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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book every woman should read!, November 17, 2010
This review is from: Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It (Paperback)
As a writer for Plugged In Parents website, I can say with complete honesty that this book is a MUST read for all women (of any age). Before I start my review, I need to be upfront with you. This book really hit home, and I cried several times while reading it, because I've been struggling with an eating disorder for the past five years.
While pregnant with my first son, I gained 50 pounds. I ate and ate and ate, having no idea the weight wouldn't magically come off after I had my son. Now, I'm not a petite person at all. I'm 5'8" and I've always been a size medium. There was no reason for me to gain 50 pounds. So when my son was 8 months old and I was struggling to lose the last 10 pounds, I started something I never thought I would do. After overeating, I would make myself purge (throw up).
Just typing that brings me to tears. Feeling completely out of control of your own body is an awful place to be.
The thing is, I looked great. I had a bit of a baby belly, but good grief, I had just given birth 8 months before! I was just too self-conscious that I freaked out. I needed to see that pre-baby weight number on the scale.
Fast forward a few years and I have yet to see that number on the scale. I still struggle with overeating and, every once in awhile, purging. I'm ashamed of this, and I'm working on getting past it. I'm trying to see myself as a beautiful woman, no matter what size I am. I know we're not all made the same, and I will never be a size 2, nor do I want to be. I want to find the beauty in ME, not base my beauty on a number or a size.
Why is there so much pressure for girls to look a certain way in our society today? We should be embracing inner beauty and encouraging girls to be who they are meant to be, not who our world thinks they should be.
Robyn does just that in Good Girls Don't Get Fat. She shares examples of conversations she's had with teenage girls and young women -- all of them eye-opening and frightening. Apparently women aren't just dealing with anorexia and bulimia anymore. Girls are taking steroids, beating their stomachs, and taking laxatives to get thin.
Robyn also discusses the importance of parents not putting pressure on their daughters to look a certain way. She includes a guide on how to be the best dad and mom you can be for your daughter, and lists actual examples on what you can say and do. Robyn shows us how one word or sentence can haunt a girl for the rest of her life, and the parents may not have even meant to be critical. I think the same goes for friends and other family members as well. We need to encourage our daughters, mothers and female friends. Let them know how beautiful they are, not how skinny they are.
There are multiple charts, quizzes and other helpful things in Good Girls Don't Get Fat. It's a great guide for parents who don't know what to look for, what to ask, or where to start. One thing that surprised me was that an older brother can 'teach' a younger sister how boys would like her to look, indirectly. A younger sister will learn how guys want her to look just by watching how her older brother treats other girls.
One of my favorite chapters is "Kiss My Assets: The Secret of Girls Who Thrive at Every Size." This chapter is so inspiring and helps girls realize they can be happy with their body, no matter their size.
The bottom line is: we need to stop judging ourselves and others by their size. It really doesn't get us anywhere. And please, if you are struggling with an eating disorder, or know someone who is, get help! Speak up about it. I held it in for too long, and now I can't believe I've been struggling with this for 5 years. I don't want this to rule the rest of my life, and Robyn's book gave me the tools to start moving forward.
It's hard and embarrassing to talk about, but it's so important to talk about. There are millions of women and girls out there, suffering from warped body images and eating disorders, who are too scared to say anything. Speak up! We are beautiful women, period! Don't let anyone tell you differently!
I can't recommend this book enough. It has helped me tremendously, and I'm positive it can help many others as well.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Dad's Point of View on "Good Girls Don't Get Fat", December 22, 2010
This review is from: Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It (Paperback)
I think the title of Dr. Robyn Silverman's book (Good Girls Don't Get Fat) really says it all. We've trained our girls to think they are bad or less of a person if they are fat. Whether it's through magazines, television, the internet or ironically, the people who are supposed to love these girls the most (parents, siblings, "friends," and teachers - yes teachers!!), girls are beginning to worry about their weight at younger and younger ages. While talk radio programs air news stories weekly extolling the dangers of obesity (which is, of course, also an important health issue), Dr. Silverman sees countless girls in her practice with only minor weight problems or none at all. However, these girls have convinced themselves they are fat and therefore "bad."
The book provides excellent information of how aspects of a young girl's life can send her the message of to be thin is to be happy, healthy, loved. The author takes the discussion from the "inside out" starting with what a girl thinks about her weight in her own head and continuing to cover how the various relationships in her life can exacerbate the issues. Including how powerful words can be in these various relationships (mother, father, step-parents if applicable, other family members, teachers and other adults).
Dr. Silverman uses a lot of tools, tips and worksheets throughout the book and are an excellent supplement to the information. Readers get examples of weight issues that may arise with girls and can read "Say What" boxes to give guidance on "what not to say" and "what to say" -- (dads take note of that please). "Overheard" boxes appear throughout the chapters as well which share stories and quotes from girls she interviewed. A tip list appears at the end of every chapter and are specific as to the information in the chapter. For example, the chapter for dads ends with tips for dads on how to nurture the relationship with their daughter so it has a positive impact on her self-worth.
Of course, I was particularly interested in the chapter about dads titled, "Father Figure: Daddy's Not-So-Little Girl." Dads play a huge role in whether their daughters have a positive or negative self-image. This chapter was eye-opening, especially in regards to some of the "Overheard" sections. I cringed when I read some of the horribly insensitive things some dads would say to their daughters, thinking they're being funny or a joker. I would like to think most dads would want to take back those words or avoid saying them altogether, especially knowing the price those jokes can have on a girl's self-image. Like I mentioned above, the chapter ends with some really useful tips and things to remember. The chapter also ended with a BIQ (The Body Image Quotient), a quiz to gauge how your daughter is doing in a world so focused on thinness at all costs. These appear in many of the chapters and in Chapter 8 you get to tabulate your daughter's score. Very interesting and a really good way to assess how things are going.
In the book's introduction, Dr. Silverman concludes with this: "I hope and pray that one day, when my daughter stares into the mirror and asks, "Am I acceptable the way I am?" she will confidently say yes. But I know that the real triumph will come when girls of all sizes and every age don't even have to ask. They'll just know." Reading that early on in the book got me thinking about what a great gift that would be and how crucial my role as a father plays into that happening. As a father to a 20-month-old girl, this just may be the most important book I've read since becoming a parent. Do something special for the girls in your life and read this book.
Reviewed on Book Dads: [...]
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A decent HAES introduction for concerned parents..., October 1, 2010
This review is from: Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It (Paperback)
Good Girls Don't Get Fat / 978-0-373-89220-4
I was pleased to receive this book from NetGalley for review; I'm a strong believer in HAES (Health At Every Size), and this book is exactly the sort of valuable study that can benefit parents hoping to raise happy, healthy daughters who are not constantly encumbered by the "skinny or else!" messages that bombard them constantly.
Broken into nine chapters, "Good Girls Don't Get Fat" explores the potentially near-constant sources of criticism and denigration that can occur in childhood and can extend detrimentally into a lifetime of eating disorders, self-abuse, and poor self-esteem. Chapter 1 covers self-criticism and the importance of banishing negative internal thoughts and the constant visceral awareness of weight at all times. Chapter 2 covers the impact that mothers have on their daughters, and carefully explains the difference between teaching your child to value good health and just popping off with criticism thoughtlessly (for instance, spontaneously popping off with "Are you going to eat all that?", teaches less good eating habits and more that eating in public will invite judgment and criticism from others). Chapter 3 explores the sometimes-hidden effect of fathers on their daughters: how to be active in raising healthy, happy women, and how not to inadvertently encourage your daughter to remain a child. Chapter 4 covers the impact of the family at large, and how brothers and sisters play an important role in either creating or preventing unhealthy attitudes towards eating.
Expanding from the family sphere, chapters 5 and 6 cover the influences of school - first of the adult officials (in a chapter that will leave most readers outraged at the sheer gall of some people - including a teacher who apparently thought it was a good idea to mention a student's weight in her letter of recommendation for college admission), and then of the children (friends and enemies alike) who play a role in a person's childhood development. From there, the book delves into positive alternatives to all these potentially detrimental sources - how to love your body and teach your children to love theirs; how to overcome inevitable negative outside sources; and how to monitor and improve your internal body image over time.
"Good Girls Don't Get Fat" is a perfect example of a `scholarly' style of work that has a great deal of knowledge and information to impart, yet the writing style is so engaging and flows so well that it reads like a book for pleasure rather than a book for learning. As author Silverman interviews hundreds of young women about their life experiences, the reader flows smoothly over the positive highs (the father who took the time to reaffirm that his daughter looked lovely in the size 12 she'd excessively and dangerously dieted for, but she would have looked equally lovely in the size 14 that she had feared so much) and the negative lows (the teacher who feels that she has no responsibility to her students to help them if they are bullied by other teachers for their weight), and all the learning experiences along the way. The message of this book, too, is a very good one - Silverman repeatedly reminds parents (the intended audience) that their words and actions matter and that it does no good to affirm your children with positive self-image if your own words and actions underscore your own negative one. She also correctly hammers home the importance of not falling into "obesity panic" - she encourages setting and modeling healthy eating habits, but also recognizes the importance of letting young adults start to choose some of their own eating habits (they're going to have to learn sometime, after all!) without the fear of constant and immediate criticism from their loved ones.
If I have to level one criticism at this book, it would be that in spite of all this wonderful HAES doctrine, Silverman sometimes can't quite follow it all the way. Although she does point out at least once that skinny does not equal healthy, she does try to have her cake and eat it too with passages that encourage parents to "be more active" with their kids if they are worried about the child's weight. Since neither I nor Silverman think children are stupid, however, I'm surprised that she doesn't seem to realize that a parent suddenly putting their child on an obvious exercise program isn't likely to instill negative body feelings any less than the same parent suddenly putting their child on a food diet. And while I have nothing against parent-child physical activities, prescribing them as a "solution" to weight rather than as a good in itself is very much against HAES philosophy; and draping everything in a platonic "for their health" statement doesn't absolve matters when the only indication of "bad health" on the child's part is that they weigh more than the parent thinks they should. In all other areas of the book, Silverman recognizes and forcefully acknowledges that parents often have unrealistic weight goals for their children, so it just seems strange to see all that fall down in later chapters with all the "for their health" talk. Another criticism, perhaps, is the "determine your daughter's body image" quizzes at the end of every chapter - again, Silverman recognizes that many eating disorder sites encourage girls to say the "right" things to prevent family suspicion, so grading a daughter based on the things she says and does when her parents are looking may give the evaluator a false sense of security that everything is fine when it isn't.
For its minor faults, however, "Good Girls Don't Get Fat" is a wonderful read and a source of valuable and insightful information, particularly for HAES followers who worry about raising a child in our culture, and who worry about slipping into old self-hating habits in a subconscious modeling of the way we ourselves we raised. I enjoyed this book immensely, and plan to reread it again to ensure that the behaviors I am modeling are safe and healthy for the children around me.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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