Talking about Body Image

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-koppelkam/body-image_b_3678534.html   <=Read this first.

I read an article by the Huffington Post telling mothers how to talk to their daughters about their body.

“Step one: don't talk to your daughter about her body unless it's to tell her how it works.”

It goes on with lots of good ideas about how to better compliment your daughter then to talk about how she looks, and I agree with some of the points about eating and cooking healthy food and teaching her to be athletic for the sake of athleticism, but on the article as a whole I disagree entirely.

If you aren't going to talk to your daughter about her body, who will? Maybe it will be her friends, who have body image issues of their own because they're teenagers and sometimes that's something they go through. Or maybe it will be other kids who won't be as nice about it. Or maybe the media will do that job for you. And if they do it, you can guarantee that they'll get it wrong.
No matter what your daughter looks like the media will find a way of making her hate some aspect of her body, and because you haven't told her what's good about herself, she may not realize that she isn't supposed to look like the glossy airbrushed photos in Cosmo or Vogue. Just because you don't talk to her about it, doesn't mean she won't go through all the same things that other girls go through when they look at themselves and don't like what they see.
Worse yet, because you didn't talk to her about it, she might think it's an off limits conversation and not be able to talk to you about it.

Body image, much like any other issue, won't go away just because you ignore it. While it's much better to model a healthy lifestyle and promote internal beauty over good looks or being thin, it's just as important to help your daughter understand her physical body. She needs to learn to love the parts about her that make her physically beautiful just as much as she needs to know that being smart is just as important, if not infinitely more important, than being beautiful.

And she needs to learn how to deal with the parts of herself she doesn't like. Does she need to lose weight? As much as we want large women to feel equally beautiful in their bodies, sometimes weight is a legitimate health concern. Sometimes she needs to be able to look at herself honestly and say, “my body isn't healthy like this, I should fix it.” Then she needs to know how to change her lifestyle to be more active and more healthy. If she looks at herself in the mirror and cannot accurately judge if there is something wrong, then she may be putting herself at risk for diabetes or other heart and health concerns.

I'm not saying that you should ever tell your daughter she's fat and should go on a diet, but you are her mother/father and it is your job to help promote a healthy lifestyle for her and keep her safe from harm. Sometimes you may just have to talk about her body, or your body or the bodies of other women.
On that note:

“Don't comment on other women's bodies. Nope. Not a single comment, not a nice one, not a mean one.”

Really? Don't tell your daughter that the pictures of Kim Kardashian and her all too famous sisters that dawn the cover of every magazine in the grocery store aren't real or accurate? I shouldn't point out that women don't look like that without a lot of help from technology that paints the picture to make it more beautiful? Why not? If I don't it is entirely possible for a little girl to go through life believing that she should look like Kim Kardashian, or Katie Holmes, or Scarlett Johansson. And she never will, because in real life we don't get to photoshop out our belly buttons. Our daughters need to know what a good role model for physical beauty is, and better yet, what a role model for physical health looks like. She needs to understand why people look different, and how she can effect the look of her own body. Sure, try not to be nasty to other women because you don't like the way they look, but we need to look at the world around us and understand it, not be naive to the fact that some women weren't born looking like Barbie.

If we make the choice not to talk about our bodies they will not magically become perfect. We need to be aware of them and their physical needs. That means discussing our flaws and then assessing their value and worth.
For example: my mom hates her stretch marks, but always reminds us that even though she hates them she also loves that they are part of the process that gave her three wonderful children. We have always joked about the fact that we have curves from our big hips, big thighs and big bust. We discuss the problems and the beauty of them. We talk about what we like, what we would wish away and what we try and change. We discuss weight loss efforts while reassuring each other that we are beautiful at any size. We celebrate weight loss and ignore the small increases. We talk openly and honestly about how we feel about ourselves and we help each other find things in their own body to love. I make sure to flatter my sister when she wears clothes that suit her and talk her out of clothes that don't. As much as we hate it, it is our responsibility to teach our children about their physical body, inside and out.

The last point of contention I have with this article is that it is about talking to your daughters. With the rapid increase of anorexia and other eating disorders in men, I think it is equally important to talk to our sons about their image. They are hit with images as well, of men with airbrushed six packs and photoshopped muscles. They need to understand too that these images are not something to build your body image around. That no amount of steroids or hours at the gym will make you look like that. They need to be as comfortable in their own bodies as they can be, same as girls.
Body image is pretty much universal in our western society and we need to arm our children by reminding them they are beautiful and special in their own way. They need to learn to love and accept themselves while still having a realistic view of their own body. Rather than make it appear to be nothing, we need to help them through it and find themselves in whoever they happen to be.