How to Talk to Little Girls: a cross post by Lisa Bloom

Originally published on ThinkTV and The Huffington Post.

I went to a dinner party at a friend's home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time.

Little Maya was all curly brown hair, doe-like dark eyes, and adorable in her shiny pink nightgown. I wanted to squeal, "Maya, you're so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!"

But I didn't. I squelched myself. As I always bite my tongue when I meet little girls, restraining myself from my first impulse, which is to tell them how darn cute/ pretty/ beautiful/ well-dressed/ well-manicured/ well-coiffed they are.

What's wrong with that? It's our culture's standard talking-to-little-girls icebreaker, isn't it? And why not give them a sincere compliment to boost their self-esteem? Because they are so darling I just want to burst when I meet them, honestly.

Hold that thought for just a moment.

This week ABC news reported that nearly half of all three- to six-year-old girls worry about being fat. In my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I reveal that fifteen to eighteen percent of girls under twelve now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up and self-esteem is down; and twenty-five percent of young American women would rather winAmerica's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Even bright, successful college women say they'd rather be hot than smart. A Miami mom just died from cosmetic surgery, leaving behind two teenagers. This keeps happening, and it breaks my heart.

Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What's missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.

That's why I force myself to talk to little girls as follows.

"Maya," I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, "very nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults good girl voice.

"Hey, what are you reading?" I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love books. I'm nuts for them. I let that show.

Her eyes got bigger, and the practiced, polite facial expression gave way to genuine excitement over this topic. She paused, though, a little shy of me, a stranger.

"I LOVE books," I said. "Do you?"

Most kids do.

"YES," she said. "And I can read them all by myself now!"

"Wow, amazing!" I said. And it is, for a five-year-old. You go on with your bad self, Maya.

"What's your favorite book?" I asked.

"I'll go get it! Can I read it to you?"

Purplicious was Maya's pick and a new one to me, as Maya snuggled next to me on the sofa and proudly read aloud every word, about our heroine who loves pink but is tormented by a group of girls at school who only wear black. Alas, it was about girls and what they wore, and how their wardrobe choices defined their identities. But after Maya closed the final page, I steered the conversation to the deeper issues in the book: mean girls and peer pressure and not going along with the group. I told her my favorite color in the world is green, because I love nature, and she was down with that.

Not once did we discuss clothes or hair or bodies or who was pretty. It's surprising how hard it is to stay away from those topics with little girls, but I'm stubborn.

I told her that I'd just written a book, and that I hoped she'd write one too one day. She was fairly psyched about that idea. We were both sad when Maya had to go to bed, but I told her next time to choose another book and we'd read it and talk about it. Oops. That got her too amped up to sleep, and she came down from her bedroom a few times, all jazzed up.

So, one tiny bit of opposition to a culture that sends all the wrong messages to our girls. One tiny nudge towards valuing female brains. One brief moment of intentional role modeling. Will my few minutes with Maya change our multibillion dollar beauty industry, reality shows that demean women, our celebrity-manic culture? No. But I did change Maya's perspective for at least that evening.

Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she's reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You're just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.

And let me know the response you get at www.Twitter.com/lisabloom.

Here's to changing the world, one little girl at a time.

For many more tips on how keep yourself and your daughter smart, check out my new book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, www.Think.tv.

LISA BLOOM, author of Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World, is an award-winning journalist, legal analyst, trial attorney, and the daughter of renowned women's rights attorney, Gloria Allred. A daily fixture on American television for the last decade, Bloom is currently the CBS News legal analyst, appearing frequently on The Early Show and CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, as well as the legal analyst for The Dr. Phil Show. Bloom has written for the Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, the National Law Journal, CNN.com, the Daily Beast, and many more. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she runs her law firm, The Bloom Firm.

Better late than never

198 pounds

I've been playing tennis on Tuesday nights here in Bowling Green for a while now, and this past Tuesday I met the most adorable little eight-year-old whom I'll call India.

As fate would have it, I injured my arm while playing tennis this week and, as a result, had to forfeit my match and was sent back to the minor leagues, also known as the drill court. That's where I came across India. Her mother was playing on the drill court too, and India was sitting on the sidelines watching and running around like a young woman on a mission.

Whenever any of us got a break, India would run right up to us and start talking and asking a myriad of questions. She grilled any and all of us about things as varied as the rules of tennis to the heat index (which was 101 on Tuesday). And, in that way, she kind of reminded me of that hysterical little kid from Jerry Maguire (pictured above).

During one of my breaks, I asked India if we had met before because she seemed so familiar, and she reminded me that she had been the one attacking me with questions the first week of our tennis league earlier in the spring.

Suddenly, it came back to me. This was the precocious little kid had come up to me and said, "Hi, my name is India" as if everyone on the planet should know who she was. I took an immediate liking to her. Who doesn't love a confident, outgoing kid?

And this Tuesday was no exception—she was still full of questions about life, tennis, and everything else.

So when I was on my way home from tennis that night, I thought about how India is the kind of kid who has enough energy, confidence, and intelligence to become an extraordinary adult and to do anything.

And then it hit me.

That's what I was like as a kid.

I was constantly butting into adult conversations, completely unaware of the fact that I was supposed to be playing with my toys or hanging out with kids my own age rather than offering opinions on grown-up issues. And there were many adults who noticed that about me—friends, family members, even teachers. It wasn't unusual for someone to comment on my maturity and intelligence. In fact, people did it all the time. And they were always telling me I could do anything, which is exactly what I thought about India.

But here's the sad part.

I didn't buy it.

In fact, I'm sorry to say that it took me years—maybe thirty?—to realize that I could do anything I wanted.

And the reason I didn't buy it is even worse.

I didn't buy it because I didn't see myself as attractive. I truly believed that the people who made it, the people who succeeded, were all good-looking. And I never really saw myself as good-looking, at least not until the past few years.

So why did I make this equation between looks and success?

I think we all know the answer to that. We spend so much time worshipping beautiful people in our society and worrying about what we look like ourselves that it's easy to equate beauty with value (and this is especially true when we're young). And from there it's not hard to think that if we're not beautiful, we have no value.

I'm of course glad that I finally figured out how wrong an equation that is, but I do wish I had figured it out years earlier.

I suppose all I can do now is comfort myself with the though that it's never too late.

Childhood Obesity, Part II: Letting go

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Last week I wrote about Michelle Obama's new initiative for fighting childhood obesity, and though, as I mentioned then, we cannot entirely blame poor eating and exercise habits for the increase in childhood obesity in our country, it is certainly a leading culprit.

I've also written on this blog about the fact that when I was a child I spent a significant part of my day being active. Even in bad weather, I walked to and from the bus, spent recess outside on the playground, and biked around my neighborhood for hours after school (and that was if I wasn't participating in an after-school activity that often involved exercise). Because of this, I'm a firm believer in the idea that all of us—no matter what our age—need to spend more time engaging in physical activity. Not just once a day, but multiple times a day.

I know it's incredibly difficult for us adults to do that, but what I don't get is why kids these days seem to struggle with it too.

Because when I was a kid, I didn't have much choice about being outside.

I had to walk to and from the bus stop whether I wanted to or not, and all of us kids were made to play outside before school and during a half-hour recess after lunch. Beyond that, my mother routinely pushed my sister and me out the front door for a few hours every day after school and on weekends.

I can even remember one sweltering summer day when my mother locked us out of the house because it was so hot we wanted to stay inside. By the end of that excruciating day, we were so anxious to get back inside the cool, air conditioned house that we pressed our faces up against the sliding glass doors in the basement like inmates waiting to be paroled.

And I know I wasn't the only child who was forced to spend time outside. David Sedaris has documented the time his own mother locked him and his siblings outside during a snow storm to riotous effect in an essay called "Let It Snow" (which I highly recommend if you're looking for a good laugh).

So why is it then that when I go on my long morning walk or my short afternoon jog—whether it's in January or July—I don't see any kids roaming the streets of my neighborhood?

In fact, almost every time I step out the door, I ask myself, where are all the kids????

Then last summer I saw something that gave me my answer. I was huffing and puffing my way around the neighborhood when I noticed that almost every single house I looked inside had a television playing. And nine times out of ten there was a child—or more than one—plopped in front of the screen like a big pile of play-doh.

Television?

In the middle of a summer afternoon?!

Blasphemy!

My mother would have pushed those play-doh blobs out the door as fast as she could whip up one of her famous Jello molds.

We all know that television and the internet and video games have become a poor substitute for more interactive entertainment, but what I don't get is why parents today allow those passive activities to replace more physical ones.

We had television when I was a kid. We had video games. Sure, we didn't get cable until I was thirteen—remember "I want my MTV"?—and we played our video games on a crappy Atari with a joystick that was harder to move than a refrigerator, but we had no idea that Space Invaders or reruns of The Monkees would someday seem so pathetic. We loved that stuff and would have happily sat in front of the TV all day. . . that is, if our parents had let us.

But, of course, they didn't.

So when did that change? When did parents stop insisting that their kids get up off their rumps and go explore the world beyond the walls of their house?

Last semester, when I was teaching a story about childhood, one of my students (who is also a mother) said that she couldn't let her kids go outside because it's too dangerous these days.

Too dangerous? Really?

I grew up on a street where kids in junior high walked around with pints of Jack Daniels in their back pockets, where high schoolers dealt everything from pot to cocaine on the corner where we all hung out, where girls got pregnant at the age of eleven, and where thieves stole an entire houseful of one of our neighbor's belongings. All of this happened, but I still turned out okay.

And this was in the suburbs!

I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that things are any worse now than they were when I was growing up—a time when the whole country was embracing free love and a song called "Pass the Dutchie" ruled the airwaves.

And what I learned from all of those experiences was that I had to be able to stand on my own two feet, that I had to be able to make my own decisions—whether I was being offered a joint or being challenged to a fight. My parents weren't always going to be around to protect me.

And I worry that's what our kids today are losing: the ability to be independent. The ability to enjoy and even desire physical activity, to feel the wind in their hair as fly down a too-steep hill on their rackety old ten-speed or to feel the cold in their lungs as they hike along a snow-covered path in the middle of winter. The ability to run away from their parents' house and the ability to come back. Because if they aren't allowed outside, not only will they become overweight, they'll also become afraid. And I'm not sure that those two things are entirely unrelated.

Yes, it's scary to let kids go outside on their own.

They could be exposed to things we would like to protect them from, and—worse still—they could be harmed or even stolen from us. But the harm we do them by keeping them locked up inside is ultimately a much greater disservice to their generation because it is one that cheats them out of the life we so desperately want them to be able to live.

Do or do not. There is no try.

191 pounds

I was talking with some co-workers at lunch today about what kind of sports and physical activities we were involved in as children.

The fittest person in our group, a man who might not have a single ounce of body fat on his extremely lean build, confessed to us that he had been overweight as a child and only passed gym class because his P.E. teacher took pity on him.

This from a man who now works out every single day and wanted to walk the two-mile roundtrip to lunch even though the hill we work on top of is so steep that our college's sports teams is actually called the "Hilltoppers."

It was definitely a surprise to hear about his heavier past, but when I thought about it, I had to admit that he's not the first person I've known who was overweight as a child and then decided as an adult that they no longer wanst to be bigger than everybody else. Some of them, like my co-worker, even go so far as to decide that they want to have a nearly perfect physique.

So what I want to know is, what makes this work for them? How do they do it??

Because when I decide I want to have a perfect physique—which I admit I sometimes do in my weakest moments—nothing really changes. Yes, I keep improving my health and losing small amounts of weight, but why is it that when I wake up on an unusually bad day and decide I want to be 150 pounds, it doesn't happen? Do these people have some special powers I don't have? If you're overweight as a kid, do you get a pass on being that way when you're older?

For God's sake, what is their secret?!!

These Kids Today

190 pounds

Like almost everyone on the planet, I'm spending the holidays with family. Dave and I always come to Florida in December to see my parents, and this year—for the first time ever—my sister and her family are here too.

My sister has two girls, and I absolutely adore both of them, which means I'm thrilled to get some time with them over the holidays.

But sometimes I worry about them.

Today we took my two nieces out for the day, and at one point, my older niece pointed to my middle and said, "You have a big stomach."

I tried to explain that my "big stomach" was a result of my recent surgery, but she was having none of it.

"You look like you're pregnant," she said with a small laugh.

Though many women with fibroids do look pregnant, I really don't, but I do look bloated, and as the daughter of two of the fittest people I know, I could understand why she might make that mistake. So I tried to explain.

The girls already knew that I had my uterus—or as they call it, my "baby holder"—taken out, so I went from there: "I look pregnant because my uterus used to have a whole bunch of tumors in it that stretched my stomach out the same way it would if I had a baby."

"Oh," my niece said. "Okay."

And just to clarify, I added: "It'll probably go back to normal by next summer."

You might be thinking that it was unnecessary for me to go into so much detail with my nine-year-old niece, but I saw this as a "teachable" moment (as much as I hate that overused term): I wanted them to understand that a big tummy does not necessarily have anything to do with being overweight or being unattractive and that they shouldn't assume it does.

And I was glad that I used that moment when I had it because it was only a few hours later when my niece told me that I look twenty years older than my thirty-six-year-old sister (her mother) because I am bigger than she is.

The old me would have been gutted by this comment, but it honestly didn't hurt my feelings. Still, it did bother me on a soci0political level, especially since I know she was also thinking that my sister is also prettier because she's smaller.

Since we were sitting with the whole family when she said it, I decided to discuss the issue with her more later and simply told my niece that size has nothing to do with age. But tomorrow I fully intend to talk to her about her implied connection between size and beauty.

Again, you may think that I should keep my mouth shut or just let it go as kid talk, but I fully believe that if we don't teach the young women in our lives—be they daughters, granddaughters, or nieces—to expand their notion of what kind of women are attractive, then we'll still be talking about these same issues twenty years from now.

No, my niece will never have to worry about her own body image—her genes guarantee that—but she will affect how other women see themselves, and I refuse to sit by and let her continue to go through life with such a narrow definition of beauty.

Wild things and the cruelty of children

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I saw Spike Jonze's film adaptation of Maurcie Sendak's beloved children's book, Where the Wild Things Are, this weekend, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe because the film is primarily about something we’ve all been through—childhood and the challenges that come with it.

And the main idea—that children are “wild things” that sometimes need to be let loose inside their own emotional and intellectual universe—is one that resonates with me on many levels. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I think it’s crucial that we all let ourselves go a little crazy sometimes—whether it be how we act or what we eat. And this film—as well as Sendak's original—seems to agree with this point.

***WARNING: THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS***

But on another level, in a much more subtle way, the film broaches the issue of childhood cruelty, especially adolescent cruelty, when it shows the friends of Max’s older sister mocking Max and eventually crushing him inside his homemade igloo, making them a different, more malevolent kind of “wild thing.” This moment happened early in the film, and it was flat out terrifying: both in the sense that I worried for Max’s safety—Would he be able to breathe? Would he get out alive?—and because I was appalled by the older kids’ lack of concern for him as he crawled out from under the snow and ice and eventually stood next to his destroyed igloo in tears. It was this moment that took me back to the ugly part of childhood—the times when it seemed that no one cared about anyone else’s feelings or well being. Ultimately when Max arrives on his island, the Wild Things of his imagination want him to create a world where there is no unhappiness, no loneliness, so that they won’t have the desire to hurt each other, and we intuitively understand that this is what Max wants, what we all want: an exile from sadness, both in childhood and in life.

***SPOILERS END HERE***

This may seem like a strange post for a blog about not dieting, but from my point of view it’s directly related to the topic at hand. For, as much as I hate to admit it, I believe many of our ideas about our bodies are formed during childhood, shaped by the wild and cruel behavior we encounter as kids on a day-to-day basis.

For instance, I remember hearing people make fun of one girl for having cellulite in fifth grade. Let me repeat that—in fifth grade! I also remember being told I had thunder thighs before I was even a teenager. And I remember sharing a common understanding that if a another girl in our class would just lose some weight, she would be the prettiest one in our school. What's even more frightening is that I was on a diet from the time I was eleven until I was twenty, always trying to lose weight, to be more thin, which I equated with being more attractive. And I know nothing has changed today because two of my nieces—ages 10 and 14 and about as big as my earlobe—talk all the time about how “fat” they are and how much they need to lose weight.

Why are kids cruel? It’s hard to say. I certainly can’t imagine an adult hanging out at a party and making fun of someone’s cellulite. If that happened, we would all think that the person was insanely superficial and pretty juvenile, not to mention a weirdo.

Sometimes I think kids are cruel because they feel so vulnerable and so not in control. I mean, how would you feel if someone took away your ability to decide what you did every day? If people told you when you had to get up and go to school, when you had to go to sleep, when you had to eat, even what time to play? I think if I didn’t feel like I had some control over my day-to-day life I would probably start losing my mind, and it wouldn’t take very long for me to start lashing out at those around me. Of course, it’s also clear that kids—like the Wild Things in the movie—are mean to each other as a defense mechanism: if they hurt someone else first, they’re less likely to be hurt themselves.

Unfortunately, there’s probably nothing we can do to make our children feel more in control of their own lives—nothing short of home schooling them, which isn’t possible for most parents.

But what we can do is combat the negative lessons they learn from their peers by challenging those comments—when we hear them ourselves and when our kids repeat them back to us. We can also show them that beautiful women come in all shapes and sizes by reading magazines and watching movies and television that feature real-sized women (and appreciating those women). And most importantly—and this is big, people! it's possibly the thing I care most about on this blog—we can show them with our behavior by not giving into the temptation to constantly criticize and feel bad about our own bodies, by reveling in our curves rather than always trying to erase and hide them.

Because, I mean, honestly, isn’t it the least we can do?

In the film, Carol, the Wild Thing Max is closest to, tells Max that as king of the island he can do whatever he wants because it's his world, and I would argue the same is true for us. It's our world—we control what it is and what it becomes. And if we do, maybe we'll be more like Max, "a truly great king."

The model cousin

194 pounds

I caught up with two of my favorite cousins last week in Nashville, and though I was thrilled to see them for the first time in years, I was horrified by the way my self-confidence plummeted in their presence. I've talked before about the way family members can affect how we see ourselves, but I don't think I realized before last week, that this can happen even when we are around family members with whom we have supportive and loving relationships. I guess that's what took me by surprise: I've always been close with these cousins, I've always enjoyed their company, and never once have I thought that they were judgmental about the way I look. So why did my self-perception change so dramatically when I saw them?

The first thing that might have played into this change is the way my cousin Jim looked. Most of the people on my mother's side of the family are solidly built, and as a former high school football player, Jim has always been broad shouldered and brawny. But when he walked through the door of my favorite Nashville restaurant last week, he was so thin that I barely recognized him. Jim had slimmed down after high school, but he still always had that hulking footballer look. This was not the case last week. The man who met us for dinner was a far cry from the Jim I had grown up with. In fact, he's now what I would call model thin—not too thin, but thin enough that it's easy to imagine him posing for an underwear ad. I was, of course, surprised by the change in his physique, but more than anything, I was surprised by how handsome he looked. Never a bad looking guy, Jim is now a bona fide hottie.

And I couldn't help but wonder if underneath his former football player body, this model had been waiting to come out all along.

You can probably guess what I thought next—is there a model inside of me waiting to come out? Could I look that good if I lost a significant amount of weight? Have I been approaching this whole weight loss thing the exactly wrong way???

After dinner, my other cousin Jeff got out his camera for a few pictures, but when I looked at the first one, I was horrified by what I saw. I had turned to the side for the photo, and when I looked at my image on the tiny camera screen, all I saw was arm. A huge, flabby, fleshy piece of whale arm. I was disgusted with myself.

I had not seen Jeff or Jim in years, and here we were, finally reunited—Jim looking like he'd just stepped out of the pages of GQ and Jeff as boyish and cute as always—and I imagined I must have reminded them of the fatty ham our grandmother put out every year at the family's Christmas dinner.

Admittedly, this is exactly the kind of talk—exactly the kind of thinking—that I want to steer people away from on this blog. But that doesn't mean I'm entirely immune to it.

Yes, I was feeling horribly unattractive in the moment, but I was also simultaneously angry with myself for breaking the very rules I set forth on this blog. So if I understood even then how wrong it was to see myself that way, why did I still do it?

The answer is probably too complex for someone who's not schooled in the psychology of the mind to fully understand, but I can take a guess: when we're around family, we revert to the roles of our childhood, whether they be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. When I saw Jeff and Jim, I became the person they grew up with—the insecure, awkward, somewhat nerdy child of my youth. I often become this way around my immediate family, but it surprised me that I would do this with my cousins as well. It wasn't that they didn't believe in me. It's that they reminded me of the person I used to be. And maybe it's not the worst thing in the world to remember whom we used to be. Otherwise, how would we be able to recognize how much we've changed and grown?

Maybe there is a model lurking somewhere deep inside of me. A model I might be able to find if I were willing to starve myself for the rest of my life, which is what I'd have to do to lose and keep off the fifty pounds I'd need to shed to find that model. But what's different between the me I am now and the me I was when I was a kid roller-skating with Jeff and Jim in our grandmother's basement is that I no longer want to be that model. I no longer believe that I'll finally be happy when I look like I've just stepped out of the pages of Vogue.

No, I no longer believe that happiness is something I'm waiting for. Now I believe it's something I already have.

Running for the border

I'll face the scale again next week!
I just finished visiting my family in the Chicago suburbs, and as I prepared to leave this morning, there was one thought that kept coming back to me—how important it is to let loose and have fun.

I've written before about the importance of allowing ourselves indulgences in our our diet from time to time—in other words, giving in to those cheeseburger and brownie cravings when they come rather than trying to pretend they don't exist (which only makes us want them even more). But I realized today that having a sound mind in a sound body also means that we have to do the same with our behavior—indulge ourselves by sometimes giving in to the crazy things we want to do in life and not just the crazy things we want to eat.

I was thinking about this today because it feels like no one ever lets loose or does anything wild or out of the ordinary in my family. Clearly, this is partially the result of the fact that my sister has two little girls. Whenever the girls are around, it feels as if everyone is walking on eggshells—instructing them on how to behave, carefully answering their never-ending questions, and gingerly guiding them through their daily routine. In this way, their lives seem totally prescriptive: there is a certain way to eat, a certain way to sit, a certain way to be . . . there is a time to practice piano, a time to work on penmanship, a time for swimming lessons, a time to eat meals, a time for bed, a time for everything. And everyone—my sister, her husband, and my parents—follows this world order as if deviating from it might lead to the loss of life or limb.

The effect this has on me is the opposite one it's supposed to have on the girls: rather than being reassured by this carefully crafted routine, I am honestly driven to the brink of insanity by it. In fact, my response to the lessons and the practices and the organic food is to want to blow off the entire schedule, pack the girls into the backseat of my car, roll all the windows down, crank the Abba, and drive them all the way to Mexico—stopping only for candy and purple hair dye before we get to the border but saving enough money for tequila and tattoos after we arrive in Tijuana.

Of course, I don't do that. But that's not the point. The point is that I want to do it.

And when I left my sister's house this morning—windows down, an old Pink Floyd anthem screaming from the stereo—it hit me that my response to the girls' claustrophobic schedule is the same response I have to dieting.

To put it simply, I did not want any part of it. And just the thought of it, just being around other people living under such a tight regimen, makes me want to give into my very worst cravings.

Hand in hand with my response to being exposed to the girls' overstructured lives was my second viewing of The Hangover, which, believe it or not, I saw last night with my mother and my husband. Even though I find the idea of strip clubs wholly objectionable, I found myself agreeing with one of the characters when he defended an out-of-control trip to Vegas with his buddies to his incredibly uptight fiancee.

And when I thought about these two experiences side by side, I understood very clearly that it's just as important for us to give into our cravings for adventure and a life without rules as it is for us to give into our food cravings. When push comes to shove, we all need our trips to Vegas or Mexico . . . or even just a wild night of drinking and dancing now and again. Because if we don't give into these desires, we're not really living, are we?

At the end of Stephen King's novella, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," the character of Red is released from prison and, on his way to Mexico, thinks about what he is about to do. (If you've seen the movie adaptation of this novella, you'll remember that Morgan Freeman played Red, and his thoughts were included as a voice over while he rode a bus south to Mexico.) It is Red's words I will leave you with today since I think they best epitomize why being free to do what we want is so incredibly important.

I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.

I hope I can make it across the border.

I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand.

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

I hope.

Why we should all see AWAY WE GO

196 pounds

Tonight I had the privilege of seeing Away We Go, the new dramedy about a confused young pregnant couple played by Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski. It was a film I've wanted to see as long as I've known about it but one I'd been D Y I N G to see ever since I saw a gorgeous but very womanly picture of Maya Rudolph splashed across two pages of Entertainment Weekly with an article they wrote about the movie last month. In the picture, Rudolph's skirt was creeping up her thighs to reveal wonderfully fleshy legs, and I immediately admired the hell out of Rudolph for that photo—not only for showing off her regular-sized body, but for doing so in such a sexy manner.

What's even better is that Rudolph was pregnant at the time the picture was taken. Sure, we've seen pregnant woman knocking our eyes out on the cover of magazines before (Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair comes to mind), but this photo was different. Rudolph didn't look like she had something to prove. She looked like she was merely comfortable with herself—womanly thighs and all.

In a recent post, I talked about my wish that more magazines would feature women who are a happy medium between the severely underweight and the severely overweight, and Maya Rudolph is a great example of someone who personifies that happy medium—both in terms of her body and her non-traditional beauty.

Because of this photo, I was hoping that Rudolph would look just as real in the film, and it did not disappoint. Both she and Krasinski go from average to stunning to disheveled at various points throughout the movie.

But what I really want to talk about is a comment made by Rudolph's character, Verona, in the movie. Without giving anything away, I can say that the comment occurs when she and her boyfriend Burt are discussing their future and their unborn daughter. Verona asks Burt to "promise me that you won't care if our daughter is fat or skinny, and that she won't even be the kind of girl who worries about her weight in a cliched kind of way." (I'm sure I'm getting the words all out of order, but the sentiment is what's important here.)

Verona makes this request during a very moving part of the film, and it was this line that put me over the top. I wanted to stand up in my chair, throw down my tub of popcorn and oversized soda, and shout, "Yes, yes, yes! Please teach your daughter not to worry about her weight! Please teach us all to do that!"

Of course, I didn't stand up and shout like that because I was afraid of getting thrown out of the theatre and really wanted to see the end of the movie.

But I did start to cry.

And I'm not sure I really stopped until the credits had finished rolling.

I guess what I'm saying is that this, more than anything, was a movie that really got me, that really understood what's important to me. (If such a thing is even possible.) And I'd like to take it a step further and say this is a movie that gets all of us.

These two characters were simultaneously the kind of lost souls we all feel like sometimes and the generous, thoughtful people we all aspire to be at other times—whether it be their take on their unborn daughter's weight, the way they both embraced Rudolph's pregnant body, or their stubborn refusal to accept the rejection of strollers. No matter how you look at it, these characters were the real thing.

So I'll add it to my list of Movies Every Woman Should See, but do yourself a favor and see this one on the big screen before it leaves the theatre.

Don't wait until it's too late

196 pounds
We now know for sure that Michael Jackson only weighed 112 pounds at the time of his death. As I said in my last post, that means he had a BMI that was F A R below what is considered healthy. And as more stories come pouring out of the press, it becomes more and more obvious that Michael Jackson was simply not eating the way a healthy person should.

I think we all have known someone in our lives who has suffered from an eating disorder. For me, it was the older sister of one of my childhood friends who I watched deteriorate to almost nothing right before my eyes. What's sad is that I didn't notice it. My mother had to point it out to me, and even after that, I was still shocked when she spent two different months-long stints in the hospital. And what's even more heartbreaking is that I actually saw her as beautiful—her face was so sunken that her cheekbones were as pronounced as those of a supermodel. And though her hair was falling out, I only noticed her long skinny legs, legs that didn't have any of the fleshiness I had on my own, much younger legs. No, I had no idea that she was sick. I simply thought she was stunning.

So it can't be much of a surprise that, around the same time she went into the hospital, I also stopped eating. I was worried about my "thunder thighs" even though I was only 14, hadn't yet stopped growing, and couldn't have had more than 130 pounds on my 5'4" frame (which would have made my BMI a lean 22).

In truth, I was in absolutely perfect shape—some of the more cruel boys in my eighth grade class used to say I looked great "from the neck down," but I never heard the compliment implicit in that awful statement. Instead I focused on the criticism and, therefore, saw myself as horribly ugly.

My response wasn't to get a new haircut—which I desperately needed—or to learn to stand up straight or look boys in the eye. Instead I stopped eating. I thought that if I just lost a little bit of weight, I would be the most popular girl in my class.

I decided to start my adventures in not eating over a weekend. That way my friends would be less likely to notice. I'd read dozens of young adult novels about anorexia and, from those, had learned all the tricks—eating gum to distract yourself from real food, going to the bathroom while everyone else was in the cafeteria, even counting out Tic-Tacs to make it through the day.

I used the bathroom trick during Friday's lunch, and that night at dinner, even though I'd spent two hours biking around my neighborhood after school, I feigned an upset stomach. By Saturday, my parents were starting to catch on, and in order to get me to eat, they made my favorite meal—if you read my blog regularly, you won't be surprised to find out that was cheeseburgers. They even went so far as to put a big, fat greasy burger on a plate for me even though I said I wasn't hungry, and they made me sit at the table in front of it the entire time it took everyone else to enjoy their dinner.

But my will to be thin was stronger than the intoxicating smell of beef. I continued to claim I wasn't hungry, and my parents scolded me without much success.

My mother took my sister and I shopping at the mall on Sunday, and at around three o'clock, I started to feel the effects of not eating for nearly 72 hours. At first, I felt a bit faint and dizzy. But not long after that, I developed a raging headache. The kind of headache I can still remember 25 years later. It turned out that my will to not eat was not as strong as my body's attempts to fight it. And after all of my misguided intentions, I was in the end not foolish enough to tolerate the physical consequences of not eating. My mom tuned into my failing health and suggested we hit the Wendy's in the mall. Though I wasn't ready to go back to cheeseburgers just yet, I did eat a huge taco salad, which for some reason I thought was lower cal than a cheeseburger, a fact we know now is not always true of salads. (In fact, a Wendy's Taco Salad has 640 calories, while a single hamburger with cheese has 490 calories.)

I wish I could say that that weekend was my last exposure to eating disorders, but if I said that I would not be telling the truth. When I was in college, there were a number of girls in my sorority house who would visit the bathroom together every night after dinner. We all knew what they were doing, but no one did anything to stop them. At least, by then, I was smart enough not to join them.

But later in the evening, when the same group would hit the gym for a late-night workout, I could almost never say no when they knocked on my door to invite me along. I still believed—even at just 150 pounds—that if they were stopping at my door, it meant I needed to lose weight. This despite the fact that by then I was 5'6", making my BMI a healthy 24.

After that grueling headache, I never again considered not eating, though it would be years before I would also give up on dieting. I have realized many times since then how lucky I was to have parents who fought my desire to not eat every step of the way. And I can't help but wonder what would have happened with Jackson if his parents had done something to get him to eat. Would he have needed less pills to get through the day? Would he have simply felt better, both physically and mentally?

It may be hard for some people to understand why the media has been almost singularly obsessed with Michael Jackson since his death last week. But even though I was no more of a fan than the average 39-year-old, I get it. When Michael Jackson stepped onto the stage of the Apollo Theatre in 1983, all of us thirteen-year-olds were watching with stars in our eyes. The whole country was watching. And we didn't stop for many, many years. Jackson epitomized the youth, vitality, and success that we all longed for. Whether we were young and old, he was like magic. And maybe a little part of the reason he had fallen out of favor with Americans was because he seemed to have lost that part of himself, all in the name of being thin and attractive "from the neck up."

Rather than show Jackson at his worst, I'd like to remember him at his best. Which is why I've included an old picture of him above—as the incredibly handsome, fiercely talented, vital entertainer I grew up with.

If you think you might have trouble with an eating disorder, please get help. Talk to a friend or family member, or at the very least, read more about it on the internet. Here's a site to get you started: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/eating_disorder_treatment.htm

Practicing what I preach

196 pounds

I wrote my "Returning to Childhood" entry (about exercising as often and as enjoyably as we did when we were kids) almost two weeks ago, and over the past week, I've finally begun taking my own advice. Normally I am pretty good about working out an hour a day—mostly walking and hiking but also playing tennis from time to time—but over the past seven days, in addition to my regular workouts, I have also tossed a frisbee, rode swings,  lifted weights, done sit-ups and stretches, played basketball, mowed the lawn (formerly a teenage activity for me), and walked up and down the balance beam in the park. I'm hoping to go swimming Thursday night, and as soon as I can get some air in the tires, I'm taking my bike out for a long ride too. 

Right now you're probably thinking that I must be crazy to climb up on the balance beam reserved for kids in my local park, but for the most part my husband and I have had the playground to ourselves like two kids let loose in a candy store. I would like to think I wouldn't care if anyone else was there or not, that I'd still jump up on that beam with zeal, but I'm not yet sure about that.  

And this brings me to a question: why are all of our parks made for kids? Why do city planners assume that once we become adults we won't want to play anymore? I've been to many, many playgrounds with my nieces and nephews that have signs that say things like "Kids only" or "Age Five and Below," and I always feel cheated. 

So why do they make these restrictions? Why can't adults play side by side with the children? Maybe there's a compelling reason why we're kept off slides and jungle gyms, and if so, I'd love to hear it. Unfortunately, I fear that it's because we're simply too kid-centered as a society—kids are the center of our universe and adults are just the planets that revolve around them. 

Some part of me knew that I would probably enjoy going back to my days of playing frisbee and shooting hoops, but what I didn't foresee was HOW MUCH I would enjoy it.

For instance, when I was riding the swings in the park last night, I did more than enjoy it. I was moved by it. So moved that I felt a giant rush of adrenaline sweep through my body, a rush as brisk and electric as the thunderstorms that have been crossing our state every afternoon for the past week. 

I was so distracted by my own euphoria that I didn't even notice my husband swinging next to me or process exactly what I was doing. And, without fully realizing it, I leaned back in my swing and found that when my feet were pointing in the air, I was able to gaze directly at the clouds overhead. I'm sure all of you will remember what it felt like—it felt like I was flying!

Immediately, I remembered doing the same thing as a kid, but until that moment, I had no conscious memory of doing anything of the sort. How could I possibly have forgotten something so amazing??? It was as if simply being on the swing took me back to all those moments I had forgotten, and the effect was overwhelming. I was suddenly young again.

If feeling young wasn't enough incentive to keep participating in these child-like activities, I got another reason to do so this afternoon. 

I had to drive out to the country today to pick up our weekly share of produce from a local Amish farmer, and as soon as I got in the car, I rolled the windows down and cranked the stereo all the way up. (In case you're wondering, today's featured songs were America's "Sister Goldenhair" and Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok.") I always sing when I'm the car alone, but today something was different. I was singing even louder than normal—so loud that I could hear my own voice over the music even though the volume was turned to MAX—and I was feeling even more energetic. Simply put, I felt more alive, more invigorated than I had in years. And though I know this will sound like a cliche, I have to say it: I felt like I could do anything. 

I am absolutely certain it is the changes I've been making in my life that caused me to feel this way, and I couldn't be more happy about that realization. It turns out that riding the swings is good for more than just burning calories. It's good for my psyche too.