How can we be comfortbale in the skin we are in?!

The "Dark side of food"...great topic for the holidays right around the corner, right?! You have to ask yourself this question...do you start dieting now to be able to have wiggle room to enjoy all the holiday cooking and cookies, or eat what you want during the holidays, but sign up for a new membership at Life Time Fitness like the rest of world on January 1st with New Year's Resolutions fresh on our minds...or do you eat what you want, not feel guilty about it, but be uncomfortable with a muffin top on your favorite pair of jeans??? Lots to think about huh, and we are adults...now think about what pressures we are sending the kids we teach? Kind of scary don't you think?!

I have been a competitive swimmer most of my life, learning how to swim before I was out of diapers, and swimming for the Gophers for four years back when I was in college. Being in a Speedo most of my life, I have seen my fair share of girls with eating disorders. It is so sad...we burned so many calories in the water during our two hour practices, plus the weights, plus the yoga, plus the core training...not to mention going to class all day long to get an education...and some of these girls would only nibble on saltine crackers! I would not have ever been able to survive on that! Did I like being "in shape" when I was in college...as opposed to gaining the "freshman 15"...ABSOLUTELY! But it was all of the hard training that I liked so that I could eat whatever I wanted without having to worry...now that my training is over, well, that is another story. I look at pictures from training trips my swim team took to Hawaii where we were in the best shapes of our lives, but I have to know that I will not be that way again...I don't have time to spend 6-8 hours daily working out, I have a real life now...but that's hard to deal with...always coulda, shoulda, woulda when you look back at something fondly, right?!

So, if I am a 28 year old female longing to be back in shape again, what are my 5th grade students thinking? I can tell you what they are thinking...many of my 10 and 11 year girls are already on diets and will only pick at their food during lunch and skip breakfast altogether. I work at a charter school in Minneapolis where we provide our students and families will just about everything they could ever need...uniforms, breakfast, snacks, lunch, turkeys for the holidays, wish lists fulfilled so there are presents for Christmas, hot meals for Family Nights, bus and cab fare for parents to visit the school...just about anything is provided because 99% of our families live in shelters, are doubled up with others due to being kicked out of their old homes, or are in transit to find a better place to live. So our families do not have much of anything and weekend are hard for most of our children because they know they will not have their routines like at school and will not be getting 2 balanced meals like during the school week. Many of our younger kids come to school Monday famished and still half asleep from what did or did not happen over the weekend, so they devour the food they get at school on Monday's. But as you go up the grades, food has a different power over the students. I know many of my 5th graders do not have much at home, and the boys will come to school and eat up breakfasts on Monday's, but most of my girls will not even touch breakfast, regardless of what day it is! Why is that?

I overhear many conversations between my girls of "I'm on a diet" or "I'm not hungry" or "Are you really going to eat that?" and I have to step back and ask myself, why do they have that mentality when they are basically "starving" at home?! I teach African American students and many of my girls as 5th graders look and are REAL women already...a shock to me, and we already had to have the conversation at the beginning of the school year about how to take care of yourself when it is "that time of the month." Many of the mothers of my students were thankful that I paved the road to make sure my girls were comfortable being at school when they were on their period. Having said that...my girls look and sometimes act like 35 year old women. Not that I have anything against older women, but my "girls" have the bodies of women and at the age of 10 and 11, they are already feeling the pressure to be thin. And in today's society, who can blame them?

Like our reading said, "The message is clear-cut: women who are financially successful must have small bodies; education and ability are less important than physical appearance" (Fed Up Women and Food in America). But here is the ironic part of my teaching situation...the females in my student's lives, moms, grandmas, aunites, are not all that financially stable. So what gives? I can only turn to the pop culture side of body image. While my students may not be grade level in reading or math, they can certainly tell you who is at the top of the charts for music, what clothing style is in right now, and the latest movie to see. Pop culture is my students' way of life, but I think that it is hurting them. I see those "video chicks" in rappers music videos in their string bikinis shaking and gyrating their bodies over new Bentley's...Lil' Kim made a statement a few years back at the VMAs with wearing her purple nipple pasty and jump suit...and the latest dance movies have stick thin girls shaking their stuff for guys...what message is that sending my 5th grade girls??? This is the message: "YOU HAVE TO BE THIN TO FIT IN, AND IF YOU ARE NOT, SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOU! What in the heck kind of message is that?!

Pop culture can be cruel. Not all that long ago, pop star divas like Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson were berated for gaining a few pounds. Magazines were devoted to calling out these usually in shape females and literally poking fun at how they looked. The flip side to this, the ladies lost the weight and the same magazines that had just made fun of them, now celebrated their new bodies and gave the readers the secrets to their training and transformations. Here's the real secret: these women have the means and the money for the quick fix and can surgically "fix" the problem. But what about my students who are not financially well off, how do they fix a problem...by not having a problem at all. They might not have food at home, but they want to be part of the in crowd and their body is the tool to do that, so they have to control what goes into it...not much at all.

While reading Chapter 14 of Tooning In, I found this piece to be very shocking on page 138..."Teenage girls have the poorest diet nutrition of any group in America. Taken as a whole, their diets are deficient in many important nutrients and in total calories. We are evidently feeding refugee groups more nutritiously than we are feeding our own daughters" (Children and teens afraid to eat). How can this be?! Why in a time a place where we could feed all humans are there people in the United States still hungry, and worse, why are some Americans starving themselves? Where did this pressure come from where your pants size determined your value as a human and the smaller the number, the more valued you are?

I guess we do live and learn from our own experiences. Do I wish I cold snap my fingers and be in the shape I was back in the peak of my training in college, yes..I'd be lying to you if I said no. But why do I wish this...is it due to society's pressures to be thin? I guess I would have to say that plays a HUGE part, but overall I just wish pop culture and society would stress being healthy. And by being healthy I mean not being too over weight so that you are hurting your heart, and not too underweight so that your organs start shutting down. And the most important part of being healthy, being comfortable in the skin that you are in! But if society puts such pressure on what your "own skin" should be, then how can we ever be happy with ourselves?! It comes down to practicing what we preach!

At the end of our reading, White and Walker were paving the way for what needs to be happening in our schools. We need to promote and create safe environments for ALL sizes of students. And that goes for teachers as well...I hate when students think "all 'fat teachers' are mean, and all 'skinny teachers' are nice." How ridiculous is that?! I agree with White and Walker when they write, "Prevention needs to be the focus, not curing, if we want to control the damage wrought by eating disorders" (pg 140). We as adults in the classroom need to pave the road and show our students what healthy is and how to be OK with the body we are in right now. This is a tricky situation we are in because we too are feeling the pressures of society, and we also need to understand what morals we need to teach our students...WOW, not only do we teach students to pass the standardized tests, we also need to teach them how and why to respect their bodies as well...all for pennies to the dollar compared to what those big wigs of diet companies are making. In the words of Alanis Morsette, "Isn't it ironic, don't ya think?!" It almost feels like a losing battle we have picked to be a teacher, and it does take a special person to be an educator, and if we each make a positive difference in one life of our students, then we have made the correct decision. So on that note...who it ready to take on the world Monday morning?!