Friday, February 02, 2007

Article in the Daily Camera by Isabelle on Body Image

In the mirror: Teens struggle with body image(Daily Camera, 1/29/07)

The 13-year-old girl refused to untie her sweater from around her waist.
She was ashamed of her stomach. She thought everyone was looking at how fat it was, like it was a deformity. She began dieting and weighing herself about 20 times a day.
She was at the edge of developing an eating disorder, but her mother caught her just in time. She brought her daughter to a therapist, and within two months, the girl began loosening up the sweater until she felt confident enough to lose it completely.
The girl's therapist described her as "teeny tiny" — no stomach bulge at all. But the girl saw her body differently.
Like many other American teenagers — mostly girls — she had a warped body image. A person's body image is not necessarily connected to reality, local therapists say.
Think: If you're having a good day and you feel upbeat, you are more likely to think you look good. If you're stressed and depressed, you are likely to feel unattractive, even if you look the same as you usually do.
Developing a healthy body image is crucial for adolescents; a negative image can lead to a lifetime of eating disorders and low self-esteem.
And these perceptions begin at the beginning. Even toddlers pick up messages from society, their parents, daycare and friends about how they should view their bodies. If parents don't clear up mixed messages and let their children know they are more than their body shape, children can start to act out dangerous eating habits.
Local therapists tell stories about increasingly more preteens popping diet pills, skipping lunch or heading to the bathrooms at school to purge what they do eat at lunch.
One 4-year-old girl refused to eat the snacks at her preschool because she was afraid of getting fat.
Two-thirds of all American girls have been on a diet before the age 10. Nearly half of 9- to 11-year-olds are "sometimes" or "very often" on diets, according to a study by Colgate University. Forty-two percent of first- to third-grade girls said they want to be thinner, another national study showed.
Eighty percent of 10-year-olds said in another national survey they were afraid of being fat.
Superior-based therapist Dorie McCubbrey knows that fear firsthand. She developed an eating disorder in elementary school, after seeing most of the women in her family diet regularly. Parents have a tremendous impact as role models for their children, be it good or bad, McCubbrey says.
"This is the season right now to be losing weight," says McCubbrey, who now counsels people on healthy weight maintenance and body acceptance. "There are healthy ways to lose weight, and if you are trying to lose weight, be very careful about what you say in front of your kids, because they will pick it up."
When a person's body image is inaccurate, it often means they're using their body as something they can change when they feel like their life is out of control, according to McCubbrey. She saw one 6-year-old girl who refused to eat after her parents got a divorce.
"Any kind of trauma, whether mild or severe, can trigger someone to use their body as a means of control," McCubbrey says. "And that needs to be taken very seriously."
'Your body's a wonderland'
Isabelle Tierney, a therapist in Boulder, says 80 percent of her clients struggle with their body image. She speaks to local students and trains school counselors about positive body image.
Few people admire their bodies for the "marvels" that they are, Tierney says. She often guides her clients through meditation where they think about their skin, muscles, blood, the cells and the complex organs inside.
"Nobody teaches kids and adolescents how incredible the body is, the way the muscles work," she says. "It allows me to jump, run, wrestle. When you start seeing your body, as opposed to an object that is supposed to look a certain way to be liked, but as a magnificent system — and if you take care of it, it'll work for you — it shifts you into an incredible place where you think, 'Wow, my body is amazing.'"
Tierney runs the Web site, www.bodybeloved.com, which teaches and "inside-out" view on body image. That means letting your inside define your outside, rather than letting your feelings depend on what's going on outside: How others view you, whether you're in a good mood, if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend.
Tierney recommends teaching this as young as possible.
"I have three kids myself, and I always say, 'What does your body need? Take care of this machine working for you,'" she says.
Celebrating real beauty
As a teenager, Audrey Brashich got caught up in society's definition of beauty. She was a teen model, landing gigs with magazines such as YM, Seventeen, Elle Girl, Cosmo Girl, Lucky and Self.
Brashich also was elected to her New York high school's student government, one of the first girls chosen since the school's founding in 1709, she says.
No one seemed to care about that.
"I was in a bunch of magazines, and a lot of people were asking me about that," she says. "Why is that so much more important than something else that took a lot of intelligence to achieve?"
Brashich, who now lives in Canada, says society's messages to girls perplexed her. So she decided to do some research.
Brashich published a book in May, "A Girl's Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty," a body image and media literacy guide for teens. She says some girls don't realize there is more to life than feeling "pretty."
"The girls I've spoken to are torn. They want to fit in to what is beautiful, but be valued for other things they know are important and are told are important," she says.
She urges parents and teachers to talk to their children about what they see in the media — "raise questions and get kids thinking about what they see," she says.
"If you ask kids what's important in a role model, they'll make a mini list, or if you ask them what professions are the most important in the world, they'll probably say doctors and teachers," Brashich says. "Then ask them to name famous doctors and teachers, and they'll have a harder time. It shows them that we know these things are important, yet we don't see them in the media. Let's find them."
Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at (303) 473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.

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