Fit Villains: Selfish, Shameless, Sassy, Fitness.

If you follow my blog, you know that I do my best to try and promote positive  body-image (with a little self-love 101). I also try to discourage negative self-talk & body shaming which seems to be making so many of us miserable. It’s a freaking epidemic.

Aside from media pressure, there are a LOT of ways we inadvertently encourage body shaming in our daily lives. Here are just a few.

For one, we use physical appearance as a way to compliment each other and to lift someone’s spirits (You look great! Have you lost weight? New haircut? Love it!). We also criticize each other’s bodies at alarming levels (she’s too skinny, she’s too fat, she shouldn’t wear that, look at her cellulite). Little girls get messages from everything around them: we simultaneously tell them that looks shouldn’t matter, yet emphasize looks all the time. We try to tell little girls to love their bodies, yet criticize ours in the mirror while we dress for work (they’re watching & listening to every conversation you have with your girlfriends about which body parts you hate also). 

Every girl learns to hate her body by watching other women hate theirs or hate on each other’s.

We tell little girls how pretty they are, over any other attribute they may have. It’s usually the first thing out of our mouths when we see a little girl, or get a chance to say howdy. Look how pretty you are...

Stop the bad body talk… and body talk all together.

In the article below, the author provides an example of how to take ‘looks’ out of the equation when speaking with little girls. It’s challenging (I mean, they really ARE cute sometimes), but if we truly want ‘looks’ not to matter, we need to stop emphasizing how important they are.

Excerpt from How To Talk To Little Girls

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.

Read More On Huffington Post