I started working a couple months ago. Only in the evening and only 2 nights a week adn the odd Saturday. It’s the perfect time schedule for me. Not only that but at work I get to see all the latest and greatest new products for kids and get to see all the consigned clothes before anybody else so I can take all the good stuff before anyone else, theoretically. It was my intention to capitalize on working at a women’s and kid’s clothing store but the truth is that I am more excited to talk to like minded moms than anything else.

Today I had a mom come into work and ask me if I was the woman who wrote an article on PPD in a local birthing magazine. That was the best part of my day. I also got to talk to a new mom about baby wearing and help her find a baby carrier that she liked. I love talking about mom stuff!

Today though I was working in the back near the fitting rooms and I get to hear a mom and her two daughters talking while they tried stuff on. One of the daughters was a young teenager and the other was about 8 or 9. I kept hearing comments like this,

What do you think about these jeans? Does it make my butt look big?
Does this shirt make me stomach look too big?
You know, when I lost that 40 pounds I could have fit into those jeans.

I constantly heard the mom or the teenager asking about whether something made them look fat or too big. I couldn’t get it out of my head that there was a young girl in there listening to all these self conscious comments and she is inevitably going to take on the same body image and worry about how she looks in a pair of jeans.

She’s only a little girl!

I worry so much about what kinds of messages I’m sending to Jocelyn about body image. It seems to me that the kids worrying about how they look are getting younger and younger. I know of kids who are on diets and teenagers who have been battling eating disorders for years.

It’s so sad to me that our idea of what is healthy is so off kilter with what is really best for our bodies. We eat crap food too often and we don’t exercise enough. On the other hand we also expect our daughters to be smaller than they can when they’re eating poorly. This same mom who was commenting to her daughter about how a pair of jeans looked too tight, said later that she was taking them out to eat.

If we aren’t consistent with how we talk about our bodies and how we take care of them than how will our daughters learn to do anything else?