This is Not Advice (TINA)
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This is Not Advice (TINA) is a weekly publication by me—Laura Freeland, blogger, soon-to-be-published-author, the world’s okayest mom, and avid plant eater—where I explore motherhood, the creative life, and other topics I know almost nothing about. It comes out on Thursdays via email, and it eventually makes it’s way onto the blog.
In today’s edition, I talked to people who are way smarter than me about how our relationship with our bodies, food, and societal beauty standards have the potential to impact our children—and what we can do about it.
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Have you noticed how many people are donning wildly plump and hydrated lips? Maybe it’s all the water they are drinking from their Stanley cups, or maybe they are born with it. But more than likely, it’s Juvéderm. The rise in cosmetic procedures—and my draw to them—has me wondering how will this affect my daughters?
In 2021, plastic surgeons, PAs, and nurse practitioners across the country performed nearly two million dermal filler procedures. When you compare that to the mere 100,000 annual dermal filler visits from 1993 to 2010, it’s safe to say injectables are en vogue (and maybe more accessible) now—and I don’t hate it. What is not to love about time-defying foreheads and Angelina Jolie lips?
What was once reserved for the rich and famous is now for the people. Well, the people who have a few thousand extra dollars to inject into their faces, which does make it cost-prohibitive for the majority. But that is not my point.
I am watching the influencer moms sculpt their necks and defy aging, and I am torn between acceptance of my 36-year-old self and the perpetual pursuit of perfection. I dig the pouty lips and the paralyzed forehead look this era will be known for. I am here for the semblance of control that dermal fillers and their neurotoxin cousins give us over aging. I stand in favor of women feeling good about themselves, but…
I can’t help but think of the message it sends to my daughters.
At the tender age of three, I don’t have to tell them mamá is heading to the plastic surgeon to smooth out her wrinkles, but they aren’t stupid; I expect them to draw some conclusions in the near future.
While it’s heartbreaking to think my daughters will one day want to change things about their perfect little faces and beautiful little bodies, it’s not the things they can change that I’m losing sleep over. It’s the things they can’t.
When Vivienne and Margot were born more than 17 weeks early, their skin was papery and prone to scarring and infection. Where most babies’ bodies are soft, smooth canvases, my daughters’ bodies are etched by the wounds that made them warriors. Across their bellies, down their arms, and into the places most people will never see, are reminders of how they fought to stay alive. It’s a powerful story, but I fear it won’t be powerful enough to combat society’s standards.
What started as internal dialogue about how what I do to my face might impact my daughters’ views of themselves turned into weeks of thought and conversations with friends and experts.
Our conversations evolved from thoughts about Botox and fillers to the way we talk about food and bodies at and how it will affect the way our kids see themselves and others.
My friend Jess Davis is a registered dietitian at a local children’s hospital, and while eating disorder patients are not the majority of her patient load, they do take up the majority of her time. The four years she’s spent nourishing dozens upon dozens of eating disorder patients back to health have shaped the way she is raising her children.
Jess and I share a lot of feeding philosophies. We don’t put dessert on a pedestal, and we don’t make our kids finish their dinner to enjoy said dessert. My conversation with Jess, however, made me confront my tendency to moralize food. I don’t believe a cookie is inherently bad–and I would certainly never tell my kids that what their friends are eating is bad. But, my insides cringe at the thought of my daughters snacking on packaged foods.
Jess believes all foods—from crackers to cruciferous vegetables—have their place. I understand the principle behind this philosophy, but my body tenses at the thought. I have spent three years keeping processed foods out of my daughters’ diets and out of their purview. I want to believe all foods have their place, but are cheese crackers and frozen nuggets really food? Jess’s ideology challenges my beliefs.
If it fuels a body, it has a place at the table, or in the stroller—or wherever you’re willing to let your offspring eat.
When I feed my kids kale pesto and chickpea pasta, I’m fueling them, and when another mom serves her kids cereal or frozen fries, she’s also fueling them.
Vehemently forbidding foods may only give those foods more allure and power. Some foods may be helpful and others hurtful for my daughters’ complicated digestive systems, but my daughters’ value doesn’t come from what they do or do not eat—and neither does anyone else’s. A single negative comment about a box on a grocery shelf or a peer’s snack choice has the potential to give my daughters the wrong idea.
If we make some foods right and some foods wrong, the next step is making people right or wrong for eating those foods. In this, we create fertile ground for eating disorders, disordered eating, and a lot of judgment.
I can get behind this philosophy of not moralizing food, but my flexibility does have its limits. Fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes are—scientifically—better for the body than processed foods. They are good, but this can only be true if you have access to those foods and your children will actually eat them. This is more complicated than I want it to be, but as a supporter of the gut microbiome and an advocate for increased fiber consumption, I would be remiss to pretend we shouldn’t at least try to raise plant eaters—if remotely possible.
My body may have convulsed in response to Jess’s first philosophy, but her second philosophy diffused the tension.
“I won’t let my kids participate in any sport where their appearance plays a role in how they are judged,” she says to me.
Jess says she has always had a pretty healthy relationship with her body. Even still, when she flips through her high school journals, she finds a Slim Down To-Do List where every third bullet point is a reminder not to eat. She assured me she did not adhere to this checklist. She was an active child and teenager with a healthy appetite, but she was not immune to the beauty myths society perpetuates.
When Jess’s oldest daughter’s dance studio pushed her to apply lipstick and fashion extra high ponytails on her toddler, she took it as a sign that this was not the right place for them. It’s egregious that anyone—let alone a four-year-old—would need to wear makeup or a certain type of ponytail to compete in a dance competition. Lipstick won’t make little girls better dancers, but it will probably make them self-conscious.
I had never considered how a sport’s emphasis on appearance could shape the way my daughters see themselves, but I didn’t have to think about it too hard to decide I want to adopt Jess’s rule for our family.
Of course, if one or both of my daughters desperately wants to dance competitively, our family’s doctrine can evolve as they mature and better understand their relationships with their bodies. As a rule, protecting them from such standards until they are old enough to have intelligent discussion about it feels like a tangible way to approach something that feels so intangible.
The intangibility of this topic is what makes it so challenging to take a concrete approach. Dr. Kesley Evans-Amalu holds a Phd in education with a focus in mindfulness; she apologizes for how impossible it is to give concrete steps to raise kids who love their bodies. She’s a somatic educator who uses movement and meditation to empower students to take care of themselves by improving their bodies’ posture and function, usually in an effort to address or manage pain.
Dr. Evans-Amalu has been in recovery for an eating disorder for a decade and a half, and she’s quick to tune into her patients’ relationships with their bodies. It’s impossible to successfully navigate movement with someone who is at odds with their body without addressing the tension.
As she is halfway through her pregnancy with her first child, so we are quick to transition into a conversation about how to raise children who are not at odds with their bodies. Dr. Evans-Amalu does not skip a beat before saying what I knew from the moment I decided to write about this topic: we have to deal with ourselves first.
Before our children will believe they are beautiful and valuable regardless of what society’s look du jour is, we have to believe it about ourselves. This is not to say we should not pursue exercise, green juices, or face lifts to boost our self-confidence, but rather, that we need to learn to disentangle what we want for ourselves from what society is influencing us to want.
If we are not truly doing it for ourselves, we will never achieve the feeling we’re chasing.
My husband and I prioritize putting money away for our daughters’ educations and for their future medical needs—and wants. If they want treatment to minimize their scarring—and it’s a safe and reasonable option—we want them to have it. But more importantly, we want them to know that if they don’t want treatment—or there is no treatment—it has no bearing on their beauty or their value.
In a world where thin and smooth is the standard of beauty, it takes consciousness to confidently wear wrinkles and scars and say “this is beautiful too.” It seems insurmountable to raise children who can separate true beauty from the beauty myth the media perpetuates.
We cannot shield our children from this damaging place, but we can arm them for it. Dr. Evans-Amalu is of the opinion that we usually don’t need to talk about bodies. Our value does not come from what we look like or what our bodies can do. As parents, we ought to be mindful of our relationship with beauty and bodies and acutely aware of how we talk about these topics. Most of the time, talking about our bodies or someone else’s doesn’t add value to the conversation.
In a world that is still trying to sell us Six Ways to Slim Down, refusing to make bodies a topic of discussion is radical.
Striving for a beauty or body standard is all most of us have ever known. It’s confronting to examine whether my dermal filler dreams are mine or something society has imposed on me. It’s sobering to accept that Botox, a plump pout, and an anti-aging IV may make me feel more beautiful for a moment, but moments fade. The pursuit of a purposeful life and the choice to stand in my talents and my God given value is lasting—and it sets a better example for my kids too.
Does this mean I’m saying no to my Barbie dream pout? I couldn’t tell you.
You thought I’d wrap this newsletter up with a beautiful promise to forgo beauty treatments in favor of sunlight and probiotics, didn’t you? Nothing in life is that simple; this is why I’m unqualified to give advice. So, do with this what you will.