Let's talk about body image

When was the first time you felt bad about your body?

I was 12 or 13 years old. It was summer time. My brother and I were swimming in our pool in the back yard. I hopped out of the pool for a moment and my brother started laughing and shouted "Hey, your butt jiggles!" I laughed it off and we kept playing in the pool.

That night I when I went into my room to change out of my bathing suit I stood naked in front of my full length mirror. I carefully examined my body from head to toe. I jumped up and down a few times. My butt jiggled. My thighs jiggled. Everything seemed to jiggle. I also noticed that I had stretch marks scattered from my belly button to my knees. My breasts didn't have any stretch marks because there weren't hardly any breasts there to stretch. I noticed that the acne on my face had spread to my upper back.

I was devastated. I didn't see any beauty. All I saw were those stretch marks. The harder I looked, the longer they grew. I was 5'4" and around 105lbs, long blond hair and tanned from the summer sun, but all I saw was imperfection. I was all knobby knees and gangling arms, and a jiggly butt to boot. After a time of self pity, I pulled myself together, put on some clothes and went out to join my family for dinner. My brother mentioned my jiggly rear once more. This time each word hit me like a ton of bricks.

Your. Butt. Jiggles.

My dad quickly told him that it wasn't ok to tease me and he needed to apologize. He did, but it was obvious that I was upset. After dinner my parents talked with me for a long time. I told them how much I hated the way I looked. I wished I didn't jiggle. I wanted to get rid of the stretch marks. What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I perfect?

After assuring me that I was indeed beautiful and God made me special and almost everyone gets stretch marks, including boys, Daddy told me something that night that probably took a whole lot of daddy courage. It also was exactly what I needed to hear and it stuck with me. He said "Someday in the future there will be a man who appreciates that butt more than you could even imagine."

That may sound like rather odd advice, especially coming from a father of a 13 year old girl, but that short phrase summed up the whole situation for me. I was growing into a woman. A woman who would one day be desired. I wasn't going to look like all the other women. There would be things about myself that I loathed and wished would change, but someone would love those things I thought were faults.

Have you talked with your daughter about how she feels about her body? Has she tried to talk with you about it at all? I believe it's something that parents need to discuss with their daughters, and if at all possible I think that fathers need to be involved in the conversations. (there will likely be more than one conversation, so be prepared) Having my father involved in at least some of the conversations about "my changing body" (not the period part, just the stretch marks part) showed me that my father loved me for who I was. It cemented in my mind that there would be a guy out there who would love me too.

I have since grown a bit taller and filled out a bit more. I definitely still carry my junk in the trunk, and Jake goes crazy for it. That wasn't the only conversation we had about how I looked or how I felt about how I looked. I still call my mom to talk about my insecurities from time to time and I'm married and moved out. I am not always completely comfortable in my own skin, but I have a bit more self confidence to go along with it, so the issues don't always seem so big. I also can carry on a conversation for more than 15 seconds with a guy without him bouncing his eyes off my chest, and I know that I still have his attention as I walk away.

BTW, my brother never mentioned my butt again, unless he was complaining about how his guy friends were teasing him about how hot I was.