I can’t wait to talk about the kids’ cool stuff from the weekend, but I’m still working on getting those pictures together so I’m tackling this instead.
Saturday evening found the four of us at our friend’s house for his backyard BBQ. He’d said it would be kid friendly and it most definitely was…we walked through the gate into a gorgeous backyard where the first thing we saw was a trampoline with at least six kids jumping. There was a beautiful blue sky that afternoon, but it felt as though the sky dimmed and a spotlight shimmered on the trampoline while a choir of angels sang.
Despite the fact that we’d all skipped lunch suddenly neither kid was at all hungry or thirsty, just anxious to go play. I made a few feeble attempts at pushing dinner but then decided whatever, they’ll eat when they’re hungry, and watched them run off to join the jumping crew. My kids love a trampoline so, short of an injury, I figured we wouldn’t see them for at least an hour.
BrightSide and I headed into the house to get some food (because I was definitely hungry, and the trampoline had no gravitational pull on me). We settled at a table to eat and visit with friends and, true to form, it was probably about an hour before the first kid popped through the door.
I could tell in a second that something was wrong. Bear’s face was tight and her eyes were swimming, just barely holding back the tears as she made a beeline for the table. I excused us and we ducked around the corner where we sat on some stairs while Bear dissolved into sobs. It took a few tries to get the story out, but she finally managed to tell me what had ruined such a wonderful start to the party.
She had been working on a front flip on the trampoline. Another child was spotting her (which kind of freaked me out, but I managed to keep quiet for the moment) and I guess she was having some trouble landing it. This would be when T-man decided to show his ass.
(I’d like to point out here that I don’t mean this in a “my child sucks” kind of way. When they were young I’d call it showing their rear end, as in “Don’t think I won’t pull you out if you decide to show your rear end in here.” The kids take turns being ugly as only kids can be. Saturday evening happened to be T-man’s turn in rotation.)
Anyway, T-man is remarkably skilled in flips of all sorts and took advantage of this opportunity to dig at his sister since she was struggling. He announced to the group that she couldn’t do the flip because “she’s a hundred pounds.” (Yeah, I know, every female reading this just winced.) Bear was horrified and denied it, saying she only weighed 80 pounds, at which point T-man outed her by naming her exact weight for everyone to hear.
Bear told me all this between gulping sobs with tears streaking her cheeks as I sat there aghast, wondering which issue I should tackle first. T-man’s cruelty? Bear’s reaction to his statement? The lie she tossed out there to counter his announcement? Letting some random kid spot her flip?
I think there’s some kind of time-space continuum that comes into play for parents at times like this one. These moments seem to take forever when I’m confronted with so many factors to process, but it usually only takes a few seconds to sort through everything and form a plan of attack.
In this case I targeted the most painful betrayal first, her brother being hateful and telling her personal information. (We’re big on privacy around here.) I reassured her that I’d talk to him as soon as we were done, that it had been very wrong for him to speak to her that way and he had no right to share her weight with anyone. That was pretty much all I could do there.
Then I tackled the bigger issue. I gently asked her to tell me truthfully if the number she saw on the scale bothered her and, after scrunching up her face, she said yes and started crying again. When I asked her why it all came tumbling out, and I found myself gripping the stairs to control my temper.
It seems that this topic is all the rage among the (THIRD GRADE) girls in her class. But it’s not just a conversation; apparently this has been a hardcore slam. Other girls have been telling her that they’re “perfect” because they’re skinny and she’s not because she’s fat, and Bear’s taken it so much to heart that she’s beating herself up over a stupid number on the scale. Seriously, it was all I could do not to run screaming from the house.
So I asked Bear, out of curiosity, could she tell me who had been saying these things. She named three girls, paused, and then said it was basically all the girls in the class who were talking about weight. Now here’s an angle that bothers me but I can’t address it with her because this is SO not the message I want to send. The first two girls she named AREN’T SKINNY. I mean, what the hell?! But I can’t say that to her because I’m encouraging her to focus on being healthy, not being skinny, so I’d be throwing myself under the bus with that conversation.
So while adults throughout the house were enjoying BBQ and drinks, I was sitting on the stairs talking with my daughter about body image. How confusing it is because people who look normal (like Bear and me) aren’t the ones on the tv shows and in the movies, so we don’t see ourselves as an ideal. How we’re taught from a very young age that skinny is best, skinny is pretty, skinny is smart and popular and all things good.
And that this is wrong.
Because the number on the scale doesn’t reflect what’s truly important — that you’re active and healthy and happy with who you are.
I told her again that muscle weighs more than fat, so the muscles that make her strong and powerful will by their nature make her weight higher than some of her friends. But those same muscles are what make her faster, stronger, and feel better when hour four of field day rolls around…
I also reminded her of a story BrightSide loves to tell about a pre-kids trip we took to Hawaii. We went to a luau during which the male dancers asked women in the audience if they could carry them under the limbo stick, and one of the dancers made the (somewhat unfortunate) decision to ask me. I tried to politely decline but it was one of those things — he kept insisting, the people at the table had the whole “go on, it’ll be fun” attitude — so I ended up saying yes.
BrightSide still chuckles when he remembers the look on that guy’s face when he picked me up, realizing that he’d have to limbo while carrying me and probably wondering what the hell would happen if he dropped a guest. As I recall, this was a strong guy and I’m sure he was used to quickly eyeballing the audience to find a good partner. The problem is that I’m…dense. (Not in the intellectual sense.) I, like my daughter, have a muscular build so people often underestimate my weight. Not a significant problem in real life, but probably not so great for that guy’s back the next day. (And no, he didn’t drop me. It was extremely impressive.)
At any rate, my reassurance seemed to help and my luau story cheered her up because she ran off to play again. But I was left feeling sad and angry and weary.
Because my 9-year-old Bear hates her body so much that she felt the need to lie about her weight. That her class is even talking about body issues. And that girls as young as third grade are already learning to tear each other down.
It was a sad moment indeed.
Riddle from the Middle 