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Good Inside with Dr. BeckyGood Inside with Dr. Becky

Your Body Is Not a Problem to Fix

Kids today face a near daily onslaught of body shame from their peers, school, diet culture, the media, and even the most well-meaning parents themselves. Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist and author, joins Dr. Becky to discuss why it’s critical that we change the way we talk to kids about fat, weight, health, and self-worth. Join Good Inside Membership: https://bit.ly/3H2HDpr Follow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside Sign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletter Order Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, at goodinside.com/book or wherever you order your books. For a full transcript of the episode go to goodinside.com/podcast Today’s episode is brought to you by Littlespoon: Little Spoon gives parents the freedom to choose how they spend their time, without sacrificing quality food. It’s easy: just pop your kid’s Little Spoon in the fridge or freezer, and use the meals when you’re ready. Little Spoon will take care of fresh, nutritionally balanced recipes - from organic stages 1-6 purees, to transition-to-table food meals, + big kid Plates your little will love. Think: hidden-veggie mac + cheese, chicken nuggets, and even adventurous eats like potstickers and gnocchi. Get 50% OFF your first order at littlespoon.com when you use the code GOODINSIDEVIP at checkout.

Dr. BeckyhostVirginia Sole-Smithguest
Apr 25, 202339mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:02

    Intro

    1. BE

      [gentle music]

  2. 0:02 – 1:52

    The body-talk soundtrack we inherit (and carry in our bodies)

    1. BE

      I wanna share some words that either they were said to me, or they were said, like, even just around me, but they're things that still just, like, live in my body-

    2. VS

      Mm-hmm

    3. BE

      ... and take up space. Okay.

    4. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. BE

      Ugh, I was so bad this week. I really have to eat better next week. I have to go to the gym. The way-- Ugh, I just feel so disgusting. Ooh, you're so tiny. How did you get so tiny? You just had a baby, and you're so tiny. Ugh, I don't know why she doesn't just, like, take better care of herself, especially 'cause she's dating these days.

    6. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    7. BE

      Okay. Now, go.

    8. VS

      [laughing] Um, yeah, all of that, all of that, and so many more. Yeah, I mean, it's exactly what you said. These comments are made around kids, around us growing up. It's a way women in particular are taught to narrate and perform our bodies, and these comments stay with you. They live rent-free in your head forever pretty much. [gentle music]

    9. BE

      I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. Virginia Sole-Smith is a journalist and the author of the new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. And this is not an exaggeration. This book is truly game-changing, and every parent needs to read it. We're going to talk about why it's so important that we change the way we talk about fat and the eight important fat talks we all need to be having.

  3. 1:52 – 4:54

    Virginia’s shift from diet-culture journalism to anti–fat-bias parenting work

    1. VS

      I started my career in women's magazines very much in the, like, pro-dieting camp. I spent a lot of years writing. I was a health journalist, but health journalism in women's magazines means, at that point in the early 2000s, writing a lot of weight loss stories. And I always struggled with it. It didn't sit right with me. I didn't love that we were putting so much emphasis on the body, but I was also very much doing it myself, had internalized a lot of this. I was a thin kid. I am not as an adult, and so I was in sort of transition, like, desperately trying to hold on to my thin... Like, I thought my thinness as a child felt very tangled up with my excellence in school and my identity as a person, and it felt like this sort of thing that was f- should be fixed in me. And so when my body started to change in college and then in young adulthood, I felt like I really had to fight it, and I had to hold on to that thin pass, you know, that, like, piece of myself that I was, quote, "letting myself go," like, as a 22-year-old, like [chuckles] um, who was just, you know, like, m- developing her adult body. And so it was a constant tension. And then, you know, my older daughter is nine and a half, so when I became a mom, a lot of this came to a head, as I think it does for a lot of parents. I think parenting is this thing that we show up to without a lot of this ever having been reckoned with in a real way, and suddenly you have to figure out how to feed another human being who's so dependent on you, and all the old stuff comes up, right? Like, all old stuff and new stuff because there's the expectations about the mom body, what your body should look like after having a baby, like you said. If you bounce back or don't bounce back, there's a lot of judgment in that. And then feeding our kids is this really loaded thing because it feels like this way that our motherhood or our parenthood is graded and judged, and everybody's allowed input. And so all of this was sort of swirling around. In our particular case, my daughter, my older daughter, was born with a heart condition and was on a feeding tube the first two years. So I also had this experience of being pushed really far outside the mainstream. You know, breastfeeding was not possible for us, like all the sort of typical eating milestones were out of reach. And that really led to a reckoning where I was like, "Why am I measuring my value as her mother and my value in my body by all these external messages? How do I start to separate from that?" And that really led to a pretty profound change in my life, in my, in my parenting, in my work as a journalist. And in the decades since then, I've really been focused on understanding those cultural messages and why we internalize them, and that's led me to really trying to reckon with the concept of anti-fat bias, identifying where that shows up in our parenting, in our culture at large, and looking at what we can do to start to unlearn that and start to develop some new models.

  4. 4:54 – 6:57

    What anti-fat bias is—and how diet culture runs on it

    1. BE

      Can you say more about that term? I'm guessing for some listeners, they're thinking, "This topic really interests me, and I've never heard that term, anti-fat bias." Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

    2. VS

      Yeah. The term you might be more familiar with is diet culture, which is the systems-- I mean, not everybody, but [chuckles] I think that term gets a little more play. And diet culture is the systems of beliefs that we all have about the, quote, "right way to eat" and the right way to have a body. And it shows up in, obviously, like, media, my women's magazine career, now influencer culture on social media, all the before and after photos, the what I eat in the day journeys, all of that. But it also shows up in conversations with our healthcare providers, in conversations with our families, in the, again, these beliefs that we internalize what our bodies should be. And what diet culture really rests on is the fundamental belief that fat bodies are not as valuable as thin bodies, and that is anti-fat bias. That is the belief that a fat body is less attractive. It can't be as healthy. It doesn't hold the same value in the world because it must represent some kind of failure on the part of the person who has that body. And that a thin body is valuable, it's beautiful, it's evidence of health, it's evidence of doing all the, quote, "right things" in terms of how you eat and how you exercise. And this bias is really baked into our culture on every level. It goes into how airplane seats are designed and restaurant booths. You know, what bodies do we physically let fit in public spaces? It shows up in youth sports. What sizes do the uniforms come in? Which athletes get the coaches' attention, and then who excels at the sport because they have the uniform that fits, and they're told they have the right body for the sport, and they get the coaches' attention. And it shows up a lot in healthcare. And again, when we then think about our parenting, it feels like this really core thing that to be a, quote, "good mother or good parent," you need to be raising a child in the right body.

  5. 6:57 – 7:26

    Parent worry vs. bias: when ‘health concern’ gets tangled with fear of fatness

    1. BE

      Yeah, and I'm just thinking about it showing up in parents', you know, own anxieties about their kids when they see their kids' bodies or how much their kids are eating.

    2. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BE

      Right? And how hard it is then to separate kind of some concern you might have about your kids' health. To some degree, it's our job to, like, notice our kids' health.

    4. VS

      Yeah.

    5. BE

      And on the other side, this anti-fat bias that might really be the source of some of that reaction.

  6. 7:26 – 9:11

    Reclaiming the word ‘fat’ as a neutral descriptor (and why ‘don’t say that’ backfires)

    1. VS

      Yeah, I think if you grew up in a fat body, and I wanna be clear, I use fat as a neutral description, as a positive description. It's a loaded word.

    2. BE

      Can you say more about that?

    3. VS

      Yeah.

    4. BE

      Because I do, just before, 'cause then I wanna come back to the thought, but I do think I hear this a lot from parents now that I talk to so many parents. Like, fat, like, oh, like, we don't say that. Like, don't say that.

    5. VS

      Yes.

    6. BE

      Right? And then someone else is like, "Well, no, now it's actually okay to say that." People are like, "What?" Like, I, I actually really do wanna get it right. Like, can someone-

    7. VS

      I know, I know

    8. BE

      ... right, can someone help me? And I know-

    9. VS

      It's [laughs]

    10. BE

      ... right, so, like, assuming everyone here, which I always do assume, has, has such positive intent, there has been a shift, it feels like, a little culturally. And okay, how can we think about that word? Now I'm gonna say it, fat. It's a word. It's a three-letter word.

    11. VS

      [laughs]

    12. BE

      It's a very simple word to say. Fat. Like, how can parents think about using that word in the way that you're describing, Virginia?

    13. VS

      It's hard because we all grew up thinking of fat as a negative thing, as a slur, as a way to hurt someone, as a joke, the punchline to a joke. But if you keep thinking of fat as a bad word, and you keep thinking of it as a word that you don't want your kids to say, and when your preschooler in the grocery store points at a man and says, "Why does he have a fat belly?" And you say, "Don't say fat. Don't say fat. That's not nice," what you're teaching your kid is there are bad bodies, and that's a bad body. And you're teaching your kid, like, we don't talk about bad bodies. So you're baking the shame and the bias into it, even though you think you're teaching them manners, you're teaching them to be polite. And so a better way to go about it is, like, "Yes, he has a fat belly. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. We don't really talk about people's bodies without their permission, though, so, you know, I always would check in with someone before you comment on the size of their body."

  7. 9:11 – 12:23

    Scripts in the grocery store: validating noticing without instilling shame

    1. BE

      Hmm. Can you s- I just, I'm picturing people, like, I'm gonna write that down. So to allow them to keep going and not rewind this episode.

    2. VS

      Yeah.

    3. BE

      Can you just say that again?

    4. VS

      Yes.

    5. BE

      Right, because I think scripts, and people say to me, like, "People love your scripts." And to me, what scripts allow parents to do is match their intention with their action, which seems like, oh, well, if I have the intention to show up a certain way, I'll know how to say it. But that's actually not true when you're learning a new language.

    6. VS

      Yes.

    7. BE

      So I think, like, these words are helpful. So your kid's in the grocery store. "Why does that man have such a fat belly?" We take a deep breath. We're like, "Oh, wait. Okay, okay, okay."

    8. VS

      This is the moment. Yes.

    9. BE

      And, and then we have Virginia's amazing words in the back of our mind.

    10. VS

      Yes. And so you would say, "Oh, yeah, he does have a big tummy," you know, or what- however you wanna characterize it. "Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Isn't that amazing? But, you know, sometimes people don't feel comfortable if we talk about their bodies without their permission, so it's always good to check in before you label somebody's body."

    11. BE

      Okay, so I just wanna push us a little further 'cause what I'm reminded of in this conversation is a different episode and, you know, just other conversations I've had with Brett Hawthorne around kids noticing race at the grocery store.

    12. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    13. BE

      Right? So let's say there's a white child who is in a predominantly white or almost, let's say, completely white school, and they see someone, instead of saying fat belly, they say, "That man's skin is so dark."

    14. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    15. BE

      Right? And I remember her saying, "Okay, you know, like, we don't, we don't wanna say to our kids, 'You're so racist.'" [laughs] You know? Like-

    16. VS

      Yeah

    17. BE

      ... and in fact, there's something to saying, and I wanna know, is this word, is this way of saying it, Virginia, kind of aligned with, you know, this way of valuing bodies? Like, you're right to notice that. That man has darker skin, or you're right to notice that. That man has a fat belly. That man has a large belly. Is that pushing it too far, or is that, is that okay to say?

    18. VS

      No, I think that's great. I think it's another way of celebrating this idea that human diversity is real and one of our strengths. And, you know, another line that I've used with my kids and that my five-year-old uses a lot now is, "Wouldn't it be so boring if we all had the same body size?"

    19. BE

      I love that.

    20. VS

      And just as a way of reframing and thinking, like, right, this is a strength. This is a good thing that bodies come in different shapes and sizes and colors and et cetera. And so the other thing I do is I do use fat conversationally, positively as a descriptor. I identify myself as fat, you know, and I use it not in a, I'm not expecting someone to rush in and say, "Oh, don't say you're fat. You're beautiful." I'm not expecting that. [laughs] I'm just saying, "This is my body size. There's nothing I need to apologize for about it." And so my kids now use fat in a very neutral and positive-

    21. BE

      Hmm

    22. VS

      ... way of, like, you know, yep, that's just a fact about some people's bodies. And it's like saying they have brown hair. It's like saying they're tall or short. And again, you can talk about how, like, we don't walk up to other people and be like, "You are very short." You know, that people don't appreciate just having their body as described is not comfortable, but that there's nothing wrong with noticing and appreciating how cool it is that bodies are different in this way.

  8. 12:23 – 14:20

    ‘You’re right to notice that’: building kids’ trust in their perceptions

    1. BE

      That's right. And, and just for, like every parent here, I really, I love the line for my kids in general, "You're right to notice that." Even when they're like, "You and daddy were fighting." Like, "You're right to notice that." Like, kids are noticing so many things.

    2. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BE

      And I think one of the things we do to kids all the time is we insert self-doubt because they say something they notice, and to some degree we say, "You shouldn't notice that," or, "You shouldn't say that." And beyond the specific topic, we do something in some ways much grander than anything about body size or race or arguments within a couple. We really say, like, "You should not trust your own perceptions." So if you grew up in a family where everyone has a thinner body type, and then they're in a grocery store and they see someone with a larger belly, like, a kid's job to some degree is to be like, "Wait, that's different. I've never noticed that."

    4. VS

      Yep.

    5. BE

      Now, how we react to that has a big influence on the story they tell themselves about that difference. But noticing that difference, th- like I always think, that's my kid's job. How cool-

    6. VS

      Yeah

    7. BE

      ... that they're noticing a difference and bringing it up to me. I kind of want them to do that. It's what we want our teens to do. We want them to say, "Hey, I was at this party and something about it felt very, very different."

    8. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. BE

      "And so can you come pick me up?" Like, we can't-

    10. VS

      Yes

    11. BE

      ... ask our 16-year-old to do that if when they're young we respond with like, "Don't say that."

    12. VS

      Yes.

    13. BE

      "Don't notice that." [laughs]

    14. VS

      And I would add to that, I actually don't even add the part about we don't talk about other people's bodies unless I'm worried that the other person heard and is uncomfortable.

    15. BE

      Hmm.

    16. VS

      If my child notices a fat body to me and the person's like, you know, across the parking lot, like didn't hear us, I don't even get into that because I don't want them to think it's not okay to talk about this. I'm just like, "Oh, I know. Isn't that so interesting? Yeah, bodies are all different sizes." And you know, we just s- keep it there because this is my chance to keep reinforcing that fat is a valid and wonderful way to have a body.

  9. 14:20 – 16:49

    Body positivity vs. radical acceptance—and why systems still matter

    1. BE

      I love this. I, I feel like this gives parents so many things to think about [laughs] and action on, and I'm not ready to stop here. There's more things I want people to think about with you and action on. So I don't know if these things are like cousins to you, but I guess they feel like that in my head. So body positivity. Body positivity. We should love our bodies, uh, you know, ourselves, our kids, how that happens between us. How do you think about those terms, body positivity and kind of loving your body?

    2. VS

      I think it is both something we all have a fundamental right to, and it is really, really difficult for most of us to achieve, and it can therefore become another unrealistic ideal to strive for.

    3. BE

      Yeah.

    4. VS

      So-

    5. BE

      Yeah

    6. VS

      ... I think the biggest gift we can give our kids is radical acceptance and love of their bodies-

    7. BE

      Hmm

    8. VS

      ... regardless of their size. I want parents to love their fat kids' bodies. Like, this is huge. Because if you can give your kid that, whatever else the world says to them about their body, they can come back to that core of, "My body is safe in my home. My body is loved here, my body is safe." And that is so powerful. That is going to build so much resilience to the way the rest of the world's gonna treat their body. But it is really hard to do because you are encountering all of that stuff from the culture that's telling you that your kid's body is a problem to solve. And when it comes to our own bodies, we probably didn't get that as kids, so you're having to go back and deal with the fact that your body didn't feel safe in your home maybe, for a whole variety of reasons. And so then the idea that you should just love yourself is like, what? How? [laughs] You know? There's so much wo- there's so much that needs to happen between point A and point B. And the other problem with body positivity is that it makes it a personal project to love yourself when we also need larger systemic change. It is not enough for a fat person to love their body if they can't fit in an airplane seat because no one's designing airplane seats for bodies, you know? If they can't access healthcare because their doctor won't see them unless they lose 30 pounds. They won't talk about that knee issue until you lose 30 pounds or whatever. So loving your body doesn't get you fair and equal treatment in our culture, so it can also sort of steal focus from those larger systemic issues we need to work on.

  10. 16:49 – 20:20

    When parents don’t love their bodies: harm reduction, not perfection

    1. BE

      I hear from so many parents, and I'll be honest, for me, I hear mostly from moms in general, so I'm gonna say this, this is something I hear from a lot of moms. "I want my daughter to love her body. I really do. I don't love my body. Is that possible?" Would someone say, "Well, you gotta work on yourself before you give that to your kid." Like, can I sneak that in? Like, you know [laughs] what, what would you say to someone who asked that question?

    2. VS

      I mean, it's so tricky because we are modeling so much for our kids. And so if you, your struggle with your body manifests as you not eating certain foods that your kid loves to eat, and you don't eat them because you're trying to lose weight, or your struggle manifests in a lot of body shaming and mirror-checking and things that your kid is noticing, they are understanding that, right? They are seeing that. Like you said-

    3. BE

      Yeah

    4. VS

      ... kids are noticers, and they are taking in that data, and that is going to impact what they understand to be possible in terms of a relationship with your body. That being said, I do think there's a lot of harm reduction we can do that's really valuable, and I think can be really reassuring to parents, because it is not realistic to expect every parent to love themselves prior, and love their body prior to parenting. Like, that ship sailed. We're not, we're not gonna get there. But if you do, and this is some work I did myself in the early years of parenting as I was starting to work through this stuff I remember when my older daughter was about two, I was talking to my husband at dinner, and she's in her high chair. I was talking about how my pre-baby jeans still didn't fit, and I said, "I just don't really like my body right now." And my two-year-old started patting herself and going, "My body. My body. I like my body. My body." And I was like, "Oh. Oh, oh, okay." [laughs] Like, that's, you know... Thankfully, I don't think she heard the don't, but, like, that was probably the last time I was gonna be able to get away with that, right? And so I did make a really conscious decision in that moment that I stuck to, that my children do not hear me say negative things about my body. If I'm having those days, those bad body image days, that, like, feeling weird about my clothes, like, that happens, like, out of their line of sight, out of their earshot. I have other people in my life I can work that out with. I talk to my therapist, you know. I don't put that work on them. And what they see is me enjoying my body to whatever extent that feels possible on any given day. They see me wearing a swimsuit and getting in the water with them. They see me eating what f- tastes good and what I'm hungry for and listening to my body around food. And so not all of that's gonna feel possible to everybody because we're all at a different place with this, but if you can sort of identify the ways that your kids are being exposed to your body stuff, and can you start to turn the volume down on that, and maybe there's, like, one or two things you can do to turn the volume up on a more positive relationship, like, that can be very powerful. And there's research to show, you know, the kids who internalize the most are, number one, the parents say things about their kids' bodies. That's, like, the most-

    5. BE

      Hmm

    6. VS

      ... damaging thing. And number two, the parents who talk negatively about their own bodies in front of their kids. And even, you know, there's a nice study I'm thinking of that even though the parents, moms, had eating disorders, the ones who didn't engage in the negative self-talk or the negative talk about their kids, their kids were doing better. They were showing less risk factors for inheriting-

    7. BE

      I love getting out of the binary of, like, is this possible, or is that possible?

    8. VS

      Right.

    9. BE

      Like, there's so much in between.

    10. VS

      Right.

  11. 20:20 – 23:17

    ‘Maybe you’re just not your own type’: de-centering aesthetics in self-worth

    1. BE

      You know, there's two things that come to mind. So one time I- I remember I was in my kind of postdoctoral fellowship, and I was working on the eating disorder team at Columbia University's counseling center, so very steeped in these themes. And I had a supervisor, and we were kind of, you know, moving away from talking about the clients that I needed supervision on and talking about our own relationships to our body 'cause obviously, that comes into play, too.

    2. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BE

      And she said something so interesting to me, you know? I'm just curious how you receive it. I've never heard anyone e- else say this. She said, "You know, I used to have really, really low body confidence." And she said, "My husband once said something to me, like, flippantly, that really stuck. He said, 'You know, sweetie, maybe you're just not your own type.'"

    4. VS

      Hmm.

    5. BE

      And she's like, "And I think about it all the time. Like, maybe I'm just not my own type." And there was this, like, I don't know. There was this way in which she saw these feelings, but also had, like, distance from them-

    6. VS

      Mm-hmm

    7. BE

      ... and honestly, a little humor around it, too.

    8. VS

      Yeah, yeah.

    9. BE

      And I think about it a lot. And you know what it says to me, then, and I have this image, okay, of, like, there's a circle, like a pie, of our self-concept. If your body and how you look in the mirror takes up 95% of how you define yourself as a human and how you derive self-worth as a human, if you don't feel good about your body, and it takes up 95%, you and your kid, nobody's gonna be in a good place. But also, what I ended up talking about with my supervisor in terms of how she, in general, thinks about her self-concept and therefore her overall confidence, is the physicality of certain parts of her and her body, like, it just doesn't take up that big of a slice. And so she's like, "I've developed, actually, into what I would say is, like, a pretty confident person. How I look in the mirror and, like, the thoughts I have and the feelings, it just, like, it doesn't get that much air time."

    10. VS

      Yes.

    11. BE

      I- I don't know. I'm curious how you think about that phrase, "Maybe I'm just not my own type," if you ever heard someone say that, and that idea in general.

    12. VS

      I do love it, and I love, I think what you're also saying is something I talk about a lot, which is you actually don't have to aesthetically love your body in order for your body to be valuable and worthy of-

    13. BE

      Yes

    14. VS

      ... respect and dignity and safety.

    15. BE

      Yes. Yes.

    16. VS

      And we put all of the emphasis on aesthetics, right?

    17. BE

      Yes.

    18. VS

      That's all, that's where we stay. It's like if I am not matching up to this physical ideal, that's just the mirror, you know? It has nothing to do with, like, how your body serves you throughout the day, how it supports your kids, how it supports you in movement or in rest or in joy. Like, your body is valuable even if it's not pretty. It doesn't have to be pretty to be valuable. We need pretty to matter so much less, and then thin would matter so much less.

    19. BE

      Oh, yes.

    20. VS

      And that's exactly it. Like, you can be like, "Yeah, this is not the most attractive part of my body, but that's the least interesting thing about me."

    21. BE

      Yeah. The way she was saying it, she's like, "Moving on," you know? [laughs]

    22. VS

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

  12. 23:17 – 26:35

    Rethinking ‘pretty’ (and ‘smart’) as identity labels—and avoiding a new kind of restriction

    1. BE

      Right? And- and it's funny 'cause in my house, I was just saying this to someone around, quote, "gifted" and "smart." Those words, just like the word pretty-

    2. VS

      Mm-hmm

    3. BE

      ... like, they are, they're like dirty words in my house. Like, I think most of us know, like, don't call your kids stupid. Like, yeah, probably. Like, don't look at them and be like, "You're ugly," right? Okay. But I feel like pretty or smart or gifted, like, it- it's actually the same reductionistic label around-

    4. VS

      Yeah

    5. BE

      ... like, this is who you are, and therefore, this is what I value, and I'm gonna put you in that box, and that says so much about how I view you but also how you should view the world.

    6. VS

      Yes.

    7. BE

      And yeah, removing those words from our vocabulary. Like, I have a daughter, and there's times she comes out, and I will, like, I whisper to my husband on the side. I'll be like, "She looks so pretty." He's like, "Stop it."

    8. VS

      [laughs]

    9. BE

      You know, "She might have heard you," you know? And I'm like, "I know," you know? But it, it does, I watch how liberating I really think that is-

    10. VS

      Mm-hmm

    11. BE

      ... right, to her-

    12. VS

      Yeah

    13. BE

      ... and then to her ability to form her own viewpoints of, like, what really is valuable about herself and people in the world.

    14. VS

      And I would just add to that, I think if you can make pretty much less important and much less a measure of your worth in this way, I mean, that was what I struggled with, right, when I went from being a thin kid to a not thin adult. It was like I'd lost this whole, you know, I had so much bound up in that I had to-

    15. BE

      Yes

    16. VS

      ... let go of. And when I see with my own daughters, pretty is not something we're defining them by. It's not a label we're using on them. But it also frees them up to enjoy themselves aesthetically because it's just fun now. It's just play. I have one daughter who's dyed her hair blue this year and is loving that, and like, it's just creative and fun, and she's not worried about whether it looks cool or, you know. I mean, I'm sure there's of course some of it. I'm not saying like she's [laughs] you know, she's a, a tween. Like, this is all there. But she's able to explore her appearance in a way that feels very detached from beauty ideals and very much more just on her own terms.

    17. BE

      Yeah.

    18. VS

      And that feels really powerful, too, because I think one tendency I do see is when once parents start to do this work and they start to say like, "Okay, I wanna divest from diet culture, I wanna reckon with my fat bias, I wanna do this work," they then get perfectionist about that. And it's like, "My daughter can't have Barbies. My daughter can't, you know, we can't watch that show that has that fat stereotyped character. We can't engage with all of that. All of that can't matter. We can't have princess stuff." And I think what you're doing then is setting up some of the same restriction that diet culture teaches us to have around food, you know, sugar, whatever, and you run the risk of sort of pushing your kid towards it, right? Like, 'cause it's forbidden now, and they know it matters in the rest of the world. They're out there. They get that. It is this tricky thing of like what I actually want to do is like give my kid the tools to identify diet culture, to identify this bias themselves and reckon with it and work through it themselves.

    19. BE

      Yes, that's exactly right. So anyone listening also, if you're like, "I can't, I guess I can't say pretty anymore," not what I'm saying, okay? Not what I'm saying. Obviously, there's times I tell someone, "Oh, you look so pretty," and I don't then go like, you know, hit myself with a wooden spoon-

    20. VS

      [laughs]

    21. BE

      ... 10 times for saying that. Okay? Ever, actually. I've never done that. I don't know why that came to mind. That was very odd.

    22. VS

      [laughs] That's very specific.

    23. BE

      But, um, no need to do that.

    24. VS

      Yeah, yeah.

    25. BE

      Okay? You're gonna say pretty. You're gonna say, at some point, you're probably gonna say, "Don't call her fat," and then you're like, "Oh, wait. I'm trying not to do that," right?

    26. VS

      Right.

  13. 26:35 – 29:51

    Creating ‘dissonance’ at home: using culture as a practice field (books, shows, ads)

    1. BE

      But anyone listening here, what I know about you is you're open to thoughtfulness, to consideration. You're reflecting. And I think what we're really talking about, Virginia, is just, I, I always think about like creating dissonance. I wanna give my kids a foundation so that when they're playing with Barbies and a friend, everyone's like, "They're so pretty," and, "They're the prettiest one," right? They just have something in their mind that's like, "Hmm, I don't know about that."

    2. VS

      Yeah.

    3. BE

      And maybe they say it to a friend, maybe they don't. But what we do in our family home really creates that, and sometimes having those items in your home can help. Someone in our community just asked, "I've all these Berenstain Bears books."

    4. VS

      Mm.

    5. BE

      Like, the things they say in them.

    6. VS

      I know. [laughs]

    7. BE

      They're like, "Yes!"

    8. VS

      Crazy.

    9. BE

      Like, "Do I have to get rid of all them? My kid kinda..." Like, no. You know? Like, my guess is all the books aren't those books, and how cool you can be reading a book and say, "One second" to your kid and say, "What do you think about this?"

    10. VS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. BE

      Or, "I do not agree with what Mama Bear said there," right?

    12. VS

      Yes.

    13. BE

      Now, actually, that's such good practice for real life. Our kids are not ever gonna be in a world with complete erosion of anti-fat bias. So develop that in your home. Develop dissonance. Allow those other items in as a way, actually, I think of preparing your kids for what is actually ahead of them. Is that in line with what, how you think about it?

    14. VS

      Yeah. No, completely. And I mean, and I just wanna say, too, like I have struggled. Like, I have wanted to put up that like, oh, I don't want this in my house. We had it just come up recently. There's some iPad game my older daughter loves to play. It's like penguins on an island. Like, definitely a children's iPad game, and she's playing it, and then she comes over to me and she's like, "Look at this ad they're showing me," and it's for keto weight loss pills-

    15. BE

      Ugh

    16. VS

      ... in a children's game. And of course, my first instinct was to be like, "Bye, iPad. [laughs] We're done. You know, I don't want you exposed to this. What is this?" But instead, I was like, wait, she's bringing it to me. She's identifying it. And she was like, "Isn't this weird? Like, this is so messed up. Look, Mom, it says expert approved. What expert approved this?" And I was like, oh, oh, this is great, actually.

    17. BE

      Yeah.

    18. VS

      This is her interrogating it, and like she's having all the same realizations that, you know, not that she has to think exactly like me, but she's using the tools, and it just showed me-

    19. BE

      I love that

    20. VS

      ... like we have actually been working towards something here. [laughs]

    21. BE

      Yeah.

    22. VS

      This is encouraging.

    23. BE

      And for all the parents listening here, like I'd encourage you, my, my image of it, Virginia, is like hug that moment. Like, wow, you got this ad, and you knew it wasn't appropriate for kids, and you were even questioning like, "What is this?" That is so cool-

    24. VS

      Yeah

    25. BE

      ... that you can have something coming your way, and you pause, and you don't just take it in as truth, and you kind of keep it outside yourself long enough to wonder and ask questions. Like, that is one of the coolest things about you. All right, go back to the iPad game. No kid's gonna look at you and say, "Wow, Mom, thank you for that profound intervention."

    26. VS

      [laughs]

    27. BE

      "I was proud of myself for that reason." No. Right? But I picture like you're hugging that moment.

    28. VS

      Yeah.

    29. BE

      Like, you're making it a little louder.

    30. VS

      Yeah.

  14. 29:51 – 37:06

    The ‘Eight Fat Talks’ framework—and the doctor conversation in practice

    1. BE

      Okay, here's another thing you talk about that I am obsessed with, okay? The eight fat talks.

    2. VS

      Yes.

    3. BE

      The eight fat talks we should all start having. Talking to doctors, talking to teachers, talking to a co-parent, talking to friends, talking to your thin kids, talking to your fat kids. I, I feel like you're probably like, "Becky, like I would have to have a lot more time to like preview each one of those with you."

    4. VS

      [laughs] We may not get through all eight.

    5. BE

      But I'm just gonna...

    6. VS

      [laughs]

    7. BE

      Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, cliff notes. But like what does that mean in general? And can you jump in, maybe I'm gonna be biased. I've heard so many stories, and I just had a very, very good friend tell me about a very upsetting conversation she had with her son in the room at the doctor's checkup. So if you wanna jump into the doctor one, that could be great. But what does that mean in general? And then let's jump into one specific one.

    8. VS

      Yeah. So the reason I called the book Fat Talk is because that is a phrase that body image researchers use to measure how often they engage in fat talk. And what we think of as fat talk is the, "Oh my God, I'm so fat today. I can't... These jeans, you know, my thighs," whatever. The, the sort of casual body berating that women in particular are socialized to engage in. The apologizing, "I can't believe I ate the cheese." You know, the apologizing for what you ate, denigrating your aesthetics, all of that. And what I wanna do is reclaim the concept of fat talk. First of all, it's anti-fat that we're using that as the research term. Like, we mean body berating. We mean body shame. It's... We're immediately saying, like, well, what is the bad body? It's the fat body, right? So there's, like, some bias we need to untangle in the fact that that's being used as a research term, and that that is even, like, a pop culture concept that people kinda get. And I wanna say, no, actually, we need to talk quite a lot more about fat than we do, but in a really different way. And so that's why we need to reclaim the word fat, and that's why we need to have these conversations. And the eight conversations are, like, the different people in your life where you're likely to encounter diet talk, body shaming, explicit or implicit anti-fat bias in different ways. And so, yeah, it's everything from the doctor, your kid's soccer coach, teachers at school, your mom. I mean, that's the number one [laughs] question I get from readers is like, "How do I talk to my mom about this?" Um, your partner.

    9. BE

      And you say, "Good luck."

    10. VS

      [laughs]

    11. BE

      Is that what you say? [laughs]

    12. VS

      [laughs]

    13. BE

      Next question.

    14. VS

      [laughs]

    15. BE

      [laughs]

    16. VS

      I mean, I do think we have to work real, dig real deep and find compassion for the boomers, 'cause they, decades upon decades of this messaging. They have... You know, it, it is not easy to be a boomer woman. So, yes. But obviously there are times where it's like, "Yeah, good luck." Um, yeah. So the doctors one is really complicated because you wanna be able to trust your pediatrician. You want your child to think of their pediatrician or their healthcare provider as this trusted, wise adult in their life who they can bring problems and concerns to. And unfortunately, the reality is doctors in general are a group of people that have really high rates of anti-fat bias. So if you are walking in the exam room as a fat parent, or you're bringing your fat kid in, this bias is in the room with you, and you're gonna have to navigate it. And so there's, there's a couple ways to go about it. In terms of protecting our kids, especially our younger kids, I think one of the best things you can do is simply opt out of weight talk, and you can send a note ahead of time. You can send an email. You can write a Post-it Note and ask the nurse to put it on the file that gets handed over to the doctor that just says, "Please do not discuss body mass index or weight in front of my child. I'm happy to have that conversation with you separately."

    17. BE

      And just pause there, because I want that, again, to be something. You know, we can't control what a doctor says to us, but we can control who is around to hear that.

    18. VS

      Yes.

    19. BE

      And as hard as it is for us to hear it about our child's body, it evokes, you know, whatever fears or morality, like we're talking about. We know we wanna protect our kid-

    20. VS

      Yeah

    21. BE

      ... from hearing that from their trusted doctor. So that is such a, a great first step, that email before. Or I've s- heard, heard someone walks in with a note card-

    22. VS

      Mm-hmm

    23. BE

      ... and hands it to the nurse-

    24. VS

      Yes

    25. BE

      ... and has a second one handed to the doctor.

    26. VS

      Yes.

    27. BE

      Just because they're like, "I'm just double-proofing this," you know?

    28. VS

      A couple, a couple of methods may be useful. I think that's a really great strategy to just, like... And to be start building that relationship with your pediatrician that, like, weight is not a focus for our family. Like, we, we don't wanna focus there. Now, of course, like, not everybody is gonna be able to hand over the Post-it Note and have the doctor be like, "Awesome. Thank you for that. Will not mention it at all. Totally good." That's not always gonna work out that way. So then the next level of this is to remember whatever the doctor does say in the room in front of your child, what matters most is what you say. Like, yes, you want your child-

    29. BE

      Yes

    30. VS

      ... to be able to trust that doctor, but you are still the parent. Your response is what's going to stick more.

  15. 37:06 – 39:50

    Closing mantra: ‘Your body is not a problem to fix’

    1. VS

      I want them trusting their body, and I want them to know that I unconditionally trust their body. So yes, just setting that, that boundary. And then depending on the age of your kid, again, if it's a three-year-old, you maybe let it go and that's it. But if it's a five-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 12-year-old, afterwards, "What did you think when the doctor said that? How did that feel for you?"

    2. BE

      Yes.

    3. VS

      "Do you have questions? Do you wanna talk about this?" You know, and like, have that debrief. And even say pretty clear-cut like, "A lot of doctors have a lot of specific ideas about body size. It's not what the science shows. It's not what our family believes. It's not something I want you to have to worry about. Your body is not a problem to fix."

    4. BE

      Hmm. Your body is not a problem to fix. And I just wonder I [laughs] how many people listening right now need to pause and like connect with a part of their bodies and say, "My body is not a problem to fix." [sighs] So helpful. Amazing. Thank you so much.

    5. VS

      Thank you. This was wonderful.

    6. BE

      Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com/podcast. You could also write me at podcast@goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like-valued parents. It's totally game-changing. Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Natt, and Kristin Mueller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside. [outro music]

Episode duration: 39:58

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