Raising Girls with Better Body Image: FAQs

by | Oct 5, 2018

By Lexie Kite, Ph.D.

Aunt Lindsay, 2-year-old Logan, and Mama Lexie

Some of the most frequent questions we’re asked about body image revolve around teaching and raising young girls. The reasons why are obvious: It is extremely difficult to live in a female body, let alone raise girls growing up in this wildly objectifying world. Far too often, girls grow up being taught that they are to be looked at above all else. It doesn’t always happen so explicitly, but it happens consistently and implicitly if your eyes are open.

We talk to little girls about their pretty dresses and hair. Their toys and favorite characters have idealized and sexualized bodies and faces. We give them dress-up kits and makeup and play vanities. Most diet pills and weight loss plans are targeted directly at women and they see their moms, aunts and sisters on constant diets. In the top children’s and family movies, male characters outnumber female characters 2:1 in leading and supporting roles and speaking time, and female characters are three times more likely to be shown in sexually revealing clothing and to be verbally objectified. On social media, girls see that the most popular influencers bare their bodies — often framed as “fitspiration,” “body positivity,” or empowerment. With a cell phone in hand, girls are undoubtedly pressured by boys to send sexy pictures in exchange for male approval and attention or to avoid being insulted and rejected.

No wonder rates of eating disorders have skyrocketed, with hospitalizations for little girls 12 and under doubling during the last decade. Rates of cosmetic surgery increased more than 137 percent since 2000, with 92 percent of those voluntary procedures (mostly liposuction and breast enhancement) performed on women – many younger than 18. And the constant body monitoring of self-objectification we know so well is leaving even the youngest of girls and the oldest of women with fewer cognitive resources available for mental and physical activities, including mathematics, logical reasoning, spatial skills, and athletic performance. No wonder women and girls face such immense pain and shame in their bodies. If we listen to the profit-driven lies in the world, we are bodies to be looked at, judged, and constantly in need of fixing.

Click here to see Lindsay’s incredible TEDx talk

Our work at Beauty Redefined illuminates that pain that comes to just feel like a normal part of girlhood and womanhood, but it also shines a light on the ways difficult experiences and feelings about our bodies can work for us instead of against us — giving us opportunities to push back on discomfort and objectification. Our game-changing approach to body image resilience explains the way we can become stronger because of our shame and painful experiences — not in spite of them. So many of you who are raising, guiding, or working to be a good example to young girls ask us how on earth you can help them navigate the pitfalls of objectification, and we want you to know that we believe in your power to do this successfully. It is your job to shine a light on the soul-sucking messages from real-life people, online people, media and companies that reinforce the lie that we are bodies to be looked at first and humans second. We are counting on you to call out those lies and replace them with the TRUTH.

We are more than bodies. We have work to do, and the world is desperate for every one of us to understand our purpose beyond our looks so we can lead fulfilling lives and contribute good to a world that needs us — not just a pretty vision of us, but all of us. Let’s teach and demonstrate this truth to the girls in our lives.

Raising Girls with Positive Body Image: FAQs

 

What do I do if she asks, “Am I pretty?”

Of course you think she’s adorable, and she should know that. But, more importantly, she is more than pretty or cute or adorable. Tell her who she is – smart, loving, curious, energetic, creative, articulate, compassionate, talented, etc. “I see the way you include those kids that no one else talks to. You are so kind and compassionate.” Or “You are an incredible artist. You have a gift that helps people feel happy!” Or anything else that helps her see her PURPOSE that extends far beyond how well she decorates the earth. When she can find her many purposes, she will feel less need to look to her beauty or her body to find purpose, love, and acceptance.

 

Follow us on IG at beauty_redefined for more of this inspiration.

What do I do if she calls herself or someone else fat or asks if she’s fat?

Respond without putting a value on fat. It’s not good or bad, it’s not mean or nice, it just is. “Our fat keeps us warm, protects our insides and our bodies use it as energy. Isn’t that cool?” or “You are so lucky your body has fat on it – that means you’re alive and well.” Talk openly about how some bodies have more fat than others, for lots of different reasons, and that isn’t a good indicator of whether someone is healthy or not. We only need to worry about ourselves, and we should avoid talking about other people’s bodies. The second you respond to her calling someone fat by telling her “that’s not nice,” you are teaching her that fat is bad. Be a champion for body diversity.

What do I do if she wants to go on a diet or is restricting food?

Let her know that many people and companies in this world try to convince little girls and grown women that they should shrink and take up less space, but it’s a mean lie. This lie is intended to get girls to spend money and time worrying about their bodies instead of living and leading and serving and taking up space doing good in the world — and, too often, it works. Talk to her about how our bodies need and want food for lots of reasons, including for fuel and enjoyment, and that by paying attention to how she feels when she eats, she can take better care of her body and trust that her body will lead her toward choices that are good for her and that have nothing to do with her body size or shape. Let her know strict diets hurt our bodies and almost never lead to sustained weight loss. (Tip: Read the book “Intuitive Eating” and if you want more personalized help with all this complicated food stuff, find a non-diet dietitian.)

Do I need to stop putting on makeup in front of her since I want her to know she doesn’t need it to feel good about herself?

You don’t necessarily need to stop wearing makeup, but be real with her. Show her (and yourself) that you can live without makeup, and that you are YOU without needing any extras. Go to the store without mascara. Swim and workout makeup-free. Show her your reality so that she can appreciate her own. When your daughter is old enough, start talking to her about how hard it is to justify wearing makeup when you want her to know she’s perfect without it. Talk to her about how women and men are held to different standards where women have to decorate themselves – just to look “normal” – in ways men are not asked to do. Tell her about how billion-dollar industries are set up to make sure women are self-conscious of their eyelashes and the size of their pores and the shape of their brows and the color of their hair and all hair below their eyes and the size and shape of their breasts and behinds. Help her make choices for her own body that aren’t based in shame or feelings of needing to “hide” or “fix” in order to feel OK. Keep an open dialogue and challenge her to resist giving into profit-driven beauty ideals as long as she possibly can. It’s much easier to never start wearing makeup, getting eyelash extensions, waxing, dying hair, etc., than it is to stop once those things become your “normal.”

Lexie with her 2-year-old, Logan. Click here to grab an “instrument not ornament” shirt, decal or sticky note pad for yourself!

Should I even talk to her about her body at all?

A popular answer in recent years has been to skip body talk entirely. But we disagree! Don’t pretend like her body doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. Instead, teach her how incredible her body is, regardless of her appearance or ability level. Talk to her about how her body is an instrument, not an ornament. Encourage her to think of use her body as an instrument for her own benefit and experience in all the ways she feels called to do – as a soccer player, a violinist, an artist, a singer, a gymnast, babysitter, a club president, a swimmer. Treat your own body the same way so she can see that you are first and foremost a woman that knows her body is good for much more than being looked at. Swim even when you are so nervous to be seen. Run after that frisbee even though you might sweat and jiggle. Raise your hand in that meeting even though it makes your heart pound. She will need to learn to push through her own self-consciousness that creeps in with age, especially for girls, and especially during puberty. Any thought or outside message that tries to tell her she is an ornament can be successfully challenged by reframing her perspective and reclaiming her power as an instrument for her own use, experience, and benefit.

What do I do when other people consistently compliment her for her beauty or thinness?

We recommend being firm and explicit about avoiding these comments whenever possible. When appropriate, let them know you are working to make sure she (and all girls and women!) know they are so much more than decorations, so you and she are working to notice and compliment people on more than their outsides. Work to change the conversation to illuminate the fact that she is more than her body. “Did you know she has been learning Spanish?” or “[Insert name], do you want to tell them about the book you’ve been reading?” Let them know it’s hard, but so worth it to remind girls and women of their value beyond their looks. It can be helpful to illuminate your reasons for avoiding body talk. For example, if a loved one has struggled with disordered eating or self-consciousness, consider telling the commenter about that problem and explain that you are working to avoid those problems in any way you can. When thinness is explicitly complimented,  try something along the lines of, “We’re actually working together to get rid of the ‘thinner is better’ mindset since we’ve seen how much it has hurt people we love.”

In summary: You’ve got this. Don’t be down on yourself for past mistakes or when you feel like you’ve messed up in your actions or messaging toward the kids in your life. Learn all you can about body image and resilience, and do your very best. Make sure the girls in your life feel your love and admiration regardless of how they look — that alone will improve their chances of developing positive body image. We are all more than a body.Once we can see more in ourselves and everyone around us, we can be more!

If you want more guidance on this stuff, we worked for years to develop and test our online Body Image Resilience course that is available to individuals 14+. Through an in-depth 8-week video course (that also includes full text, graphics and audio), participants can learn how to 1) recognize harmful messages in media and culture about female bodies; 2) reflect on the ways those ideals have impacted your life; 3) redefine the ways you think about beauty, health and individual worth; and 4) develop resilience through your own path that utilizes four sources of power.

Save Your Girls From Instagram

by | Jun 27, 2018

By Lexie Kite, Ph.D.

I know a 12-year-old girl who is the embodiment of our famous Beauty Redefined mantra: My body is an instrument, not an ornament. She is kind, innocent, active, and largely free from the burden of living to be looked at that is placed upon women’s shoulders around the age of puberty. Today, that girl joined Instagram.

When I think about her scrolling through the explore page, I envision her being shoved from childhood into adulthood, sinking in a pool of dehumanizing lessons with every scroll:

You exist for others’ viewing pleasure. Your happiness and self-worth is directly connected to your ability to command increasing likes, follows, and DMs. Your beauty is defined by specific ideals set constantly out of reach and ever changing. You joy will come from documenting perfectly posed, styled, and edited images of your experiences – not the experiences themselves. Your looks are your most valuable asset. Your body will earn you love, popularity, and self-esteem.

These are messages girls and women are taught every day – through media, but also through the ways we talk to them, the toys they play with, the ways they hear us talk about other girls and women, the ways other girls and women receive validation and respect, the ways we define health that are dangerously conflated with beauty, the girls and women that receive attention from love interests, etc. But as a media and body image expert, I can unequivocally state that a young girl’s access to Instagram is like a master class in objectification. Taught by influencers and peers with more power than any teacher, parent or advocate, she will learn at the speed of light that she is her body, and that her body is her ticket to happiness, fulfillment, power, and love.

Research echoes what our own real-life experience as women with bodies and access to social media makes very clear: Social media use – especially Instagram – is associated with high anxiety, depression, negative body image, bullying, loneliness, and envy. And the more time spent on social media, the more likely she is to experience these negative outcomes. Parents, even if you spend lots of time on IG, you have no ideas what kids are really exposed to. They are savvier than you are, targeted with ideals and messages you aren’t, and you can rest assured you are hugely underestimating the harm that social media can do to your child.

Get this: when girls hit puberty, they are TWICE as likely to experience depression as boys. Much of this is connected to the fact that we live in an objectifying culture that teaches society that girls and women are most valuable for how well they decorate the world and they need to spend precious time and energy evaluating and controlling their bodies in terms of their sexual desirability. It’s called self-objectification and it’s sucks the life out of most girls and women. It is *very* likely your daughter already monitors her body by picturing what she looks like to other people more than you or she realizes. She thinks about what her thighs look like in her seat, she adjusts her clothing as she walks, she wonders if the person she’s talking to thinks she looks good. She sits out of PE when she doesn’t want to get sweaty or red for her next class.

Research shows us that when we live “to be looked at” in a perpetual state of self-objectification that overtakes most girls and women throughout their lives and is made exponentially worse by social media, we are left with fewer mental and physical resources to do what can really bring happiness. We perform worse on math tests, logical reasoning tests, athletic performance, we have lower sexual assertiveness (the ability to say “no” when needed), and we are left anxious and unhappy. It is so disheartening to think of how this holds girls and women back from a world that needs them.

If you are a parent or caretaker to a child, you undoubtedly face the burden of giving them access to social media. We are here to promise you that the burden of objectification that will be placed upon your daughter’s shoulders is much, much heavier than the burden you will carry by encouraging her to stay off Instagram. Even if everyone else is on.

The crushing weight of objectification heaped upon girls that scroll through Instagram is intense, and they learn to carry that weight as a natural part of womanhood. Most parents don’t quite understand the gravity of what girls encounter online. She will bear the weight of:

Every appetite suppressant and flat tummy tea and waist shaper sold by her favorite celebrity influencers (we’re looking at you, Kim Kardashian, and the millions of other influencers like you that prey on teen girls).

 

Every bikini and workout picture from influencers who rack up likes and follows from body baring photos – (those get the most likes and engagement on IG).

 

Every gym-going woman posting photos from the locker room, twisting herself unnaturally to highlight a tiny waist with a fashionably rounded backside to show her “fitness” progress or her sad-to-glad “before and after” transformations.

 

Every lifestyle and fashion blogger posting casual pics of themselves emphasizing their thinness and/or curves, products and procedures they’ve had done and are selling through sponsored posts, underwear and bikini pics that are supposed to represent elevated causes of body positivity, fitness, or empowerment, etc.

 

Every beauty influencer posting makeup tutorials for facial contouring to help women rid themselves of “flaws” like pores, lines, wrinkles, hairs, or other signs of life.

 

Every ad snuck in between photos her friends have posted, targeting her insecurities and selling her aspirations designed to look attainable but always out of reach.

 

And on and on and on.

Based on all of this overwhelming evidence against using Instagram, I’m going to talk to this 12-year-old girl and her wonderful parents. We’ll chat about why it might be best for her to hold off on scrolling for a while. The right age to join Instagram is different for everyone, and the conditions for using it or avoiding it all together are up to you, but at Beauty Redefined, we recommend you seriously rethink joining Instagram. Let her experience life as more than a body as long she can, because logging on Instagram marks the day when that could end for too many girls.

 

When your kid comes to you asking to join Instagram, why not take the opportunity to talk with her about what peer-reviewed, legitimate research and self-reported feedback from her peers brings to light with a pro and con list:

Pros

  • You’ll be able to interact with your friends online.
  • You won’t be left out of what is happening on Instagram.
  • You will be exposed to other messages and ideas and images you might not see otherwise, like body positivity, activism in all its forms, and people doing good in the world.
  • You’ll be able to express yourself through posting pictures and captions.

Cons

  • You will be more likely to experience increased loneliness. Instagram is isolating and leads to feelings of FOMO, or fear of missing out. While you might like the interaction from likes, follows, and DMs, in the long run you are left feeling more alone.
  • You will be more likely to experience depression and anxiety, and the more time you spend on social media, the worse these symptoms get.
  • You will be more likely to compare yourself to the girls and women you see on Instagram, and self-comparison causes you to feel less love and unity toward those you are comparing yourself to AND it makes you feel worse about yourself.
  • You will be more likely to be preoccupied with your looks (self-objectification). Your clothes, your angles, your skin, your hair, your shape, your size will all be front and center in your mind, and it’s very difficult to focus on anything else, whether you like the way you look or not. This hurts your schoolwork, your relationships, your health, your mental and physical capabilities, and your happiness.
  • You will be more likely to experience negative body image (feel bad about your body) because you will be more sensitive to how you appear to others as a result of seeing so many idealized photos, ads, and highlight reels.
  • You will be more likely to be exposed to harmful messages and ideas and images you might not see otherwise, like rampant objectification, pornography, self-harm, pro-anorexia (pro-ana) messaging, digital manipulation of photos, influencers selling you aspirational ideals that lead to feelings of shame and self-consciousness, and beauty represented in very narrow, unattainable ways.
  • You will be more likely to become desensitized to the messages that hurt you – that cause you to think about your body and your looks (self-objectification), and make you feel shame about your body. After only a short time, those things that once make you feel uncomfortable become your new “comfort zone” that is very uncomfortable.

If your daughter decides to join IG despite the cons she learns about, or already spends time scrolling through social media (especially IG), please help her practice self-care. Instagram can be used as self-help or self-harm, and every user must make that continual choice for themselves.

 

The following questions are an excellent media literacy resource to help her (and you) look out for herself with the following critical questions as she scrolls:

  • Does this image/account encourage me to fixate on my own or other women’s appearance?
  • Does this image/account spark body anxiety or feelings of shame?
  • Am I engaging in self-comparison as I view these images?
  • Does this account seek to profit from my insecurity by selling solutions to fix my “flaws?”
  • Are these images promoting or reinforcing distorted ideals of what bodies and faces should look like – either through digital manipulation or featuring only one body type or “look?”
  • Would men who think women are only valuable as sexual objects enjoy viewing these images?
  • Does it encourage me to see women as bodies first and foremost?

If the answer is yes to any or all of the above, consider unfollowing, unsubscribing, limiting, or otherwise avoiding this type of content.

On top of being a critical media consumer, we suggest a few very important rules for your kids to follow if they do use Instagram:

  • Make your profile private and NEVER allow anyone to follow you that you don’t know and interact with in real life.
  • Only follow people you know in real life.
  • Never scroll through the explore page – it’s just not safe. It allows users access to every public post, and molds itself to the user’s interests, which for girls and women are often body-focused, looks-oriented, and objectifying.
  • Set a time limit: Only spend X number of minutes on Instagram each day – the less time spent on social media, the better for the user’s mental health and well-being.
  • If the content you are viewing doesn’t pass the media literacy test above, unfollow immediately.

Because we are taught through so many cultural messages that our bodies and looks are our primary source of power, value, and happiness, we get confused about what confidence feels like. We believe this major lie that feeling confident in ourselves equals feeling confident in our looks, and we leave it at that. We believe our bodies define us, and our self-esteem is dependent upon how good we think we look to others. Instagram makes this problem worse. It heightens our awareness of our bodies and our looks and teaches us that we are our bodies, and that our bodies are our key to beauty, power, love, popularity, and happiness.

Our work at Beauty Redefined is based on the premise that positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good, it’s knowing your body *is* good regardless of how it looks. Your ability to experience positive body image frees you from the prison that locks you up decorating yourself, isolated, and missing out on purpose and power and real happiness. We don’t want one more girl stepping into womanhood with the added pressure of living her life on Instagram before she is old enough to realize her purpose, power, and worth beyond her body. She is more than a body, and you can help her see more and be more. If you or your daughter want more expertise in how to boost your body image, our online body image resilience course will do the trick. Check it out here. 

If nothing else, take it from one of thousands of teens who have reached out to us to tell us about how social media (and taking much-needed breaks from social media) effects them:

Illustrations by Michelle Christensen, commissioned for Beauty Redefined.

Lexie Kite, Ph.D. and Lindsay Kite, Ph.D. are the co-directors of Beauty Redefined, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that aims to help women redefine the meaning and value of beauty in their lives through body image resilience. 

Do you need help developing body image resilience that can help you overcome self-consciousness and get on to bigger and better things? Learn how to recognize harmful ideals, redefine beauty and health, and resist what holds you back from happiness, health, and real empowerment with the Beauty Redefined Body Image Program for girls and women 14+. It is an online, anonymous therapeutic tool that can change your life, designed by Lexie & Lindsay Kite, PhD. 

Not Picture Perfect? Bounce Back from a Body Image Blow

by | May 9, 2017

By Lindsay Kite, Ph.D.

1 New Notification:  [Someone] added a photo of you.

Oh wow. It’s not good. It’s so not good.

Whatever the reason — bad angle, unflattering position, weird filter, googley eye, whatever. You HATE it. We’ve all experienced this one way or another. If not after being tagged in a pic on Facebook, Instagram, or a blog, then in a school picture, family portrait, or whole album of vacation pics. It’s a yucky feeling.

After you’ve exhausted all your untag/hide-from-timeline options, what comes next? For too many of us, the embarrassment of being captured in a less-than-ideal photo isn’t easily brushed off. In a world where girls learn from childhood to monitor their appearance at all times, and where public identities are carefully crafted online at every waking moment, a picture speaks more words than ever. For some, the sight of a photo she deems unattractive is enough to spark thoughts and reactions directly related to one of our favorite (like the bad kind of favorite) subjects: body shame.

You’d think someone who has spent the last decade researching that subject would be immune to the effects of it, right? I should be unflinching and invincible in the face of bad photos of myself, right? Ugh, I wish. Let’s use my own personal example of being captured in a cringe-worthy pic to illustrate what body shame can do to a gal, and how to fight that shame with some healthier options, shall we? I’m not one to hide in a photo. I actively resist the temptation to self-objectify or hold myself back from activities (or photos) because of concern over what I look like while engaging in those activities (or being pictured in those photos). I posed for a group photo and thought nothing of it until Instagram and FB notified me of a newly uploaded photo that had an unanticipated effect: it made me feel sick. Because I hated the way I looked so much. It struck a yucky chord in my brain that told me I was disgusting and everyone on the planet was going to see the documented evidence of how disgusting I was. Sounds asinine, you say? Yeah, definitely.

This is your brain: “That’s not a great photo. Oh well.”

THIS is your brain on body shame: “This photo has captured what I really look like — not what I think I look like. Why didn’t anyone tell me I look so awful? I’m never wearing those clothes again. What made me think I should be in the front of the photo? I’m always going to be in the back now. I can’t wear my hair like that anymore. Is the gym still open so I can go run and burn off the crappy food I ate at the party?” Asinine doesn’t begin to describe it, but the “brain on body shame” doesn’t see the asinine-ness of those thoughts — it takes those thoughts and runs with them. Almost literally. On a treadmill. And not for healthy reasons. But the gym was closed, and thankfully, my education and experience as a body image researcher started to kick in pretty quickly to tell me that what I was experiencing was all too familiar and entirely conquerable.

Shame makes us want to HIDE or FIX the thing that doesn’t meet our standards. That showed up immediately for me in depressing thoughts of planning to hide in pictures, throw out clothes, and burn as many calories as I could quickly. And speak of the devil, beginning with puberty, females are TWICE as likely to experience depression as males. This is directly associated with our objectifying culture, which leads us to evaluate and control our bodies more in terms of our sexual desirability (a.k.a. self-objectification) than our desires, health, or competence. Self-objectification has been linked to way too many negative consequences: disordered eating, plans for cosmetic surgery, diminished mental and athletic performance, anxiety and depression, etc., and these occur among women of all backgrounds.

So, in an objectifying culture that teaches us from birth that we ARE our bodies and that our appearances define our worth, how does anyone survive, let alone thrive? Lexie and I dedicated our PhD research to this question and wrote dissertations on the [invigorating, exciting, incredible] results. In independent studies, Lexie and I both identified resilience research as the light at the end of the dark body shame tunnel. 

Resilience theory describes opportunities to call upon resilient traits as “disruptions,” which are experiences that shake us out of our comfort zones and allow us to change in positive or negative ways. Disruptions are occurrences that cause us to feel self-doubt, hurt, fear, or loss. They can be anything from unkind words from a stranger, to a pregnancy, an invitation to go swimming, weight loss/gain, or even the super lame inconvenience of being tagged in a photo you can’t stand. Disruptions are big and small and different for everyone, but the emotions you feel from them lead to opportunities to begin the process of changing. This post is about how to make sure the change is for the better.

In today’s world, too many of us have settled into a comfort zone that is a whirlwind of body shame and appearance anxiety. It is a “comfort” zone because it feels normal, but it certainly isn’t comfortable for those always hiding and fixing their looks as a response to body shame. We are here to assist you with WAY better options than just taking constant hits to your body image and just absorbing it and going about your lives by fixing and hiding. The first step of resiliency is to identify the disruption. Name it. Shine a light on it. Call it what it is: a crappy, painful opportunity for positive change.

Our research confirms several qualities can protect us from the harms of body-shaming disruptions, and that cultivating those qualities can even predict positive outcomes from negative situations. We can use dark, painful incidents as a springboard to healthy choices, happiness, and empowerment. That, my friends, is body image resilience. I promise that if you will work to identify disruptions in your life and use them as opportunities for growth, you can cultivate a million strategies to make those disruptions happy.  Today I’ll highlight four of my faves:

Self-compassion 

Let’s get lovey up in here. Self-compassion is all about acknowledging that suffering, failure, and inadequacies are part of the human condition, and that all people—yourself included—are worthy of compassion (Neff, 2003). There are three basic components of this strategy that have GOT to be cultivated in the midst of our objectifying culture and self-objectifying tendencies: 1. Self-Kindness: Extending kindness and understanding to oneself rather than harsh judgment and self-criticism; 2. Common Humanity: Seeing one’s experiences as part of the larger female experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating; and 3. Mindfulness: Holding one’s painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than letting them define or overwhelm you.

This strategy lifted me out of the sudden fog of anxiety that accompanied my reaction to the bad photo of myself. I remembered that everyone has had that experience. And it’s just a photo. And my self-objectifying panic slowly started to become more ridiculous. I asked myself, “What is the WORST that could happen because of this?” And my answers were ridiculous: “Someone could see me and think I looked fat and ugly.” That’s about as bad as it got. And guess what? That’s THEIR problem, not yours. And it doesn’t mean ANYTHING in real life. You can demonstrate these aspects of self-compassion by journaling and sharing your experiences with other women who undoubtedly deal with the same objectifying experiences you do. You are not alone in your disruptive experiences. Promise.

Feminist Beliefs

Don’t be scared. Feminism isn’t quite as evil as you may have been led to believe. As Amelia Richards has observed, “body image may be the pivotal third wave issue—the common struggle that mobilizes the current feminist generation” (1998).  Whether or not you consider yourself  a feminist, you may agree with much of what feminism is all about. Feminist perspectives celebrate diversity among women, provide ways to interpret the objectification of the female body, unite instead of divide women, and give us strategies for resisting oppressive ideals. My early introduction to body image research and activism can be summed up with this: “Feminism appears to be a life raft in the sea of media imagery” for women (Rubin et. al. 2004). You can read more about why feminism became my life raft here.

Research shows us awesome connections between feminist beliefs and body image.** In these studies, feminist beliefs are those that reject ideas of women’s bodies as objects constantly in need of fixing.

  • Women who had feminist beliefs experienced less shame and body dissatisfaction than women who didn’t subscribe to feminism.
  • Feminism provides women with an alternative way to interpret objectification, and offers specific strategies to resist these ideologies on a personal and societal level. 
  • One of the most important feminist strategies is maintaining a critical awareness using media literacy to resist cultural messages about women’s bodies.
  • Women need coping strategies as a buffer against self-objectification, such as decreasing self-evaluative statements (“I look fat today”), substituting self-affirming statements (“I am capable of much more than looking hot”), and cognitive reframing of objectification (“that company wants me to feel bad so I’ll buy their product!”).  

Don’t be scared. Go toward the light. These feminist studies also found that finding new ways of inhabiting our bodies is a promising and empowering approach to resisting body shame and self-objectification, which leads to our next characteristic …

Using Our Bodies as Instruments, Not Objects

When women learn to value their bodies for what they can do rather than what they look like, they improve their body image and gain a more powerful sense of control. Ideas of “feminist embodiment” that have been pinpointed in research include using our bodies to dance, play, move, and be outside the confines of being looked at. As early as grade school, research shows that girls’ activities and thoughts are more frequently disrupted than boys, and those interruptions are often related to weight and appearance. Experts suggest we can resist self-objectification by participating in non-aesthetically-focused sports (like competitive team sports) and other kinds of physical activity. Finally, STEP AWAY FROM THE MIRRORS while exercising. Research shows people who work out in front of mirrors can’t perform as well because they are consciously and subconsciously wrapped up in how they look instead of what they can do. 

So challenge yourself to be active – run a race, try out a new Zumba class, and prove to yourself that your body is powerful and useful for more than looking good. Plus, we need to set and achieve goals outside of appearance – raise your GPA, volunteer, put yourself out there. Feelings of empowerment come from achievements and they add to your sense of control. Placing higher priority on how we feel and what we do is key to shutting down body shame.

Spirituality

Spirituality is well documented as a key to resilience. Richardson (2002) says being able to flourish in the face of disruptions requires increased energy to grow, and resiliency theory states the source of that energy is a spiritual source or innate resilience (p. 313). Resilience has been called “our innate capacity for well-being” (HeavyRunner & Morris, 1997, p. 2). Many participants in our PhD studies cited some form of spirituality as a positive force that led them out of hard times relating to their bodies, whether through religious worship, meditation, or acknowledging the guidance of a higher power. When women are able to place their lives and experiences in the context of a bigger picture — one where they aren’t defined by their appearance alone — those body-related concerns lose power and shame is lessened. If you can say a prayer, read scripture, meditate, attend a worship service, or any other way to tap into your spirituality, you can access power to put body-related disruptions into a more holistic perspective. 

The second you feel shame – the specific shame YOU feel that compels you to hide a part of you or fix yourself to meet an ideal – the disruption has begun. This shame can no longer be a normal, everyday part of your life you cope with. You’ve named it. You can’t be comfortable with it any longer. It’s time to grow from it. Start that growth process by focusing on self-compassion, considering your own (or learning about) feminist beliefs, using your body as an instrument, and tapping into a spiritual source of power to remind you that you are more than just a body and you are not alone. 

Without these strategies, the experience of being so unexpectedly shaken by that less-than-ideal photo of myself could have led directly to awful options my “brain on body shame” came up with. But, as inconsequential as the experience might seem, I was able to use it as a disruption that prompted me to come up with better plans, like turning to Lexie for a pep-talk (twin bonding!) and writing this post. Painful disruptions don’t need to drag us down deeper into the pit of shame and self-objectification! 

Need more help developing body image resilience that can help you overcome your self-consciousness and be more powerful than ever before? Learn how to recognize harmful ideals, redefine beauty and health, and resist what holds you back from happiness, health, and real empowerment with the Beauty Redefined Body Image Program for girls and women 14+. It is an online, anonymous therapeutic tool that can change your life, designed by Lexie & Lindsay Kite, with PhDs in body image and media.

*Werner, E.E. and Smith, R.S. (1982). Vulnerable but Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of Resilient Children and Youth. New York: McGraw-Hill.

**Cash et al., 1997; Dionne et al., 1995; Rubin et al., 2004

This post was originally posted in August 2013 and updated again in May 2017.

How I’m Winning the Body-After-Baby Battle

by | Mar 24, 2017

By Lexie Kite, PhD

My amazing baby girl, Logan, turned one this week. Having been fed a lifelong diet of how humiliating “bodies after babies” are and how important it is to “get your body back” after birth, I was not thrilled about living a life with a post-baby bod. Despite my last 10 years of body image research and public activism, in the back of my mind I secretly worried that maybe all Lindsay and I know and teach through our hard work at Beauty Redefined wouldn’t hold up through the scary disruption of pregnancy and “body after baby.” What if I couldn’t honestly live what I preach?

But you know what? Our research on how to continuously attain body image resilience because of difficult things we experience in our bodies – not in spite of those things –absolutely did hold up. I am grateful to feel that I have internalized the foundations of positive body image to the point that these thought processes are second nature, and I know it is possible for anyone. This last year has been amazing. It’s been amazing because I haven’t lived my days as a “body after baby.” I’ve been a person, a woman, a director, a wife, a sister, an activist, a mom. I haven’t been a body – I’ve been so much more than a body.

My changed body hasn’t consumed my thoughts like media and peers and cultural ideals have so often taught me it should. Instead, the very dramatic experience of growing a baby (and having a c-section because she wanted to sit straight up, and having mastitis, and not producing enough milk to sustain her, and having a body that is softer than it used to be) has absolutely not caused me to hate my body or fixate upon my body, but to appreciate it even more than I could have without those hard experiences. Yes, I’m still self-conscious some of the time, and no, I’m not going to rock a bikini on Instagram (or anywhere) to prove how much I love my body. But I have survived pregnancy and childbirth and become more resilient in my feelings about my body in the face of those difficulties and changes.

I am absolutely living, breathing proof that believing you are more than a body – that learning to SEE MORE in yourself and the world’s cultural ideals and BE MORE than a body to be looked at – is an absolute game changer.

Every one of us are on a lifelong body image rollercoaster. There’s no getting off of it. Harmful beliefs and messages about women’s bodies are deeply ingrained in our culture. But the knowledge and expertise that informs all the work we do at Beauty Redefined has made that roller coaster so much less extreme and scary for me – it’s more like a bumpy ride than a life of really high highs and really low lows when it comes to how I feel about my body. I can absolutely testify that the strategies for resilience we have identified and teach consistently, and the new patterns of thinking we recommend work beautifully.

For moms, future moms, or anyone with a body on this lifelong body image rollercoaster, I want to offer a few personally proven and research-driven tips to experience the paradigm shift from “body after baby” to “more than a body after baby.” If you haven’t had a baby or aren’t planning to have a baby, insert “baby” for the life event of your choice (example: “body after surgery,” “body after breakup,” “body after cancer,” “body after weight gain/loss,” etc).

What helps:

I am not a “before” or an “after.” Our bodies are constantly changing. We age, grow, shrink, hurt, heal, and change every minute. Recognizing that I am on a lifelong journey in this body helps me be compassionate and loving toward myself. I am not a before or an after – I’m “during” and enduring a million moments in between my “before” and “after.”

My body is an instrument, not an ornament. Despite the very normal and stifling anxiety I often feel when thinking about wearing a swimsuit, I have found immense happiness by actually putting on a swimsuit and getting in the water. Repeating and living our mantra, “My body is an instrument, not an ornament,” opens up your life to the freedom of living outside the confines of being looked at. Try these tips for incorporating body positive exercise or fitness strategies that improve your health and your body image. I LOVE swimming and being in the water. We took our baby to the lake or the pool most weekends last summer when she was just tiny, and it was a transformative experience to just LIVE and prove to myself again and again that it doesn’t matter what I look like in a swimsuit. We all qualify to enjoy the world in our bodies, regardless of how we think those bodies might appear.

Bag the body talk. Maybe I’ve just trained the people in my life well, but I have been blessed to be surrounded by people who have not commented on my body – for good or bad – and that’s a great thing. My extended family and my coworkers did an incredible job of bagging the body-related comments all together and instead doing things like asking me how I feel and how my baby is. Even those intended to be positive comments (“You look so good for having just had a baby!” or “You look even better now than before!” or “I can hardly tell you had a kid!”) can cause us to fixate on our looks in new ways and start to question how we appear to others (“Did I look gross before?” “I need to keep losing weight so I can keep getting these awesome comments!”). The best thing you can do if you are getting a lot of looks-based comments or compliments is to change the conversation. Depending on how well you know the person, that can be a quick “thanks” or “I feel great too” and then diverting attention elsewhere, or you could consider saying something like, “I’m actually working on not thinking about my weight or looks so much, and focusing on more in other women too. You should try it with me! It’s harder than it seems!” or “If I can be honest, those comments about my body actually make me really self conscious and hyper-aware of my looks. Can we talk about anything else?”

Helpful Sorta “Post-Partum” Tip from Lindsay: I went to a midwife appointment with Lexie while she was pregnant and when the nurse asked me if I have any kids, I responded, “Nope, this is our first!” So yeah, this baby feels like mine. I should also note that not having any kids of my own hasn’t held me back from experiencing the pregnancy weight gain right alongside my sister. I’m honestly not sure if it was sympathy gain or an unavoidable side effect of our twin connection, but it was real. I also realized how much I love baby legs. Their little dimples and thigh rolls and chubby ankles — all the varieties and shapes are perfect and NO ONE can argue that. I love them so much I can’t even call them legs — I have to call them “leggies.” Then one day, I referred to my own legs as “my leggies.” Game-changer. It’s adorable, hilarious, endearing, and you can’t feel negatively about something you refer to in such a painfully cute way. If you love baby leggies of every shape, size and color, think of your own precious leggies on those terms and feel the love!

What doesn’t help:

Comparison is the thief of joy. Scrolling through old pictures of yourself when you were thinner, younger, more curvaceous, etc., is the kiss of death for your self-esteem. Looking at bloggers and social media starlets who have just had babies and are suddenly posting swimsuit pics and skinny jeans pics is no better for you, either. Studies and real-life experience show that comparing yourself to pictures of yourself or other women online or in real life is not going to do you any good. It’s actually proven to destroy your self-esteem and lead to loneliness, envy, anxiety, and body shame. Staring at your phone or laptop when you’re up at weird hours with a baby is inevitable, but it’s important to screen your screen time by being super aware of what and who you are viewing. Consider a short but incredibly powerful media cleanse. If you feel even a tiny bit of that yucky sinking feeling of envy or body shame when you see pictures of women online, click away. Unfollow. Hide. Block. Do whatever you have to do to be compassionate with yourself. I caught myself several times scrolling through popular fashion/lifestyle bloggers’ Instagram accounts and feeling worse about myself, and I have learned to click away. Even the most well-meaning, really nice-seeming social media influencer is making big money to sell you aspirational images that aren’t entirely real. They are perfectly lit, flatteringly posed, filtered, cropped, styled, and designed to sell an ideal. If their pictures trigger you toward self-comparison or push you to fixate on your body, it is perfectly healthy and compassionate toward yourself to unfollow. I did it, and I promise you it’ll help you tremendously.

Don’t conflate happiness with thinness. Your happiest times are not necessarily your thinnest times, and neither are mine. Life doesn’t work like that, even though happiness and thinness are ALWAYS conflated in advertising, magazines, #transformation photos, and any entertainment news show. Happiness just absolutely does not equal thinness. They are two very different things. My thinnest times have often been consumed by self-objectifying thoughts of how I appear to others and food-obsessed thoughts about how many carbs I am consuming. My happiest times have been times in my life where strict carb counting or exercising to lose weight takes a backseat to cuddling on the couch with my husband, sharing a birthday cupcake with my baby, going on walks in the park, and not letting my weight or shape consume me. Body size just can’t equate with joy, and a changing body can remind you of that truth.

“I’ll be happy when…” is a mean mindset. Any mindset that requires you to change your body before you can appreciate it or feel happy with it or shop for new clothes or take family pictures or go swimming or anything else is a mean mindset. Don’t be so harsh on yourself. You qualify to live your life happily right now! Do you believe that? It’s true. Instead of setting arbitrary goals like, “it took me nine months to grow this baby and I’m giving myself nine months to look like I did before having her” isn’t super helpful. What if you don’t hit your goal? What if you hit your goal by using unhealthy means like starving, binging, over-exercising, unsafe diet pills, etc.? Be compassionate with yourself. Set goals to do the things you want to do right now, regardless of your looks or how you think other people think you look. Want a new pair of jeans? Find a pair you love and don’t let the size hold you back. Want to go to the gym? Wear whatever you feel comfortable in and go use do your favorite exercises. Want to take family pictures? Book that photographer even though you’re scared. You qualify to be in photos with your loved ones.

You are more than a body. You are also more than a “body after baby.” You have important work to do and people to love and goodness to contribute, regardless of what toll a baby (or your twin’s baby) has taken on your body.

Lindsay and Lexie Kite, PhDs, are co-directors of the Beauty Redefined foundation, founded in 2009, and identical twins with doctorates in the study of body image resilience. They travel the US speaking at universities, high schools, and conferences about how to identify objectifying ideals and overcome them to get to a more powerful, healthy place. Learn about our life-changing, research-backed online body image resilience course here. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to stay up-to-date on this and all things Beauty Redefined!

Help us #CuttheCarls Because Women are #MoreThanMeat

by | Dec 8, 2016

(This was originally posted in August 2014. We’re republishing as a refresher following Donald Trump’s selection of Carl’s Jr. CEO Andrew Puzder as U.S. Labor Secretary. See Puzder’s very telling quotes about objectification below. See Lindsay’s remarks in the Boston Globe on Dec. 10, 2016 about Puzder’s nomination here. )

By Lexie Kite, Ph.D., and Lindsay Kite, Ph.D.

SEX SELLS! Right, Carl’s Jr.?

The problem with everyone that uses idealized women’s bodies for their “sex sells” campaigns is that this is the least sexy thing they could possibly be selling. Messages that depict one narrow definition of “hot” and one way to think about, view, and use women — solely as an object for sexual pleasure — are actually damaging sexuality for both sexes by limiting what we perceive as “sexy” and keeping all of us preoccupied with looking “sexy” rather than enjoying sexuality.

Sexual objectification (ex: Carl’s Jr. commercials) is the process of representing or treating a person like an object that exists to serve another’s sexual pleasure. All hours of the day on mainstream TV, Carl’s Jr. among many others sells the common and dangerous lie that women are valuable for how sexy they appear to others. Because women’s sexuality isn’t for themselves, it’s for others’ viewing pleasure, right? Nope. We’ve posted about Victoria’s Secret, SI Swimsuit Issue, and many others, but today it’s time to talk about Carl’s Jr. 

Here’s the thing. Sexually objectifying messages (like CJ’s ads) do 3 things really well:

They teach boys and men that women are passive objects to be looked at and acted upon.*

They teach girls and women they exist to be viewed and they must judge themselves by their sexual desirability to others, rather than in terms of their own health and desires. And with that life-threatening line of thinking comes depression, eating disorders, shame, decreased cognitive functioning, sexual dysfunction and inability to find satisfaction and pleasure in sexual experiences.* Suuuper sexy, right?

They work as a tool used to dehumanize, control, and abuse women. Viewing someone as an object is “almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person.” It makes it easier to mistreat women when they are seen as objects – not people.*

But Carl’s Jr. doesn’t care about the public health crisis to which they are proud contributors. When women complain about their sexist ads, CJ literally replies with, “You aren’t our target demographic of 18- to 35-year-old men so we don’t care.” They only care about money. “The people we wanted to target were young, hungry guys. …We target hungry guys, and we get young kids that want to be young hungry guys,” says Andrew Puzder, CEO of Carl’s Jr.’s parent company and newly selected Labor Secretary under President-elect Donald Trump. He told Enterprise in May 2015: “I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American. I used to hear, brands take on the personality of the CEO. And I rarely thought that was true, but I think this one, in this case, it kind of did take on my personality.” Congratulations, Andrew! Your brand of blatant, proud dehumanization of women – equating objectified women’s bodies with the meant he wants “young hungry guys” to consume – is the reason we have to fight for women to be viewed as more than just bodies.

If Carl’s Jr. doesn’t care about women, let’s talk man to man.

Since BR’s co-directors are women (identical twins Lexie and Lindsay Kite), Lexie’s husband Travis has decided to step up to the plate. Travis is a “young, hungry guy” who fits squarely within CJ’s target demographic of 18-35, and he’s taking his appetite elsewhere. Will you? 

 

To my fellow 18- to 35-year-olds:

Why do things have to be the way they are? Why does our demographic have to represent the scuzziest our society has to offer? When advertisers want our attention their first move is to wave some form of sex in our face. Sure that’s a given, but it doesn’t have to be. They keep using sex because we keep taking the bait. Because, sex sells, right? And we hear that phrase a lot, but it’s a little misleading. The advertisers aren’t using sex per se; they’re using women’s bodies. They take women and strip them down (literally and figuratively), removing everything that makes them human beings, and for years we’ve essentially said with our dollars that we were cool with it.

So now we come to Carl’s Jr. They took what all the other advertisers had done, then they went a little further, and then they deep fried it. And it makes me sick. And if it doesn’t make you sick, then you should probably turn off your internet machine, think really hard about how numb you are to stuff that is doing a lot of harm, and just have a conversation with a real woman. And just maybe think for one second about what it means for women to turn on the TV and see basically every woman stripped down to sell you things. Things as stupid as hamburgers. Don’t you see it!? Women are more than objects!

Sure, Carl’s Jr. isn’t the only one out there pulling this sort of crap, but why not start by pushing back against a company run by guys like Andrew Puzder who are brash enough to combine women and meat and feed it to us like we’re animals. Let’s stop buying their hamburgers. You can stop until they change their campaign or you can stop for life (I’ll probably #cutthecarls for life because I think they’re a bunch of jerks). We never should have let it get this far. Maybe, like me, you’ve cared about women and how they feel about this sort of thing all your life, but have mostly been on the sidelines. Well it’s time to step up to the plate, son. Let’s “man up” (to borrow their marketing slogan) and close down some Carl’s Jr.’s. And don’t stop there. There’s a lot of this business of treating women like they’re something less than human beings. Talk to any woman and she’ll tell you about it. This is about a lot more than not eating hamburgers. This is about showing the women you care about (and everyone else) that you won’t put up with this demeaning crap. You ain’t gotta buy it. If you don’t want to help then … whatever. You and the guy who lives in his mom’s basement can go get some soggy burgers and talk about Transformers 5 to your heart’s content.**

Here’s how you can join us:

  • Share this post with Travis’s photo, or your own similar photo, asking others (especially 18- to 35-year-old men) to #cutthecarls.
  • Take to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all of social media to talk back to Carl’s Jr. and tell them you’re taking your appetite elsewhere. Go nuts with the hashtags #cutthecarls and #morethanmeat.
  • Check out what others are doing in this same fight! As we were writing up this campaign, a guy named Ryan Hawks posted his own plea to talk back to CJ, and we jumped on his #cutthecarls hashtag to keep the momentum going!
  • Most of all, full-on boycott Carl’s Jr. Not even on a road trip when it’s the only restaurant for miles. Vote with your dollars.

Check out part of our CNBC interview from September 2014 here. (Of course they featured a highly objectifying Carl’s Jr. ad for much of the segment, so be aware of that imagery. Feel free to listen, not watch.) Read Lindsay’s remarks in the Boston Globe on Dec. 10, 2016 about the Puzder nomination here. 

Need help developing body image resilience that can help you overcome your self-consciousness and be more powerful than ever before? Learn how to recognize harmful ideals, redefine beauty and health, and resist what holds you back from happiness, health, and real empowerment with the Beauty Redefined Body Image Program for girls and women 14+. It is an online, anonymous therapeutic tool that can change your life, designed by Lexie & Lindsay Kite, with PhDs in body image and media.

*We won’t make you read our whole Ph.D. dissertations (Kite, 2013 & Kite, 2013), so we’ll direct you to this awesome report from the American Psychological Association that rounds up huge amounts of research on objectification and its effects on society here.

**We decided to leave Travis’s words unedited, though his last sentence is a departure from our regular tone. No offense to anti-objectification basement dwellers was intended.

Feel free to share the image below:

Your Body is Not a Before or an After

by | Oct 10, 2016

“Before and after” body transformation photos used to be relegated to late-night infomercials or old magazine fad diet ads, but now you can’t click on IG or FB without seeing the dramatic comparison pics from your old friend selling those shakes and skinny wraps or those fitness buffs showing you that you can get a “bikini body” too!

Though it’s tempting to scroll through these dramatic and persuasive images while longing for the days when our bodies will look like those “afters” with thousands of likes and perfectly happy lives, we want to add a word of caution. Your body is not a “before” or an “after,” and neither is that woman’s changing body being shared online. You’re on a journey of a million befores and afters and a snapshot just can’t capture that beautiful reality. Sometimes those simplified, glorified comparison images actually distract people from positive health choices and experiences by turning the focus to appearance at the expense of fitness.

Let me be clear: lots of individuals post occasional transformation photos without selling any too-good-to-be-true products or being overly preoccupied with looks as opposed to fitness. This post isn’t about that. Lots of people work hard to change their lifestyles and get stronger and healthier, and simply want to share their results and what worked for them when those results show up physically. We would never discourage fitness goals or sharing fitness successes. At the same time, we also must be aware of our culture’s tendency to conflate “fitness” with “ideal body shape and size,” which ideals have changed over time and will continue to change constantly based on what makes money. (For one clear example, a protruding, rounded behind was nowhere to be seen in fitness media before just the last few years, and now it is inescapable.)

This post also is not about the young women posting before and after photos that subvert the standard idea of fat/sad-to-thin/happy, and instead show themselves at the height of an eating disorder “before” and (hopefully) in a healthier mental and physical state “after.”

Here’s what this post is about:
Too many salespeople and companies use before and after photos to package hope and sell it in the form of weight loss products, plans and services that may or may not aid anyone on their journey to health. (See this great post for more on how weight loss and hope for love, success and happiness are often linked for women.)
Too many people use before and after photos to warp health and fitness into the sexy “after” shot that doesn’t tell the whole story of how that photo came to be (too often with Photoshop, filters, great lighting, just the right poses, or even through dangerous starvation and dehydration).
Too many people follow accounts full of incredible before and after photos to work up the motivation to lose weight or get in shape, only to fall short of the appearance milestones and body ideals in those transformation shots they thought they could attain. This very often leads people to give up on their goals altogether and turn to unhealthy ways of coping with that shame.

We know transformation photos are super fun to look at. They give us a momentary thrill by attempting to show off what hard work and dedication to fitness and health look like in a snapshot. In their aspirational way, they give us a temporary high of motivation to improve our fitness, but for many people, “improving fitness” really just means “getting my body to look like hers.” Incredible “after” photos paired with the latest, greatest food/exercise plans often work as fitspo that encourages people to engage in exercise and eating habits that prioritize altering the looks of their bodies above all else. It might sound harmless, but for many people earnestly seeking to feel positively toward their bodies and improve their fitness, it isn’t.

Our culture’s fixation on defining and advertising fitness through before and after photos serves salespeople and companies very well, but it doesn’t do the rest of us much good in terms of body image or sustained progress toward real health and fitness goals. One of the major reasons why these transformation photos often distract and discourage people from healthy behaviors is that the before and after photo trend reinforces the notion that visible results are the only way to illustrate fitness success. They whisper to us that if we don’t see results like the “after” photos on the screen, we aren’t succeeding at health and fitness. This is an affront to actual health and fitness! Did you know most women give up on exercise routines because they interpret their efforts as failing when they don’t reach the appearance-related milestones they hoped they would? When their cellulite doesn’t leave or their love handles don’t disappear or their abs or thighs don’t tighten up, they give up on working out and eating a healthy, balanced diet. They often turn to unhealthy means of achieving those body goals at any cost, or even turn to a more sedentary lifestyle and binge eating to cope. Both alternatives are the worst.


Pay attention to how you feel when you scroll through “inspirational” images like before and after pics posted by companies online, or when you look through your own transformation photos. You might run up against Teddy Roosevelt’s hard truth: comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing what you looked like when you were thinner or younger or prettier to your current state rarely induces genuine feelings of joy and gladness. You’re left either wishing you’d have loved yourself when you looked “better” or wondering why you’ve “let yourself go” in one way or another. And the reverse is also true: Comparing what you looked like when you were heavier or less muscular to your current state rarely induces genuine feelings of joy and gladness. Because you will start to wonder how you ever “let yourself go” or you’ll take an inventory of the things you still need to improve to look better, or compare yourself to someone else’s transformation photos and come up short. What if your “after” looks like someone else’s supposedly depressing and unfortunate “before”?! (That happens all the time!) All that comparison leads to feelings of shame and low self-esteem, and we just can’t have any more of that.

Before and after photos also tend to reinforce the assumption that you can document your life based on what your body looks like, but you can’t really illustrate your health, fitness, progress, or happiness just through the appearance of your body. The look of your body really does not always illustrate healthy eating and exercise behaviors in the ways before and after photos glorify and promise – it’s just not the way our bodies work. Many people run marathons, complete triathlons, have healthy, balanced eating habits, and perfect blood pressure, blood sugar, resting heart rate and cardiovascular health — and STILL don’t have a body you would ever see in a fitness magazine or even featured in a typical “after” photo. Alternatively, lots of people go to unhealthy extremes like disordered eating, over-exercising, using unsafe diet pills, steroids, and cosmetic surgery to achieve the look of health and then show up in fitness magazines and appear as “after” bodies in ads and posts with millions of followers. (Ask many former bikini fitness competitors and they’ll tell you the dangerous extremes many resort to.) Let’s not forget that these transformation photos are SO easily manipulated and manipulative! Check out the#30secondtransformation hashtag to see people taking “progress” photos 30 seconds apart to prove how easy it is to pose in ways that appear to reflect major weight loss and muscle tone. Anyone can add easy filters and photo altering apps to create a truly unreal “after.”

Additionally, those “after” photos don’t accurately reflect positive body image, self-esteem, mental well-being or happiness. Some people in transformation photos are much happier in their “after” photos, but many people aren’t any happier or feeling any more positively toward their bodies “after” — especially if their lives now revolve around restriction, deprivation and obsession with food and exercise. As much as we want to believe “before” photos always represent depression and lack of self-control while “after” photos always represent perfect self-control, happiness, desirability, and endless confidence, those are myths. Extremely common, money-making, hope-generating myths.

Take me (Lexie, co-director of Beauty Redefined) for example. At my thinnest, I spent a lot of time working out alone, ate a steady diet of celery and cucumbers, and then randomly binged on Taco Bell in my car when I realized how starving I was or when I didn’t feel like my body looked how I wanted it to. I felt a lot of shame toward my body and felt really bad about the fact that I’d lost weight and still didn’t feel confident and ready to rock a swimsuit with pride. I was also worried that I was unlovable because I didn’t fit the ideals sold to us incessantly as the key to a happy love life. Flash forward to today. I had a baby almost seven months ago, and I weigh more than I have in a while. I’m also the happiest I’ve been in many years. I eat a balanced diet and I walk with my baby and run stairs at Lindsay’s condo (and recently beat my personal record !). I never eat Taco Bell alone in my car out of discouragement. I feel less shame toward my body than I ever felt at my thinnest. I’m in an absolutely awesome relationship with my husband that loves me as much as ever, and I think my body is pretty awesome for surviving my worst fears – pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation!

I am the walking contradiction to what before and after pics often try to claim, and so are you. You are not a before and after photo, whether you love what shows up in the photo or you don’t. Your life and your health are so much more than what any photo could claim to capture. You are on a life-long journey in this one body and your weight gain and weight loss and muscle gain and muscle loss are just that – weight fluctuations and muscle fluctuations. We should all strive to take the best care of our bodies we can, and be mindful of how we feel as we make our individual health choices. The truth that will transform your life is this: your body is an instrument, not an ornament.

When we can get out of our own heads and stop thinking of ourselves and our lives and our progress in terms of how it appears to others or compares to other snapshots in our lives, we can better focus on how we actually feel and what our bodies can actually do. Please believe that it really is possible to reach fitness milestones and accomplish amazing health goals without those feats making a visible (or visible enough) difference in our bodies to show up in an ideal “after” photo. Those self-objectifying thoughts and behaviors that keep us fixated on how our bodies appear actually water down our sacrifices and strengthening experiences to just what we can *see*. When we are really mindful of what health choices mean and feel like in our lives, trying to prove or demonstrate that hard work and dedication with a simple photo of your body is really doing a disservice to what you are actually accomplishing.

What if instead of thinking of ourselves in static, reductive terms of “before” or “after,” we thought of ourselves as in between those two points: during. Any photo you take of yourself right now is just a “during” shot. You are “during” (and enduring) a journey of a million befores and afters. Your body is an instrument to be used for your benefit and experience, not an ornament simply to be admired. Try to shift your thinking by remembering that the instruments and tools we use to create and accomplish things are valuable for much more than what they look like — they’re valuable for what they allow us to *do.* Our bodies should be no different. No matter where you are on your journey in this body, no matter whose “before” or “after” photos your resemble right now, please know that you are worthy of love and worthy of taking good care of your mind and body right now. As we see more than a “before body” or “after body” in ourselves, we can be more.

For a more in-depth look at the ways women’s perceptions of health have been distorted to focus on appearance, as well as exercises and tools to reshape those perceptions and behaviors, check out our 8-Week Body Image Resilience Program. 

Illustrations commissioned for Beauty Redefined by the fantastic Michelle Christensen.

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