A step toward the serious for a moment

When did we as a society get so size obsessed that we extended that standard to our children. I remember when I first got told I was fat. I was 12 years old and I had just started to develop curves. I wasn't fat. At All. But that comment (from my grandmother) and others like it started me on a downward spiral that lead me to spending my teenage years eating as little as possible. I remember only eating when people were looking and constantly obsessing. To this day, I don't know how to eat right. I have to ways of eating. The kind that leads to me gaining weight and the kind that leads to obsession, eating disorders, scale obsession, lying about how little I am eating and all the not so lovely obsession related things that come with dieting. I want so badly to lose weight. I want to be that curvy, skinny girl I see in my high school pictures. But I know that the reason I was there was because I hardly ever ate. I know that at my low point, I resorted to bulimia. I know that I secretly admired people who were anorexic because they had more willpower than I did. As a child, I was hospitalized for not eating. I want to lose weight but I don't want that anymore.

I am also scared for my Little Princess. She is tiny. She is a very slender girl. I hate it when I hear constantly how she is too skinny. She eats, I am constantly trying to get more food into her. But I don't want to pass along my food obsessions. I don't want her to obsess over her weight whether she be obsessing over being too big or being too small.

I have heard of a freinds little girl at three years old being told that she was going to grow up to be a linebacker. I have heard of another friends little girl at 2 1/2 looking into the mirror and telling herself that she was too fat. What are we passing along to our little girls? What are we telling them? We see these images and stories of girls in the public eye who have felt the need to resort to eating disorders to remain an acceptable size. Do we really want to pass this along to our kids?

And as for me, do I need to just remain fat in order to not pass along my eating issues to my baby girl? In doing so, am I passing along other issues? For the most part, I try to just be positive. I let her eat when she is hungry, I don't force her to when she is not. I make her eat healthy food before junk food. The way I look at it, I have obsessed over my body so much that I don't hear it when it tells me if I am hungry or full. I want her to learn to hear her body. I guess that is the only way I know to make sure she stays healthy and that she has a healthy respect and love for the enjoyment we can all get from eating.