Kung Fu instead of diet!
At the age of ten, my daughter was a healthy, bright child, completely normal. I didn't think it was normal when she suddenly stood in front of the mirror, pinched her stomach and said: «Look how fat I am.»
In my primary school, there was a fat person in every class who was teased because of his weight. That wasn't right either, but my daughter wasn't even fat. Not in the slightest. So why was she already worried about her figure at such a tender age?
Of course I know the problem from my youth, but I've long since come to terms with the issue, which is not an issue in our family. Even the evil lifestyle magazines or MTV couldn't be to blame for my daughter's clouded body image. She has never watched television or read magazines. «Where did you get the idea that you could be fat?» I asked. It was the girlfriends. They compared themselves, set the standard and then they said: you're fat.
Becoming a woman in this society means mutating into an aesthetic defect list.
Every culture has its own initiation rituals. According to Wikipedia, this refers to «the introduction of an outsider (an aspirant) into a community or their ascent to another personal state of being, for example from child to man, from novice to monk or from layperson to shaman». Although our culture has little to do with rituals, we can still count on female initiation. Her ritual: the scrutinising gaze of others. And not just the male gaze, but also the gaze of other women.
Becoming a woman in this society means mutating into an aesthetic list of shortcomings. Hair, breasts, bum, face, thighs - women are constantly discovering new areas in which they can cultivate their lack of perfection - after the arms (triceps!) and the knees (not too bony), it is now the pubic area that must be equipped with perfect inner (small!) and outer (lush and full!) labia. The catalogue of requirements seems to be getting longer and longer, fuelled by the many so-called «influencers» on Instagram. Accordingly, problematic body image no longer begins in puberty, but as early as kindergarten.
In my secondary school class, the girls infected each other with their eating disorders. One of them only ate salad without sauce, the others kept diet yoghurt in the fridge on class trips or vomited after eating. I was also afraid of being or becoming too fat back then and starved myself for a few months until I had lost ten kilos and looked like a scarecrow. After that, I decided that this couldn't be a solution either.
At some point, the eating disorders of the others levelled off into normal eating neurosis. Today, young girls have completely different aesthetic problems for which they like to run to their uncle doctor. He pumps silicone into their breasts and collagen into their lips, corrects their labia and tightens anything else they don't like. Beauty, or the desire to fulfil an impossible ideal, is now a question of performance or whether you can afford it.
Of course it's fine for women to look after themselves and fulfil their aesthetic desires and if silicone boobs are the way to happiness, why not? But I'm bothered by the immense pressure to make everything look standardised and in doing so, an endless amount of time, money and energy is wasted that should actually be used for smarter things.
And what do I tell my daughter? I am embarrassed. It's a bit like when a relative of a friend dies. You're afraid of saying the wrong thing, but you can't ignore it either. So I said: «You're not fat. Everyone is built differently, some a little firmer, others less so.» And then I sent her to kung fu. It's much more important to feel good than to look good. And strong. That's what girls should care about - not their body mass index.
© Tages-Anzeiger/Mamablog
About the author
Michèle Binswanger is a graduate philosopher, journalist and author. She writes on social issues, is the mother of two children and lives in Basel.