Every Body Is Beautiful: Teaching Children about Size Acceptance

By Amy Votava
Issue 123, March/April 2004

Sidebar: Legacy

All I want to do is buy my prescription medication at the local drugstore. My five year old, Olivia, is holding my hand and walking next to me as we head toward the checkout counter. It should be an uneventful errand, but it isn’t.

First, we walk past the fashion magazines. Every cover features women that all look the same—white, in their 20s, very thin. I muse over headlines with such claims as, “LOSE WEIGHT WITH THE MIRACLE SANDWICH” or “GET THINNER WITH THE NEW CHOCOLATE DIET.” Next comes a point-of-purchase display of the pharmacy’s array of weight-related products. You name it, they sell it—cellulite cream, metabolism boosters, even a product that claims to have put “exercise in a bottle.” I grit my teeth and silently wish that I didn’t have to see all of these messages every time I fill my prescription. Then it hits me—I’m not the only one seeing them. I look down at Olivia, who is innocently singing a little song to herself and swinging my hand back and forth. My stomach lurches with double the force. The message being put forth to my daughter and me is this: a body with fat is a body with a problem.

In a well-known experiment, children were shown drawings of a variety of children. These drawings included a child of normal weight, a fat child, and children with various handicaps, including missing hands and disfigured faces. These children rated the fat child as the least likable. This bias also affected the larger children, who revealed the same prejudice. Children as young as six described a child with a fat silhouette as "lazy, dirty, stupid, ugly, cheats and lies."

Most of us strongly disapprove of our children making sweeping generalizations about particular racial, cultural, or religious groups, and make efforts to educate our children about such matters. But we parents need to ask ourselves: When it comes to body size, do we make the same effort?

Educate About the Biology of Size
In order for children to begin to celebrate diversity in body size, they need to be informed that body size and shape are largely genetic matters. There is no doubt about the fact that we can choose our behaviors. We can choose to satisfy our appetites with healthy food, eating when we are hungry and stopping when we are full. We can choose to make exercise a part of our lives. But the body that results from these efforts is something we cannot choose.

Dr. Craig Johnson, director of the Eating Disorders Program at Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, was recently answering questions on an Internet forum hosted by PBS. In part of his response to a depressed person’s plea for a way to lose weight, he said: “The problem is that very few people have the genetic potential to be the size and shape idealized in our culture. That is the stone-cold harsh reality of genetically mediated weight and shape regulation. I make a point with my patients that I am 5’ 10” tall. If I developed a belief system that I would only have self-esteem if I could become 6’ 2” tall, I would be doomed to low self-esteem.”2 We wouldn’t tell a child that 2 + 2 = 15. Similarly, we shouldn’t be teaching children that diet plus exercise equals thin.

Here’s a point where you can give yourself a refresher course, as well. Don’t you try to notice if you happen to have a racist thought? Do you evaluate and examine these thoughts? Do the same with thoughts that are size-biased. Do you find yourself assuming that the large person you just saw eats too much, is lazy, or both? If you are large, do you say these things to yourself? If you find yourself assuming that a fat person you see eats too much, remind yourself that this may not be true. Some people who are large—as well as some people who are thin—are compulsive eaters. Some are not. You simply can’t know this about someone by looking at them.

If you homeschool your children, a curriculum for this is available: Healthy Body Image: Teaching Kids to Eat and Love Their Bodies Too!, by Kathy Kater.3 This is a series of lessons developed for third and fourth graders to empower prepubescent students to form a foundation for the acceptance of various body types, based on recognizing what they can and can’t control in regard to body size and shape. If you don’t homeschool your children, call the school they attend and suggest that the school include this program, or something like it, in its syllabus.