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Essence Jan, 2006

I love you just the way you are: five ways to stop the self-hate and boost your child's body confidence

Lori L. Tharps
Courtney Adams * was always a big little girl. By the time she was in the fourth grade, she was the same size as her teacher--five feet five inches tall at almost 150 pounds--and not happy about it. "Courtney would hunch her shoulders to try to appear smaller," recalls Pamela Johnston,* Courtney's guidance counselor at a mostly African-American elementary school in Brooklyn. "It was as if she wanted to make herself invisible," Johnston recalls.

For Courtney, being big was the source of all her problems. "She felt she was different," Johnston explains. "Courtney didn't know how to interact with her peers in or out of the classroom, and her academics went downhill." Courtney's situation, Johnston says, was not an anomaly. "I was working with girls and boys as young as kindergartners who didn't like the way they looked because of their hair or body," she recalls.

For ages we've accepted that the Black community has different standards of beauty and body image than the mainstream. But "more and more we see Black children having a general dissatisfaction with who they are," says Connie Sobczak, cofounder of The Body Positive, an organization in Berkeley, California, that promotes healthy body image. The girls, she says, want to be skinnier or curvier. For boys, it's about wanting more muscles or being taller.

More alarming, though, is that our children's dissatisfaction may be starting earlier and earlier. "[In general] kids as young as 6 are saying, 'I'm supposed to be different from what I am,' "Sobczak says. If parents don't recognize that their kids are plagued by these self-hating thoughts, serious problems can arise. Poor body image is linked to drug and alcohol use, she warns. And eating disorders can also result when a child is unhappy with her physical self.

So what should a concerned mother do to make sure her Black children always feel beautiful, inside and out? Follow these suggestions to raise body-confident kids.

Heal thyself.

"Parents have to make peace with their own body-image issues so they don't pass them on to their kids," says Abby Ellin, author of Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs In on Living Large, Losing Weight, and How Parents Can (and Can't) Help (PublicAffairs). Children mirror parents' behaviors and adopt their attitudes. If you speak negatively about your dark skin, your sons might pick up on it and do the same. If you only praise women with long hair, your daughter may think she needs flowing locks to be pretty.

Show her the love.

"Don't criticize your kids based on their appearance," advises Ellin, who recalls growing up overweight with a mother who was concerned about weight. "Show your child you love her no matter what she looks like." If your child struggles with weight, don't make him feel you won't love him until he loses those extra pounds. "The home has to be a safe place for your kids where they feel accepted," Ellin says.

Watch what she's watching.

Children are bombarded with hundreds of images every day--from raunchy music videos on TV to the Internet--that depict unrealistic body images. "You can't stop the media," says Ophira Edut, media consultant and editor of the multicuitural anthology Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image (Seal Press). "What you can do is help children dissect what they're seeing. Empower them to understand the nature of advertising."

Sobczak of The Body Positive agrees: "Ask questions like 'Do you know anyone who actually looks like that?' Or discuss such questions as 'Who's making money off your not liking who you are?'" Considering that children spend most of their daytime hours in school, Edut also strongly suggests that parents advocate for media literacy as part of the curricula.

Provide positive reinforcement.

Even as you communicate the right messages to your child, she still won't be protected from the rest of the world. A Black girl who is constantly praised for her Nubian beauty at home must nevertheless confront a society that idealizes blond hair, blue eyes and a European body type.

"The outside messages will get in, so parents have to balance them out," says Ayana Byrd, coauthor of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin's Griffin). Byrd suggests taking your children on outings that highlight Black beauty, such as to a museum featuring beautiful Black images. "Try to surround them with real people who look like them and who embrace our unique beauty."

Take it to another level

Nike may have coined the phrase "If you let me play sports ..." to advertise its sneakers, but the research doesn't lie. According to a report by The President's Council on Sports and Fitness, exercise and sports participation can enhance mental health by offering adolescent girls positive feelings about body image, improved self-esteem, tangible experiences of competency and success, and increased self-confidence. Preliminary research suggests the same positive body confidence for boys involved in sports.

Today Courtney Adams is in sixth grade and is still bigger than many of her peers. But with the counseling she received at school and the positive role models she has in the women in her family, her self-esteem has greatly improved. "I have very high expectations that Courtney is going to be fine," says Pamela Johnston, her guidance counselor "She has accepted who she is and knows that it's all right to be different."