her toddler shape is undeniably round.  The girls’ father, in contrast, is a rectangle on end, tall and strong like a maple or a building on a skyline. 

And I’m something uneven, a trapezoid or triangle, shifting identities from writer to athlete, mother to lover, homemaker to professional.  My shape tips, end over end, seeking firm ground in a multifaceted world.  As if reading my mind, A. confirms my identity:  “You’re a triangle, Mommy.”  Bingo.

These two girls at my table, the star and the oval, are still untouched by the forces of society.  My toddler loves tractors, buses, climbing, and eating.  My preschooler is buoyant with self-assurance whether she’s learning letters or cartwheels.  But she also senses what it means to grow up, the inevitable path of baby to little girl, big girl to young woman. 

“Mommy, I want to have bubbies, too,” she tells me.  “When I’m 12, will I have bubbies?”  ”When I’m 12, will I still be a kid?”

“Yes, you’ll still be a kid,” I say.  But I’m not so sure.  When do girls grow out of their childhood magic, into the self-conscious “tween” and teenage years?  By 8^h grade I was obsessed with my shape– my body, not geometry.  I went on extreme diets, once eating nothing but rice-cakes for a week. 

Dull with depression, I leafed through the J. Crew catalog pretending I looked like the whippet-thin models in their tissue tees.  I made lists of everything I needed for happiness: 

-Thin Thighs

-Flat Stomach

-Long Hair

-J. Crew Hooded Sweatshirt in Mango or Sage

 My own mother was helpless in the face of my dark moods, though she balanced my self-loathing with her unconditional love.  She also was a life-long role model of healthy eating habits and natural, earthy beauty.  Some of my friends’ moms were always dieting and wearing gobs of make-up, and one (famously) got a face-lift.  The message to us girls:  You’ll never be good enough. 

A counter-culture feminist who went to Woodstock, my mom refused to buy me a Barbie doll and kept television out of the house during my childhood.  Of course, I played obsessively with Barbies at sleepovers and soaked up cartoons and Charlie’s Angels at my grandparents’ house.   I felt deprived and embarrassed by my family’s difference, but over time I came to wear it like a badge, proud that we all loved reading. 

Today I’m grateful for the limits my mother set, especially now I’m a parent and know how hard it is to deny your child anything. 

How will I handle my girls lusting for Barbies or the notoriously slutty Bratz dolls?  A. recently discovered an old Barbie (not mine, clearly) when visiting my mother.  She stroked the doll’s nude torso and remarked, “Look, she has bubbies!  She’s a Mommy!”

“Well, actually, she’s not a Mommy,” I corrected her.  “Do you see that her bubbies don’t have nipples?  And she doesn’t have a real booty, either.  Her body isn’t real.  Do you see?” 

 But she didn’t see; she just wanted to play.  I was desperate to teach her a lesson, show her that real women–Mommies, girls– shouldn’t strive for an impossible figure.  It’s something I need to remind myself when I watch the lithe, yet voluptuous actress Blake Lively strutting around Manhattan on “Gossip Girl.”

 Will I pass down to my girls this uniquely female experience of inadequacy?  I want my oldest to declare, “I’m a star!” on her first day of junior high.  But I remember my own self-consciousness as I walked those concrete-block halls in my plaid denim mini and royal blue flats, a carefully-planned outfit I realized was a mistake when I saw the popular girls sporting fluorescent tunics over tight leggings.

Perhaps insecurity is an inevitable part of growing up, male or female.  But does the process have to be excruciating?  Mary Pipher’s 1994 bestseller, Reviving Ophelia:  Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, examines the “girl-poisoning culture” that leads to increased media pressures, depression, self-mutilation, eating disorders, and sexual abuse in the lives of teenage girls. 

I read this book 15 years ago and saw my own experiences reflected in its pages, but now it resonates for me as a parent.  My heart sinks knowing my toddler will likely surrender her carefree love of food for the watchful, birdlike eating of many adolescent girls. 

 But both my daughters have strong wills and strong bodies.   This makes parenting them a challenge, but it bodes well for their future.  Whether or not I give them Barbies, I can love them for who they are, encourage their self-confidence, and celebrate their changing shapes, whatever they may be.

Tags:   Barbie · body image · Girls · growing up · ParentingNo Comments