Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
A big focus this week on the podcast on the
topic body image. How do you feel about your body,
how do your children feel about their body? And what
are the messages that we're giving them when we talk
about bodies generally. Goday, Welcome to the Happy Families podcast,
Real Parenting Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded
(00:26):
parenting podcast. We are Justin and Kylie Colson. I'm the
host or the co host and parenting expert on Channel
lines hit TV show Parental Guidance Season three. It's streaming
now on the nine Now app or you can watch
on Channel nine when it's live on Monday nights. We've
just had episode three go to air on Monday. Today.
(00:47):
We're reflecting on the things that happened yesterday. We talked
a lot about this challenge of standing in front of
the mirror with your children and asking them what they see.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I like my hair and my teeth.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I have bunions because I do ballet. I have acne,
which is kind of sad Ian color. It was a
really interesting discussion yesterday. I think we covered some great stuff. Kylie.
We were introduced to four new focus families, Elv and Sean.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We are authoritative parents.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
We have high expectations on our children. In the meantime,
we set strict rules and boundaries.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Nick and Sophia we're the positivity parents where confidence is key.
Josh and Cassie we are the life school parents, and
we use real life experiences to educate our kids.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
And Amandarin has Son.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
We choose to parent the hard way. We don't take shortcuts.
It's hard on us.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
We're easing the fund for the kids.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
Today.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I want to reflect on something that came up, some
really painful memories for some of our parents, particularly Sophia,
our positivity.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Momth When I was younger, I didn't like my legs.
I used to get teased at school and they used
to be actually riding on the walls about Mummy's legs.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
My body at all. It's very important, especially being a girl, Okay,
that you don't let other people tell you what beautiful is.
You know how mummy always says that to you. Okay,
because we're all different, Okay, I love you. I would
binge and then I'd be like, oh no, no, no,
(02:35):
I'm getting too big. Now, let's scale that back to
like not eating, like that's just not healthy, you know.
And then all my friends were doing it. And I
think when you're young, you're very impressionable, okay, and if
you don't have a lot of support around you don't
have you know, parents that are guiding you, you know,
through that.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Type of stuff. I can definitely relate with that. I
was one of four girls. Two of my old sisters
suffered quite bad eating disorders growing up, and it did
stem from my dad was obsessed with the way he looked.
I remember I lost a lot of weight once when
I was younger. I was severely underweight and someone said,
(03:17):
I'm really worried about you. And I went to my
dad and he said, I don't know what they're talking about.
You look fabulous. And so it does come from the parents.
And you know, you're lucky if you can get out
of that without any repercussions.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Kylie, so many things that come out of that audio.
What are your reactions?
Speaker 5 (03:35):
It didn't surprise me at all. But every woman in
that room had a story.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yes, and there were serious, heavy stories. It was it
wasn't like, oh you when I was young, I didn't
like how I looked either. These were heavy eating disorder
challenging mental health kind of stories. Yeah, why did it
not surprise you?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
Because as women, there has just always been so much
emphasis on the way we look and very little emphasis
on what we can do. And you think about that
from a generational kind of thing, girls weren't even encouraged
(04:15):
to be educated because it was actually just all about
how we looked and what we could do in the home,
without ever acknowledging what we were actually capable of doing
in any sphere.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You know what line really stood out to.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Me, You don't let other people tell you what beautiful is.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I just love that. For whatever reason, it resonated and
I thought, yeah, absolutely, Like society gives such a narrow
and unhealthy vision of what beautiful is. It focuses only
in one dimension, and I think that it causes so
much harm to so many young people. There was one
other standout point that came from the episode, and that
(04:56):
was when Courtney, the pro tech parent said, my dad
was obsessed by the way he looked. And I just
wanted to emphasize how much of the body image stuff
we carry comes from what our parents are saying about bodies. Kylie,
do you have any memories of being a teenager and
feeling awkward about your appearance or things that your parents said.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Typical teenager loved my sugar, really enjoyed you know, junk
food in general, and often I would find myself, you know,
eating I don't know, a donut or whatever else, and
my mum would watch me enjoy it and acknowledged that
(05:39):
I would regret that in the years to come because
I was going to end up with a bum like curz.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
What sort of an impact does hearing that have on you?
Speaker 5 (05:47):
So I was five foot ten and fifty four kilos.
To put that into context, I had a doctor recently
tell me that the easiest way to work out is
a healthy weight range for yourself is to take the
one off your height.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
So five foot ten in meters is.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
One hundred and seventy eight centimeters.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Okay, So taking the one meter off means that somewhere
around that seventy five to eighty kilo range would be
about right. Yeah, Yeah, And you were fifty four kilos.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
I was fifty four kilos and it wasn't until I.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Was so you MU should have been saying, eat more donuts?
Is how are you getting at?
Speaker 5 (06:24):
I was in a relationship and my boyfriend had taken
a handful of photos of me, and he shared some
of them with me, And in that moment, it was
like I was looking at somebody else. And what blows
my mind is how distorted our vision is. Yes, so distorted.
(06:45):
I would look in the mirror and I would see
someone who needed to lose weight, and I would pull
my body to pieces. And yet when I saw this photo,
all I could see was my clabacles just like popping out,
like I was skin and a bone, right. And I
remember at that period of time, my mum actually used
(07:07):
to follow me to the bathroom because she thought that
I must be vomiting.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
And yet she's still giving you this message that donat
the doughnut.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Yeah, and I wasn't. I wasn't, but I wasn't eating.
So yeah, it took that photo to actually kind of
shake me up and make me realize that what I
was seeing in the mirror was a distortion of reality.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
One of my favorite stories as well is when we
went on our first date, so you would have been
eighteen when we started dating. Yeah, and we went on
our first date and walked into the chuck Oal Chicken
shop down at Terego Beach, where I ordered a chicken
and some chips and then looked at you and said,
what would you like to eat? And you said, well,
I'll just have some of what you've ordered, and I said, no,
that's actually mine. What would you like to eat? And
(07:48):
I remember you saying to me a short while after
that that that was the day that you knew that
you could eat whatever you wanted around me and there'd
be no judgment. You were safe. That's obviously a bit
of levity in what's an otherwise really important, really hard conversation.
The impact of the words that we say are great.
I quote in Misconnection, my book about raising teenage girls,
(08:11):
research that shows that when parents, particularly fathers, say things
about their daughter's weight, if those children are under about
the age of I think it was eleven, twelve, thirteen,
something like that, by the time they're in their mid
to late teens, the likelihood of them having some eating
challenges goes up just so much. Again, I can't remember
the exact percentages now, but goes up enormously. The conversations
(08:33):
that we have really really carry weight. If you'll pardon
the quite unfortunate pun or turn of phrase, there up next,
we need to talk about how we can move into
healthier conversations around beauty and what is beautiful. That's in
just a sec on the Happy Families podcasts.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
I want to play some audio of you saying something
pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
When discussing body image, we need to move away from
beauty instead, emphasize functionality, emphasize fighting joy, focus on what
you can do, not what you look like. More than anything,
remember that beauty is best defined by who you are
and not how you look. Okay, so what do you
like about that?
Speaker 5 (09:24):
For centuries we're focused on girl's looks. I said that
earlier in our discussion, and one of the things that
we have been really intentional with our girls is acknowledging
what their bodies allow them to do. But not only that.
When we focus on beauty, we talk about the qualities,
(09:46):
the attributes that make them a beautiful person.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You know, though it's not a physical appearance thing, it's
these are the attributes, the beautiful attributes of character that
make you.
Speaker 5 (09:54):
You because those characteristics of good ness shine forth and
they actually make you a more beautiful person, like in general.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So can I jump in and read something from misconnection
because Misconnection is the book about raising teenage girls, and
it's probably the book that I'm most proud of. I've
written a few books that I really really like, but
this one, I just it's made such a difference to
so many families. I actually wrote this in chapter four,
pixel Perfect. I wrote the subheading is tell your daughter
she's beautiful. So a lot of people really don't like this.
(10:30):
They think that we should move away from telling kids
that they're beautiful because it's going to create some sort
of a complex in them. But this is what I
want to read to you, I said, I recognize that
this is a controversial thing to say, particularly because I've
been arguing in this chapter that identity is negatively impacted
by peers or parents' emphasizing appearance. But hear me out
on this. At a conference a number of years ago,
a man spoke to me after my presentation. I've been
(10:51):
discussing how our girls need to know we're proud of them.
He shared with me that he would see his little
girl all dressed up in her Sunday best before church
each week and tell her joyously how beautiful she was.
When she was about nine or ten. She said, Dad, Am,
I only beautiful when I wear a dress. It occurred
to him that he only ever complimented her appearance on
(11:11):
those Sunday mornings when she donned her dress. She thought
she wasn't beautiful at any other time. Karen Young, the
mastermind behind Hey Sigmund, says that girls should know their
beautiful regardless of their appearance. Beauty is defined by who
you are, not how you look. Her message study hard,
(11:31):
play hard, achieve failed, commit to excellence. We want our
girls to feel competent and capable and to know that
we believe in their beauty. My advice. Most girls want
to feel beautiful, let them know that they are always
your reactions.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
I'm crying. Every girl wants to feel beautiful. But I
love that dad's recognition after his daughter asked him the question,
Am I only beautiful on Sundays because of what I'm wearing?
And I think it's just a really beautiful reminder to
us that we have such an important role to play
(12:11):
in helping our girls specifically recognize their beauty. And it's
not about what they put on. It's not about the makeup,
it's not about the dress. It's actually about who they are.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, Yeah, it's not the dress. It's the girl in
the dress. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to sound cheesy,
but you're beautiful when you get weepy, stop it, all right,
very serious conversation. Tomorrow's episode, we're going to be talking
about what can happen when negative body image thoughts can
develop into serious, life threatening health issues. One of the
toughest conversations that we'll ever have on this podcast on
(12:46):
the disease that is anorexia.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Force yourself to eat it, Ashley, Yes, you can.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
You can.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
What is your voice saying right now?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Okay, so you need to do the opposite.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Look.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's tomorrow on the Happy Families podcast, which is produced
by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our
executive producer. Mim Hammond's provides research and additional support. If
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(13:30):
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