The other night at training, I was outside skipping and one of the coaches kids was out there too. She’s 11, and was chatting away to me as I skipped, or at least tried to. She had been told, by her dad, that I had lost tons of weight. She told me that she wished she could lose weight, she felt fat. Now this is a kid of 11. Not even a damn teenager and she’s got body issues. She seemed really down about it. As best I could, I tried to put her mind at ease but she wasn’t fat or even all that chubby, she was just normal.
See, that got me thinking about things to do with body image. Us guys, we have it fairly easy I think. Aside from beefcake movie stars and sportsmen we don’t have a huge pressure to have our bodies look a certain way unless we compete in a sport. Society won’t particularly judge us for not having a six pack whereas young girls? Well the young lass I spoke with evidenced that there’s a whole host of issues going.
I spent the several days since looking at some of the media aimed at tween girls. I am astonished at how overtly sexualised some of this stuff is. If a young girl is bombarded with images of scantily clad and poorly behaved ‘women’ then is it any great surprise that they develop neuroses about their bodies? It’s not even like it’s an issue before or during puberty, seeing as girls bodies are changing. Obviously, if the child is obese then it’d be time for the parents to intervene BUT unless there are serious health issues then I would leave all that well alone.
Puberty is a tough enough time without society heaping more troubles upon the shoulders of young girls.
I’ll edit this one again soon.
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