Mothers Daughters And Body Image

When women are told that what is important about us is how we look, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to feel comfortable with our appearance and how we feel about our bodies. We are told, over and over—if we just lost weight, fit into those old jeans, or into a new smaller pair—we will be happier and feel better about ourselves. The truth is, so many women despise their appearance, weight, and shape, that experts who study women’s body image now consider this feeling to be normal. But it does not have to be that way. It is possible for us as women to love ourselves, our bodies, as we are. We need a new story about what it means to be a woman in this world. Based on her original research, Hillary L McBride shares the true stories of young women, and their mothers, and provides unique insights into how our relationships with our bodies are shaped by what we see around us and the specific things we can do to have healthier relationships with our appearance, and all the other parts of ourselves that make us women. In Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image McBride tells her own story of recovery from an eating disorder, and how her struggles led her to dream of a new vision for womanhood—from one without body shame, negative comparisons, or insecurities, to one of freedom, connection, and acceptance.

Many of us have a complicated relationship with our body. Maybe you've been made to feel ashamed of your body or like it isn't good enough. Maybe your body is riddled with stress, pain, or the effects of trauma. Maybe you think of your body as an accessory to what you believe you really are--your mind. Maybe your experiences with racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, or sizeism have made you believe your body isn't the right kind of body. Whatever the reason, many of us don't feel at home in our bodies. But being disconnected from ourselves as bodies means being disconnected from truly living and from the interconnection that weaves us all together. Psychologist and award-winning researcher Hillary McBride explores the broken and unhealthy ideas we have inherited about our body. Embodiment is the way we are in the world, and our embodiment is heavily influenced by who we have been allowed to be. McBride shows that many of us feel disembodied due to colonization, racism, sexism, and patriarchy--destructive systems that rank certain bodies as less valuable, beautiful, or human than others. Embracing our embodiment can liberate us from these systems. As we come to understand the world around us and the stories we've been told, we see that our perspective of reality often limits how we see and experience ourselves, each other, and what we believe is Sacred. Instead of the body being a problem to overcome, our bodies can be the very place where we feel most alive, the seat of our spirituality and our wisdom. The Wisdom of Your Body offers a compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied living. Weaving together illuminating research, stories from her work as a therapist, and deeply personal narratives of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a near-fatal car accident, and chronic pain, McBride invites us to reclaim the wisdom of the body and to experience the wholeness that has been there all along. End-of-chapter questions and practices are included.

From You'd Be So Pretty If... I grew up listening to my mom bemoan everything from the size of her thighs to the shape of her eyes. So you can imagine my dismay the first time someone exclaimed, ''You look just like your mother!'' Every mom wants her daughter to feel confident in her own skin, but may often unconsciously impose her own ''body image blueprint.'' Dara Chadwick's You'd Be So Pretty If... reveals: What girls learn when Mom diets; How to talk to your daughter about healthy eating and exercise habits; The trigger words that set off a body image crisis; How to recognize a budding eating disorder.... With humor and compassion, You'd Be So Pretty If... offers parents fresh and useful strategies for conveying that success isn't negated by carrying extra pounds - or guaranteed by keeping them off.

Understand what your teenage daughter really means—and learn to use your arguments to strengthen your bond with her. Mothers and teenage daughters argue more than any other child-parent pair—on average every two-and-a-half days. These quarrels, Terri Apter shows, are attempts to negotiate changes in a relationship that is valued by both mothers and daughters. A daughter often feels her mother doesn't know or understand her, and by fighting hopes to force her mother into a new awareness of who she really is, how she has changed, and what she is now capable of doing and understanding. But mothers often misinterpret their daughter's outbursts as signs of rejection, and they may pull back feeling hurt and confused. Through case studies and conversations between mothers and daughters, Apter shows mothers how to interpret the meanings behind a daughter's angry words and how to emerge from arguments with a new closeness.

Drs. Lindsay and Lexie Kite know firsthand how hard filtering out media influence is when it comes to self-image. Both struggled as young women to overcome the expectations of body size and shape, but were able to learn to love, appreciate, and reclaim their own bodies, eventually earning their PhDs in body image resilience. The twin sisters founded the nonprofit Beauty Redefined and have made it their mission to help other women see themselves without societal expectations distorting their self-perception. More than a Body is a self-help book focused on going beyond body positivity, showing how a mindset focused on appearance sets women up for insecurities and self-judgement. In this book, they offer an action plan for readers to combat that mindset, and instead learn how the body can be "an instrument, not an ornament," with practical, actionable steps to take when consuming media, exercising, practicing self-reflection and self-compassion, and finding a purpose in life.

"Why does every one of my friends have an eating disorder, or, at the very least, a screwed-up approach to food and fitness?" writes journalist Courtney E. Martin. The new world culture of eating disorders and food and body issues affects virtually all -- not just a rare few -- of today's young women. They are your sisters, friends, and colleagues -- a generation told that they could "be anything," who instead heard that they had to "be everything." Driven by a relentless quest for perfection, they are on the verge of a breakdown, exhausted from overexercising, binging, purging, and depriving themselves to attain an unhealthy ideal. An emerging new talent, Courtney E. Martin is the voice of a young generation so obsessed with being thin that their consciousness is always focused inward, to the detriment of their careers and relationships. Health and wellness, joy and love have come to seem ancillary compared to the desire for a perfect body. Even though eating disorders first became generally known about twenty-five years ago, they have burgeoned, worsened, become more difficult to treat and more fatal (50 percent of anorexics who do not respond to treatment die within ten years). Consider these statistics: Ten million Americans suffer from eating disorders. Seventy million people worldwide suffer from eating disorders. More than half of American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would pre fer to be run over by a truck or die young than be fat. More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disease. In Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin offers original research from the front lines of the eating disorders battlefield. Drawn from more than a hundred interviews with sufferers, psychologists, nutritionists, sociocultural experts, and others, her exposé reveals a new generation of "perfect girls" who are obsessive-compulsive, overachieving, and self-sacrificing in multiple -- and often dangerous -- new ways. Young women are "told over and over again," Martin notes, "that we can be anything. But in those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special. You are worth something. But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness." With its vivid and often heartbreaking personal stories, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has the power both to shock and to educate. It is a true call to action and cannot be missed.

With a mix of wisdom, insight, empathy, humor, and practical advice, this book is a much-needed resource for mothers who are trying to help their daughters navigate the difficult teenage years.

This is an insightful and essential new volume for academics and professionals interested in the lived experience of those who struggle with disordered eating. Embodiment and Eating Disorders situates the complicated – and increasingly prevalent – topic of disordered eating at the crossroads of many academic disciplines, articulating a notion of embodied selfhood that rejects the separation of mind and body and calls for a feminist, existential, and sociopolitically aware approach to eating disorder treatment. Experts from a variety of backgrounds and specializations examine theories of embodiment, current empirical research, and practical examples and strategies for prevention and treatment.