It's been my experience that women struggle with their body image at some point on the way from girlhood to womanhood - this may be brief and exploratory, or get tangled with eating disorders and other destructive behaviors. When I had a period of bulimia in my early 20s, I reflected on (among other things) my mother's relationship with food and body image, and so some new research from Ben-Gurion University in Israel struck a chord.
Maia Maor, PhD, a sociologist, and Julie Cwikel, PhD, a professor of social work and director of the Center for Women's Health Studies and Promotion, invited adult mother-daughter pairs to reflect on various strategies the mothers used to instill resilience about body image in their daughters. The researchers identified five methods commonly used to resist or reject negative and oppressive messages about body image:
- Filtering: being cautious and sensitive regarding body image issues
- Transmitting awareness of the dangers of eating disorders, which can cause illness and death
- Positive reinforcement, using affirmative language in regard to their daughters’ bodies
- Discussion: providing tools for criticism of dominant body-related messages
- Positivity: shifting the focus of food and body-related discussions away from weight loss and towards health and taking pleasure in food.
In a press release from last week, Maor explained that “the focus on protective strategies was intended to achieve two goals: to emphasize the positive in mother-daughter relationships and to identify a repertoire of strategies available to parents and allied health professionals who wish to help their daughters or young women build a stable, positive body image.”
Feelings about food and bodies have long chains of intergenerational transmission. According to the release, "some of the mothers in the study recalled how their own mothers’ negative comments to them about eating too much led them to associate food with guilt and bad feelings. They raised their own daughters by instead talking about the quality of food, importance of food choices and its relationship to developing respect for their own bodies."
The study appears in the journal Feminism & Psychology.
Previously: Incorporating the family in helping teens overcome eating disorders, Stanford study investigates how to prevent moms from passing on their eating disorders, Promoting healthy eating and a positive body image on college campuses, What a teenager wishes her parents knew about eating disorders, and Social website shown to boost teen girls' body image
Photo by Thanasus Anastasiou
