The Fat Girl's Guide to Living

Charlie’s daughter strikes a pose as a “sailor boy”

If I may say so, my four-year-old daughter is a well-rounded kid. She loves trains (courtesy of my love for them), cars, tools (the toy ones), and squirt guns. (Unlike a lot of parents, we’re not anti-water gun, we just make sure she understands that there exists a world of difference between water and bullets.) While she loves foam pirate swords, the hard plastic variety hold no interest because they can actually hurt someone. Tori also adores old cars, mostly because she loves Ruby, my 1972 Ford Maverick (yes, it’s got a child safety seat aboard) and can’t wait till she’s old enough to sit up front.

When it comes to toys, games, and activities, we try to balance the passive (TV watching and online games) with the active (swimming, biking, hiking, and climbing) and imaginative (pretending, role-playing, reading, and puzzle-solving). We’ve limited the overtly commercial franchises where possible, but the “princess phase” is perhaps unavoidable in little girls, and suppressing it seems as gender-biased as forcing it. Disney’s prices have done a great job of keeping our supply of DVDs to a minimum, but even the casual observer will find that Tori likes magic wands, Hello Kitty, and Tinkerbell. Again, telling her this stuff is too passive or girly seems just as silly as strapping boxing gloves on her, so we let her enjoy it.

My only reservation about her ideas on gender roles lies in some of the “rules” she recites once in awhile. She’s fond of saying “girls like pink and boys don’t” or “boys can’t have long hair.” We’re quick in every case to point out clear examples in her life where these rules don’t apply. She knows several boys with long curly hair and others who like pink better than blue. I’m not sure if she’s getting these stereotypes from school or TV, but they don’t go unchallenged around here. In fact, at age 4, Tori’s already been to a gay pride parade so she could meet some “princesses” (i.e., full-on drag queens) first-hand, which was more a shock to them than to her.

My most deeply held dreams for my daughter have little to do with gender-based ideals or roles, however.

Be fierce. Be strong, Be compassionate. Be curious.

These are the things I want for my daughter. Other fathers likely have similar lists. Like many dads, I wonder how I’ll handle the various milestones in my daughter’s life: her first date, her first time driving solo, the day she sets out on her own. Then there’s all the body image issues that begin early and seem to challenge a woman’s self-image throughout her lifetime: How do I protect her from the shame and self-loathing so common among women in our society? Can I? Should I?

Above all, I want Tori to have a strong sense of self, a trust for her own gut instinct, and enough confidence to resist measuring herself against someone else’s yardstick. But the power of the media is strong: fashion magazines, diet plan come-ons, and “reality” programming are tough to avoid. I’ve always believed that the fashion industry is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated upon humanity, and while many disagree, I’m not afraid to say so. My motto: dress comfortably, wear what makes you happy, and screw what others think or say. Of course, regardless of what I think, people do measure each other by fashion. But I want Tori to know a few things when she makes her fashion choices:

1. Barbie is NOT a rational beauty standard,

2. All those photos in fashion magazines and on billboards are Photoshopped,

3. Every culture views physical beauty differently,

4. Your peers are just as frightened and confused as you are, and

5. You may not always be proud of everything you’ve done, but never be ashamed of who you are.

As for internal beauty, she doesn’t need any help from me. She is a warrior princess with enough self-confidence to scare a bear. She knows she is beautiful, and I hope that she can carry that feeling with her forever.

Without a doubt, my daughter’s best guide to a future of self-acceptance and self-confidence is her mother. In her, Tori has a living example of what it means to be active and confident at any size—to be equally at home hiking a mountain, canoeing a river, or biking along a beach-side trail. She is learning that being a bigger woman does not mean being passive or unhealthy. She is learning that what matters in your life is what you do, not how others see you. Of course, I am a realist and I know there will be times of insecurity and self-doubt. Everyone experiences them. But as my dad used to say, “It’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s how you play them.”

I hope through all of this that Tori will grow to see life in terms of choices rather than limitations, and that neither her gender nor her body size should be a barrier to her desires, whether in personal style, career, recreation, or choice of friends or partners.

Dara Chadwick’s book, “You’d Be So Pretty If…”

This week’s guest post comes from Dara Chadwick, a journalist who writes about health, wellness and psychology. We asked her to write about her journey to self acceptance after landing a sweet gig with a national women’s fitness magazine.

When it comes to family television viewing, there aren’t always a whole lot of great choices, but one show my family’s been enjoying together is ABC’s “The Middle,” a half-hour sitcom that features a “middle-aged, middle-class” mom in middle America. My kids think it’s a riot and I’ve found myself giggling at the over-the-top adventures of the show’s characters — especially the mom, who’s just trying to hold her head above water on most days.

I’ve had lots of days like that. And they really used to bother me. But happiness, I’ve discovered, is in those “middle” places.

See, I’m a former member of the “I have to be perfect” club: brilliant career, model children, blissfully happy marriage and spotless house. Oh, and a fabulous body, too.

Are you done laughing yet?

I can tell you that I have achieved all that “perfection” exactly zero times in my life. But that didn’t stop me from trying — or from beating myself up about it. The focus of most of my efforts was usually my body; after all, eating and exercise were totally under my control, right?

There was a time in my life when my quest to improve myself was serious business. I’d restrict calories, I’d exercise for hours and otherwise find ways to punish myself for not being “perfect.” My body may have been smaller, but I was never quite satisfied with where I was. In my mind, there was always room for improvement.

Secretly, though, I longed for a day when I wouldn’t have to care anymore.

While meeting the demands of two young kids, a husband, a job and a house, that day arrived. I didn’t care anymore. With no time to exercise, no energy to make a healthy meal for myself amid diapers and baby food and bottles, and no shortage of guilt at the idea of putting myself first, I let go of my chase of perfection.

And I do mean I let go. But that didn’t make me happy, either.

It wasn’t the extra flesh I was carrying or the bigger jeans I was wearing. It was knowing that I just wasn’t taking care of myself. Not exercising and not caring at all about what I ate didn’t deliver the freedom I once thought it would.

My life was out of balance. I’d gone from one extreme to the other.

In 2007, I signed on to write the Weight-Loss Diary column for Shape magazine. I worked with a life coach, a trainer and a dietitian to meet my goal of getting myself back to the weight I was on my wedding day. Each month, I was photographed and had to write about my “successes and failures.”

By the end of the year, I made my goal weight. But a funny thing happened along the way.

I’d started out with near obsession: I never, ever thought I wouldn’t be able to lose the weight. But as my kids — who were then 11 and nine — watched me hit the gym for a couple of hours each day, drink protein shakes and carefully monitor every calorie I consumed, I realized that I’d see-sawed back to the other extreme. And that wasn’t good.

That wasn’t the mom I wanted to be.

But here’s what was good: By the project’s end, I’d reconnected with my body. I remembered how good regular exercise made me feel. I realized how much better I felt when I ate healthy foods. I had a great dietitian who taught me all about moderation and helped me learn to bring balance to my food choices — knowledge I still use every day, two years later.

When my year with Shape was over, I made a conscious decision: No more extremes. These days, I eat what I feel like eating, when I feel like eating it. I don’t belong to a gym anymore; instead, I mix up my routine with walking, running, dance classes, yoga, biking — whatever I feel like doing. But I do something. It’s not about getting smaller, or changing a single thing: It’s about me, living my life in the healthiest body I can have — and showing my kids that you don’t have to be “perfect” to be happy.

After all this time, I feel like I’ve finally found my “middle” place — that balance between healthy self-care and accepting the body I have. I’m not striving for elusive perfection, but I’m not neglecting my body’s health either. Landing squarely in the middle, I’ve reached that body image milestone I’ve longed for my whole life: Contentment.

Dara writes about raising body-confident kids and making peace with our own body image demons at You’d Be So Pretty If (one of our “We Read” picks), and you can purchase her book here.