“Mom, how big is my waist? Like how big around?” asked my 7yo daughter, Amelia, this morning while getting ready for school.
“It looks like it is seven years old big, just right for holding in your muscles, liver, stomach, intestines…” I answer, wondering where she is going with this.
“No, I mean how big around. See how it goes in like Barbie’s does? Friend has a really small waist, too. She says she is happy because she is light as a feather.”
This? This is the pestilence that sneaks in. No matter how vigilant or media literate you are with your family, this is what comes in through media and culture and peers and family and there is truly nothing you can do to stop it.
But you can reframe it.
“Smalls, your waist is exactly the size it should be for your body. Barbie is a toy but if she were real, she would be a very sick human and her waist would be too small to hold up her upper body. Sometimes people’s waists curve in and sometimes they don’t. Friend does have a small waist, because she is petite. Everything on her is small, even her fingers and her teeth. That is how her body was made, and your body is different but it is just perfect for being you. And Friend isn’t light as a feather, Friend is probably 45 pounds, which is healthy for a person her size.”
“Well, I know all that. Did you know that caterpillars hunt in armies?”
We do own a few Barbies, the Sea World Trainer and a few of the mermaids. They have proven to be good teaching tools and conversation starters, but we have definitely limited their existence (and importance) in our home and we haven’t allowed other fashion dolls in. Our Barbies reside in our bath toy bucket, and Amelia plays with them once a week or so. The rest of the time she is playing with toys focused on science and nature, or she is playing outside in her mad scientist lab.
My husband and I want Amelia focused on:
1. What her body can do, over what her body looks like.
2. Developing her sense of curiosity, adventure, reasoning and imagination; over focusing solely on her sense of style and fashion, which is what is primarily marketed to girls.
3. Developing her own definition of beauty, and having it be as varied and inclusive as possible.
This is what our Barbies look like at our house.
So we keep our Barbies in a bucket. The pressure Amelia will experience to conform to beauty norms as she grows into a young woman will be intense. It is everywhere. We try to inoculate her from them as much as we possibly can, educating her on the industry of beauty and how it is harmful and unfair to women. When she is a little older, I’ll probably share with her this funny limerick my husband wrote for me the other day. He had helped Amelia with her bath during which they had a conversation about Barbies and beautiful women…..
There once was a girl named for the queen of the sky,
Always a rascal with a gleam in her eye.
She grew up awesome, smart and strong,
but the creep of beauty messages didn’t take long,
and she would remember the words of her mom and say “F*ck it”.