RECUT: Body Image, Fat Shaming, & Loving Ourselves

This recut of one of our most popular episodes from Season 1 includes additional discussion about the issue of body image, fat shaming, and the double standard that women and men are held to with regard to appearance and weight. We also discuss how we can protect our girl children from the beauty ideal message perpetuated in the media, and learn to love just who they are.

Body Image, Fat Shaming, & Loving Ourselves

This episode, I have a powerful discussion with Jennifer Rollin, a therapist who specializes in body image and eating disorders. We take a deep dive into body image and fat shaming. No one will be surprised to hear that the ideal body in our culture is thin. Very thin. And not everyone is very thin. Or even thin. In fact most of us aren’t. So let’s consider the space between the ideal and real. The chasm between what we are, and what the idealized perfect is.

We discuss how fat shaming and the thin ideal have become so acculturated and normalized that it pervades nearly every aspect of women's lives and can seriously undermine our confidence. We discuss how we can break this unhealthy fixation and help our girl children grow up feeling good about themselves.

Are Little Girls Getting Too Sexy?

The American Psychological Association, or APA has released a report which warns of the dangers of the sexualization of girls in media. They concluded that virtually every form of media which they studied provides significant evidence of the sexualization of women, and many specifically target children and adolescents.

In this episode I have a conversation with Professor Sarah Murnen about the sexualization of girls, and unpack the potential impact of this phenomenon on the individual girl, girls in general, and on society and how we view girls and women.