Puppies! Kittehs! Dancing rainbows! You know I still have a soft spot for Lisa Frank.Here is your homework assignment: You are given a Lisa Frank-esque rainbow with six colors (unicorns optional); you are to cut out the rainbow, write your name on the fluffy smiling cloud end and then on each of the colors write one word that describes you. Oh, and by the way, you’re six.
Tonight as I sat in a childish chair with my knees tucked up to my chin and waited for my turn to talk with my son’s first grade teacher about the wonderful, talented, amazing and all-around-perfect child that he is, I got to check out the above-mentioned art project taped to the lockers of the class across the hall. Things were running late, as these things usually do, and so I got to read all 20 of the first grade rainbows. It was quite eye-opening. I even took notes! (You don’t have to say it, I know you’re grateful.)
You’d think that at six years old, the hardest part of that assignment would be managing the scissors around all those sharp curves or not poking your eye out with the day-glo marker because you’re trying to get a closer look at the tip to see if it’s one of the cool smelly kind. But judging from the words the kids wrote, it seems that even at six they have bigger issues than whether or not to dot their “i’s” with a heart.
First up was “Kenley” (of course I changed the names!) – a little girl whose very first self-descriptive word was… can you guess?… “Skinny!” And I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean in the knock-kneed self-conscious way. She had the exclamation point on the end and everything. (!!) It was obviously very important to her. So of course I had to check the rest of the rainbows. Three other girls had either used “skinny” or some permutation thereof to descibe themselves. The rest of Kenley’s list also intrigued me. After “skinny!”, she thought herself to be “cute”, “talkative”, “loud”, “funny” and “charming.” Seriously. If that doesn’t have future reality-show contestant written all over it, then Paula Abdul’s got great fashion sense. It bothered me that this being school she hadn’t put anything like “smart” or “interesting” or “good at math” or even “kind” on her list. Not to mention it reads rather narcissistic in a very uncharming way.
For the record, none of the boys in the class used any kind of physical descriptors at all except “Matt” who wrote “stron” (Pretty sure he means strong!) which really has less to do with how he looks and more with what he can do. Perhaps this is too nuanced for first graders but I had a long wait so shut up, but someone looks “athletic” but they are “strong.” Conversely, Kenley looks “skinny!” but it says nothing about what she could do. This depressed me.
But not as much as “Cabrielle’s” rainbow did. She too included “skinny” (sans exclamation point) on her list but it was accompanied by “doofus,” “goofball,” “crazy,” “funny,” and, the unexplained-yet-poignant, “loves.” It broke my heart that the first word this six-year-old girl could come up with to describe herself was “doofus” and that the last one was “loves.” (Not loving, not loved, just loves.) And unlike Kenley, she didn’t seem to see her skinniness as a prettiness. Perhaps she wrote it because she and Kenley are desk-buddies and they did their homework together or because she admires Kenley. Or perhaps they came up with skinny independently. I mean, heaven knows young girls get the adjective thrown at them with alarming frequency. Take Taylor Momsen, of Gossip Girls:
Do you know how old she is? She’s fifteen. She started the show at fourteen. And she is often lauded as having one of the best figures on the show, nevermind that she’s most likely prepubescent. Not only do elementary aged girls covet her figure but so do adult women! Nobody wins, especially not Taylor who is obviously growing up fast.
There was one girl’s rainbow who made my night though. Courtesy of “Tessa”: “Fast,” “funny,” “good hands,” “tough,” “good skater,” and “loves hockey.” Now that’s a Minnesota girl.
Oh, this mom of two 5-year-old girls is cringing.
I remember being about 8 or 9 when my dad said we needed to go on a diet together. I was so excited because I thought the word diet meant something like “vacation.” It was something cool to do with my dad. I don’t know…is that too young? Maybe.
6 years old and the word skinny comes to her mind, quit interesting. I am surprised but I am sure she has heard people around her talk about it. But what ideas is she putting with it, I wonder.
*sigh*
I hope never to have to ‘talk’ about the Toddlers weight.
I noticed this shortly after my oldest daughter entered school – there was talk about “skinny” and “fat” coming home right along with who was “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” with whom.
As far as eating went, the only thing I had told her previously was to choose healthy foods and treats are fine for special occasions. If you eat too many, you are likely to feel sick or get “owies” in your teeth. Listen to your tummy and stop eating when it says to stop. End of discussion.
So after she came home with all this we sat down and talked about how we are all made differently. My daughter was frustrated because she was “little” and “shorter” than most in her class. She pressed me about why some people are really fat. I said there are lots of different reasons. Sometimes people’s bodies give them trouble or they are sick or they are pregnant. Sometimes people don’t listen when their tummy says stop. Regardless, we treat them the same as anyone and we don’t ever make fun of them.
She seemed satisfied with the answer. I don’t know what kind of an effect all this will have on her. Now she comes home and complains that her face is too circular, not oblong like everyone else’s. That one I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer for.
She seems like that little girl that bullies the others. I’m sure the Mean Girls would describe themselves in similar words.
Had any of the girls used academics to describe themselves? When I was 6, the most I’d put down is “likes reading”.
It’s like society has become trapped in a maze without any exit!
Oh lord – my sister, niece, and niece-in-law are awful “diet talkers.” Always “I can’t eat that I’m too fat!” and “I was bad yesterday – have to have an all-vegetable day today!”
My niece-in-law already tells her 1-year-old that she’s too fat and needs to go on a diet! It’s absolutely horrifying.
I’m so glad I have boys!
Geez, Charlotte, this post made me cry.
That sort of thing was one of the reasons my mom decided to homeschool us. We were the only non-religious family in our area that was homeschooling, but Mom did it anyway. I went to public school through the end of the 4th grade (my 2nd sister finished kindergarten, and the 3rd kid never went to school until college), and then she pulled us out.
Years later, she said to me, “You were so desperate to be liked because you were shy and quiet and smart. And you were teased for your weight even though you weren’t fat. [I’ve since seen pics, and she’s right, though I thought I was then.] I could already see that you were ready to do anything to hang out with the “cool” kids and how unhappy you were, and I figured it was only a matter of time before you started sleeping around and taking drugs just to be liked.”
At first I was upset that she would think that, but as I thought about it . . . I realized that she was right. If one of the “cool” kids had offered me drugs, I would have taken them in a heartbeat, “Just Say No” campaign be damned. And yeah, in a few years I would have been sleeping with any boy that showed a passing interest, just to try and make him like me.
*Sigh* Sorry. Didn’t mean to get QUITE so depressing. But this stuff . . . man, it kills me to read it. (I will say that I went to private school until the middle of 3rd grade, and one of the things that was fantastic about that PARTICULAR school was the fact that there were “serious” consequences for bullying and snottiness. I remember a friend sitting out all her recesses for two days – a big deal in the 1st grade! – for calling a kid with Down’s Syndrome “retarded.” I kind of wish the public schools had a policy like that. Lord knows the bullying levels were WAY lower in the private school, even in similar grade levels.)
I hated those projects in school. We used to have to do those acrostic poems where we use the letters in our name to describe us (one year we had to describe our summer vacation acrostically with our name).
I have a “z” in my name. I didn’t know about a thesaurus in kindergarten and first grade, so I resorted to “zoo” a lot.
And I hate zoos, I always have. They smell and the animals seem suicidal.
Anyway, maybe these kids are writing down things that they think they’re SUPPOSED to be good at. REflecting the values of the adults around them. Also, of course, there is the problem of limited vocabulary. You’re probably not going to see an honest 5-year old who writes “mutinous” on her rainbow. Although, it would be awesome.
oh man i used to love lisa frank. i had a trapper keeper with puppies all over it.
taylor momsen freaks me out. everytime i see her, i think she looks older than me- and she cant even drive. the weird thing? shes supposed to be 15 on the show, too (or 16, maybe) so there’s no reaso nto dress her up like that. unless shes turning trick in between takes.
I don’t honestly know that answer. From a young age, my parents pushed what they thought was healthy food and activity, which was great. The bad thing was I constantly was told to do this because I didn’t want to be like mommy and have problems with my weight. Mom was either on or off the wagon. When she was on, dinners sucked because it was a slimy veggie and some flavorless meat and salad. That’s it. When she was off – well, I learned to hide my candy because she would eat it ALL in one sitting. I never learned moderation from my parents, which has been the ONLY thing that has worked to manage my weight in adulthood.
However, I was more concerned about being good at athletic endeavors than being skinny until about 16, so I was mostly unscathed by the weight monster. Those Lisa Frank times were different times though…
When I was little, my descriptions of myself always had to do with “shy” and “likes to write”. The closest thing I got to describing myself physically would be “blonde hair” or “short”. After reading this I am SO THANKFUL once again that my parents never talked about dieting at all while I was growing up, so that I didn’t know what a calorie was until I was about 15…
Speaking of which, that girl is 15? Seriously? Good Lord. It’s really saddening how with every generation it seems that kids are “getting older” at a much faster rate.
This is really just so sad. 🙁
And for grown women to want to look like a teenage girl – well, how ever did this become normal?!??! That, too, is just sad.
Love you blog! and LOVE Lisa Frank!
I can’t wait to have kids, but this is not a topic I look forward to…
Great post
p.s. I’m a new blogger, please check me out 😉
I’ve heard 6 or 7 year olds talk about how they need to go on a diet, and tell me that ketchup has too many calories to put on their hot dog. It’s crazy the kind of misinformation that they’re absorbing about fitness and nutrition.
Sad.
But women are judged mostly by looks in our society (while men are judged more by what they can do/earn).
And kids really are little sponges.
Don’t want to offend, but I would be interested in seeing how the self-image of young girls varies by race. It seems to me (again, don’t want to offend) that, as an example, African Americans have more of a model for strong women (literally and figuratively) and have a more accepting attitude towards body size IN GENERAL.
As a mother of a 6 year old girl, it sucks when all the hard work you put into building your daughters self-esteem is sabotaged by an outside force. My daughter has commented that her tummy “sticks out” more than some of the other girls at school and she doesn’t like it. I have to wonder if she just noticed this or if another girl was making comparisons.
I tried to redirect the attention to how everyone is a different height, shape etc, and then reinforce her positive attributes. ie: You can run fast and are great at tennis. You are a kind, thoughtful and fun friend.
Although it could be worse. A friend of mine has her daughter in a different school (same age) and she came home recently to tell her mom the girls at school were trying to “dress hot for the boys”. Yikes.
Shellie: It seems like the “round face” worry is just as amenable (if not more) to the “people are built differently” explanation. Does your daughter have a similar bone structure to you or her dad or any other relatives? I was aware even as a little kid that my face is rounder than even my siblings’, but also that this is because I look just like my dad and my grandma and aunt on that side of the family (whereas my siblings take after my mom’s side).
I actually was obese for a few years as a child, and nobody ever said anything to me about it directly, though I learned later that my mom had been discussing it with her friends. Not sure if that’s better or worse. I knew I was fat and wanted to lose weight, but felt too ashamed of both the weight and the desire to lose it (having somehow absorbed both that it was “bad” to be fat and “bad” for 8-year-olds to diet) to bring it up myself. (Bizarrely, I was also never teased about it by other kids, which I can’t complain about though it might have provided an opening to the topic when I didn’t have one) It would have been nice to have an adult acknowledge what was obvious — that I was bigger than my peers — and help sort through the all the complicated feelings surrounding that, feelings I was old enough to have but not really to process.
Anonymous:
The crazy thing is, my daughter’s face isn’t circular. She clearly has a “diamond” shape face like everyone else in our family. It’s not facial fat because she’s 8 and only weighs 49 lbs.
I quickly realized that arguing with her about what shape her face really was would go no where. When I moved on to “circular, diamond or oblong are all nice, just different” she shot that down in a heartbeat. She said she truly believed she was the only one in the world with a circular face and she didn’t like it. I have to wonder if she might just bring it up when she feels the need to argue.
I had to have “the talk” (the fat talk, not the other one), with my daughter at the beginning of 5th grade, she was 10 1/2, and had gained a lot of weight the previous school year and especially summer (despite the increased physical activity, she just simply ate way too much for her little body). I was concerned she was too young and felt guilty for trying to walk that fine line between giving her a complex and tolerance of poor eating habits due to her youth. So since I decided 10 1/2 was a good age, then anyone younger than that is too young. There, I feel better now.
Hmm, I wonder what I would have written on my rainbow?
This is just too sad!!!!
When my daughter was a baby, we went on vacation to Vegas. We were in the parking lot of the hotel when one of the casino workers walked by. She pointed to my gorgeous 5 MONTH-OLD and strated YELLING “Oh my God! That baby has the fattest legs I’ve ever seen!” She then screamed across the lot to her co-worker “Come over here! You have to see this! This baby has THE FATTEST LEGS I’VE EVER SEEN!!!!”
I had no idea how to handle it. people were walking by and staring, and I couldn’t go anywhere because I was watching the kids while Hubby checked in and got our keys. My son, who was not yet 3, just looked at the crazy screaming lady. I think he was really puzzled.
Of course, now my daughter is 5, has the LONGEST legs ever on a toddler, and all the fat is gone. ‘CAUSE IT WAS THERE For A REASON! She needed it, to grow into.
When we start calling babies TOO FAT, then there is a serious problem!
azusmom, I know that for a lot of people, my family included, “fat” is a compliment when referring to babies. (I once pissed off my cousin when I said, about her baby, “she’s so tiny!” and I didn’t mean anything negative at all.) Especially when it’s about fat baby legs…people go crazy over them!
Wow i love your blog, it talks about real issues that we have today like how girl’s describe themselves only on how they look like when really their is so much more within.