Kate McIntyre Clere
Help!
I am looking for ways to guide my 9-year-old daughter through the ubiquitous and invasive media landscape that undermines, sexualizes, trivializes, and bombards her every turn.
Any advice?
From Homemade Jumpers to Diamanté Tops
In 1973, I was 9 years old. I was the youngest of four living with our parents in a seaside neighborhood surrounded by the New Zealand bush. We spent our days biking the streets, navigating through the wild reserves, hauling logs to build bush cubbies, sailing dinghies on the windswept harbor, and building fires on the rocky foreshores. There was very little TV for children in New Zealand at the time, and in the evenings we would sit together and watch the one black-and-white TV channel with shows including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I Love Lucy, and The Brady Bunch. Life for me was an endless adventure and anything was possible.
Fast-forward forty years to urban Sydney. Now my own beloved 9-year-old daughter, Miro, catches the bus to school and is exposed to hundreds of images of Photoshopped women on her journey. She loves to sing, dance, and watch music videos that have women portrayed as everything from superwoman to sex slave. Miro and I shop at the local mall where handbags, earrings, high-heeled shoes, padded bras, and diamanté tops are all marketed to 9-year-olds. Magazines covers flash sex, diets, plastic surgery, drugs, how to be hot for your man, creating a common language for my daughter and her friends. In the city there is hardly a moment of free air, space, or time when girls and women are not facing images of women that are digitally enhanced to an advertising executive’s idea of perfection. So much has changed. So much now for my 9-year-old to deal with, let alone her mother.
Lost in the Media Maze
The pressure is on and I’m not sure I have the answers. I am often overwhelmed by the responsibility of guiding her through this bizarre maze of influences and feel ill equipped to dodge all the media images that do nothing to affirm Miro’s unfolding girlhood or my life as a woman. Rather than running away to live somewhere free of these influences (if that place even exists), I want to help her learn to navigate them. It feels like a daily battle of “mother vs. media.” Who can have the most influence? Family psychologist Steve Biddulph in his book Raising Girls says, “The mechanism of advertising is to attack your mental health—to worry you. If you want to sell products to a girl, whether she is four or fourteen, you first have to make her insecure—about her looks, friends, clothes, weight, skin, hair, interests, family, or ability. TV magazines, billboard, music, videos, and shopping malls pour this toxic message onto girls wherever they look.”1
So how is this affecting us? Eighty percent of American women are dissatisfied with their body image.2 When I first heard these figures, I knew we women were in the midst of an unspoken epidemic. What do we have to protect ourselves and our sense of self-worth from this undermining climate? This uncertainty is also affecting our daughters and their self-esteem. According to the National Survey of Young Australians, concern about how their body looks is now the biggest worry for the nation’s 11- to 24-year-olds, with a recent report finding one in five 12-year-old girls regularly used fasting and vomiting to lose weight.3
Finding My Way Through
How are we as a society dealing with this ongoing issue? Are we even acknowledging the damage we are doing to our daughters? In my own search for meaning, one of the best ways I have found to connect with myself through the complexities of life is yoga. Through thirty years of life’s challenges—the darkest days, losing loved ones, facing my fears, falling in love, giving birth, finding boundaries, growing up—it has always been yoga I turned to. Yoga has been and remains my closest ally, greatest teacher, champion, soothing soul mate, and toughest mirror. Yoga has been an integral part of my adult life and plays a prominent role in supporting my feminist perspective.
My classic yoga class scenario is rushing to get there, caught in my to-do list, still answering texts and wondering if I have the time for yoga today. Wondering if I am enough, if I deserve to focus on myself, pushing and pushing. Then, slowly, the miracle of yoga begins to unfold. I return to the breath, draw inside, and I find there on the mat lies that same childhood experience of freedom and possibility. In my experience, this clarity of self is the root of my feminism, allowing me to feel equal, valuable, and vital. The creative power and intuitive wisdom that arise naturally from my yoga practice are at the heart of my own self-worth.
So with that great image, one might imagine that I am serenely at ease with my own beauty, power, and worth. Sadly, no. This is not the case. I have been doing yoga for most of my adult life and still regularly confront my own self-worth. When did this dis-ease slip into my world? I feel the avalanche of the “perfect” looking, unempowered women in the media, and it cuts deep even when I am conscious of its incessant drive to promote insecurity. It would seem that while we can cut through that illusion and experience our own sense of self-worth through yoga, it’s not something that you master then never have to address again. Like all disciplines, it takes consistent practice.
Through regular practice we can learn to rewrite our habits, breathe warmth around the incessant voice of the inner critic, and bring a consciousness to our daily lives. A regular yoga practice can ease the insecurities we harbor and gradually dissolve self-deprecating, distracted habits so we don’t pass these insecurities on to our daughters.
Watching Mom
My plan is to raise my daughter so she is strong, vulnerable, valued, free, and secure, and does not have to spend serious amounts of her conscious and unconscious life hankering over her own body image and self-worth. How to do this? I think you start by changing the language, bringing a conscious and critical eye to the media, challenging the capitalist business model devoid of all ethics, and, most importantly, finding times and rituals to value the inner world. To create these positive neural pathways, I think the work is identical for both Miro and myself.
Girls are empathetic social creatures who watch their mothers’ lives closely to help negotiate their own lives. From when Miro was quite young, I wanted to do what I could to prevent her from being burdened by or inheriting my insecurities. For example, I decided I would not linger in front of the mirror pointing out my faults. Rather, I decided to emphasize the positives and practice saying those out loud instead. (I do find it sad and numbingly boring that I can still have criticisms about my body after so many years!)
This decision to restrain what I give voice to is directly connected to the discipline of my yoga practice, and I see it as the yoga “working off the mat.” Surrendering my mind and body to my daily yoga practice and moving through the asanas has gradually created a foundation of self-acceptance. Now when I am doubting myself, wondering if I am enough—angry, jealous, lost, and vulnerable—I first notice a physical response of dis-ease. From there, I am in a position to decide “where to from here?” What is the most loving, life-fueling way forward? Repeatedly noticing and returning to the present creates a more enlightened way of living, a clarity that can then inform all our choices.
These are valuable tools we can pass on to our daughters and I pass on to Miro: the practice of self-nurturing, mindfulness, and choice. I believe at 9 the most innate teaching I am giving my daughter is through modeling behaviors or even saying my own thoughts out loud, like, “I am not feeling great about my body this morning. I don’t feel so great about wearing my bikini today. You know, Miro, sometimes my mind really believes these thoughts and it makes me feel really bad. So then I have to say to myself, it’s okay. Bodies change shape all the time. I’ve got a choice and I’m not going to let these thoughts ruin my day at the beach. Let’s go and enjoy ourselves!”
Weighing Our Food Choices
I feel very fortunate to live in a country where the quality and quantity of fresh and healthy food are abundant. However, with the pressure from the media for the perfect body, I see that food has sadly become another issue that can affect our sense of self-worth. In America, about ten million women and girls now battle with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa.4 Although always a healthy eater myself, I have found that raising my daughter has encouraged me to be more awake to my own eating and become a mentor for her. I try to consciously observe when I am eating for hunger or to stifle feelings, and make an effort to find other ways to respond.
I was interested to come across the term “thin-heritance,” newly coined from a study done in the UK. They found that “Teenage girls whose mothers diet are nearly twice as likely to have an eating disorder.” 5 Women whose mothers dieted on and off throughout their childhoods remember cupboards filled with diet products, calorie counting, and anxious attitudes around food. A mother’s dieting and low self-image permeate her children’s own eating habits and self-image issues well into adulthood.
Getting really clear on our food values and connecting more consciously to food is an important skill we can pass on to our daughters. For me, this awareness of diet is woven throughout my life of yoga—not only in the literature but also in my own experience. Regular yoga practice heightens my awareness of my dietary choices, the respect I have for food, the response my body has to food, and the state I am in when eating. As a family, we choose a vegetarian diet and often discuss the ethics of what we eat and the food industry. In yogic literature, it is written that some foods “create new energy, clarity, and a clear, calm mind, enabling us to use all our mental, physical, and spiritual abilities” and that other foods can disturb either our physical or emotional balance: “Too much of these foods can cause restlessness, agitation, and a distracted mind.” 6 By observing my own reaction to foods, I have come to know more clearly what best suits my body and what time of day I should be eating—and my daughter witnesses all this. Miro often asks questions like, “Why don’t you want a doughnut, they’re so yummy?” I say, “Yeah, when I was a kid I loved them, but you know, now I notice that they don’t make me feel so great. I feel better if I eat an apple. You’ll get to know what food makes you feel happier.”
Passing on the Perfect
I am already feeling the pressure to be the perfect mother. So much literature says we, as mothers, are the most influential person in our daughters’ lives, and as I type this I see my faults arising! All around us we see media images of perfect women, with perfect figures, in perfect clothes, raising perfect children, who maintain perfect households, perfect manners, and are perfect conversationalists—oh, and who are perfectly sexy as well!
The ongoing comparison that draws us away from our inner wisdom can manifest into depression or anxiety. Trying to be perfect makes me stressed. It makes me impatient with my kids. I respond angrily when I am feeling out of control, when I am late, the dinner is burning, my clothes aren’t coming together, I did not remember to buy food for school lunches, etc.
Breathing, deep breathing learned and practiced in meditation and on the mat is my only cure here. Knowing how to take a pause and reflect. Noticing the racket. Recognizing the symptoms of overwhelm, shame, tiredness. Letting the kids know how I am feeling, acknowledging I am unable to do the things we had planned, being open with them, practicing self-compassion. It’s my hope that being open with Miro will support her in being honest and compassionate with herself if or when she finds herself in the grip of thoughts and feelings that steal her from her self-accepting heart.
Imagining Ourselves into Being
As a teenage girl, I saw media images of women in stereotypical roles as housewives and homemakers. A woman was subservient, and her purpose was primarily to please her man and care for her family. This image never sat well with me, and I was clear from about the age of 16 that I would never become one of these women! I wanted choices; I would be the hero of my own life, free to discover and fulfill my own unique destiny. Having the courage to listen to this response and to give space and energy to hear that authentic inner voice are some of the gifts of yoga. This feeling of connection is what I want to pass on to Miro. I want her to connect with her authentic nature. I want her to be free to find her passions.
More recently I am sorely challenged by trying to protect her from the deluge of sexualized images that come her way—the soft porn of billboard advertising, the overt sexuality of MTV, and the up-aging of clothing for her age group. Just when she is starting to look outside of herself for role models and mentors, the majority of media images of woman are nude or barely clothed, objectified, placid, male-pleasing, vacuous, skinny, and white. We haven’t got to the world of Internet porn yet, but I am bracing myself for more and more explanations and ways to express a powerful connection with her own sexuality and choices. Where do our young girls find a safe, protected space to explore their emerging womanhood and imagine themselves into being?
Until recently, I’ve chiefly avoided commenting on skewed portrayals of women so as not to draw attention to them and create interest for Miro. However, I now see evidence with Miro and her friends that they are adapting their play to align with the media imagery they’re exposed to. As they sing, dance, dress up, and play, I observe them role-playing as languid, pouting, and sexy sirens. I want to give Miro a chance to play a myriad of characters: strong warrior, princess, shaman, mother, or president. To balance the objectified images of women Miro encounters, I try to draw her attention to less publicized role models. In Sydney, we have a female mayor, governor, and prime minister, so we talk about what their lives are like and what they are able to achieve. I regularly voice my enthusiasm for women around us who are choosing lives they are passionate about.
YOGAWOMAN: Creating a New Media Paradigm
Every working mother I know struggles with the work/family balance. Keeping myself available for Miro’s needs both physically and emotionally is always a challenge. One of the highlights of mixing my work with family was when we were creating our film YOGAWOMAN. Telling the stories of more than fifty strong, passionate yogis from around the globe created a three-year conversation at our home that celebrated women in all their magnificent stages of life. We created the film to highlight the ways in which women are using yoga to stand in their own power. Seeing these women portraying their real lives on the big screen was inspirational and offered women everywhere role models, inviting them all to be part of a community to build their own authentic voices. A radical counter to the mainstream media, our film offered ninety minutes packed full of wisdom and practical tools for creating a new paradigm together.
With the mat as our laboratory, there are so many things to discover about ourselves as we adapt through the different cycles of our lives. On the mat, in this quiet space, we see our habits, face our limits, feel our pain, and breathe through our edge of fear. This tool is invaluable for my life and for parenting. As a mother I often feel Miro’s pain and desires as if they were my own. Instead of reacting, blaming, wanting to collude with her distress and become the victim of our circumstances, yoga has given me other responses to offer her. Together we practice leaning in to the experiences of life—pain, suffering, joy, failure, success—and learn that we are able to be in all these places and it’s okay. There is always learning to be had from every circumstance, and with the breath as a tool, we can fully engage in all of life.
There are times I feel overwhelmed with the task of just trying to keep myself together, but I see clearly that being a mother has become part of my yogic practice. My learning is to stay on the “family mat,” lean in to the challenges, and be present for this life-changing role. If I can help Miro build a sense of awareness of herself that is respectful, kind, compassionate, and self-accepting regardless of external media prompts and other outer biddings, I feel I will have done my job well as mother and attained something in my own passage to authentic womanhood.
1. Steve Biddulph. Raising Girls. New York: Harper, 2013.
2. L. Smolak. National Eating Disorders Association/Next Door Neighbors Puppet Guide Book. NEDA: 1996.
3. Justin Healy. Body Image and Self-Esteem. Thirroul, NSW, Australia: Spinney Press, 2008.
4. J. H. Crowther, E. M. Wolf, and N. E. Sherwood. “Epidemiology of Bulimia Nervosa” in M. Crowther, D. L. Tennenbaum, S. E. Hobfoll, and M. A. P. Stephens, eds., The Etiology of Bulimia Nervosa: The Individual and Familial Context (Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis), 1–26.
5. Jane Kirby. “Many Girls ‘Damaged’ by Their Mum’s Dieting.” The Independent, www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/many-girls-damaged-by-their-mums-dieting-1811258.html (accessed March 2014).
6. Carol DiPirro. “What Is a Yogic Diet?” My Yoga Online, www.myyogaonline.com/healthy-living/nutrition/what-is-a-yogic-diet (accessed March 2014).
Kate McIntyre Clere cofounded Second Nature Films following a successful career as an actor and theater director. She is the coproducer, director, and writer of the award-winning film YOGAWOMAN, the world’s first feature documentary about women and yoga. Throughout her adult life, Kate has practiced and taught yoga, bringing balance and strength into her roles as filmmaker, wife, and mother. www.yogawoman.tv. Author photo by Clara Gottgens.