As the holidays approach I’m already hearing friends worry about how much they’ll eat at Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas feasts. It’s a topic that pops up every year at this time in every group of women I know. It’s a strangely negative backdrop to the overall messages of abundance and gratitude during the winter holidays.
And it has a negative effect on girls who overhear and recreate the conversations of their moms, grandmas, aunts and teachers. It’s a shame to teach girls, through our own example, that abundance and gratitude are the hallmarks of the season EXCEPT when it comes to food and their bodies. Then they are supposed to deny themselves abundance and criticize themselves and their bodies.
I say it’s time to replace the self-torment with actual gratitude for our bodies. We need to say out loud, in the hearing of girls, that we’re grateful for our bodies and all they do. And then we need to repeat it just as often as we used to repeat our self-bashing scripts about “being bad” for eating certain foods.
Tonight we’re chatting on Twitter and this blog about this – sharing tips and changing the messages we pass on to girls. A few of the things we’ll be talking about:
- What common things do you hear women say about our bodies during winter holiday season?
- What do you want to tell the girls you love about body image during the holidays?
- Why do so many holiday season conversations between women focus on weight and body image?
- How can we show girls that we love and respect our and their bodies regardless of size, shape, disability, etc.?
- How can we shift the holiday season conversation to be about body gratitude, not self-bashing?
- What words do you like best to express body gratitude in Nov & Dec?
To talk with other parents about how to help girls be grateful for their body, especially during the holidays, join me and four other awesome advocates for girls on Nov 10.
Thursday Nov 10 at 9pm est/8 cst/7 mst/6 pst for a chat on Twitter. Follow hash tag #girlsnow. Add it to the end of your tweet so we can see your question or comment.
Before the chat follow @Nancy_Newmoon, @PigtailPals, @BeABetterWoman, @AudreyBrashich, @DrRobyn .
If you’re not on Twitter you can still participate live on my blog. We want to hear from you!
If you can’t make it live, the transcript will be available afterward at my blog.
My c0-advocates are:
Amy Harman of Becoming A Better Woman
Dr. Robyn Silverman, author of Good Girls Don’t Get Fat
Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals
Audrey Brashich, author of All Made Up
