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Showing posts from November 7, 2021

Helping young girls develop a healthy body image

~18 years old On Monday, as I was about to dry my hair after my early evening swim, I overheard three young girls (~9-11 years old) talking to one another by the bathroom mirrors. I didn't think much of it until I heard one of the girls talking about her body. Still in her swimsuit, she stood in front of the mirror and was telling her friends about her body. She first said that she liked how she looked from the front but she didn't like how her butt looked in her swimsuit. While "fat talk" or self-degrading, negative body-related comments have sadly become somewhat normalized among adult women, it saddened me that these young girls were taking part in body shaming.  I started swimming when I was 10 years old. Although I really enjoyed being in the water, I always looked forward to swim practice because it was an opportunity to be around my friends. There was no social media to make us feel dissatisfied with our bodies so any negative body talk would have been learned ...