My posts tag is "Writing Worth Reading." The idea being that I would go chapter-by-chapter through a book. I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to find a book with some fresh insight, something new and exciting to serialize. Looking through my extensive book collection (my husband, Gregg, and I joke about the fact that when he logs on to christianbook.com, they have an office party) I saw a book I started on my blog but never finished - 5 Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter by Vickie Courtney. I'm not certain why I never finished blogging about it, because my daughter, Kaylee, and I finished reading it, but I'm happy that God has given me this opportunity to share this amazing book.

Gregg bought this book while working out of town a couple of years ago. He read it and the statistics in it opened his eyes to a lot of things we need to be concerned about in modern culture. As soon as he was finished, he called me and said, “I have this book. You must read it. You must read it with Kaylee.”

Just to give you an idea of some of the statistics the book faces, I’ll share this:

Conversation no. 1 is titled “You Are More Than the Sum of Your Parts” In it, we learn that:

• by the time a girl turns 12, she’s been exposed to 77,546 commercials.


• 58% of girls describe themselves in negative terms including disgusting and ugly.


• 60% of women believe that society expects them to enhance their physical attractiveness.


• The average woman is 5 feet 3.8 inches and 163 pounds. Only 8% of women have an hourglass figure, 46% of women have a rectangular shape, 21% are spoon shaped, and 14% are shaped like an inverted triangle. However, the garment industry assumes the hourglass figure to be the dominate shape, which leaves 92% of women struggling to find clothes that fit, making most of them feel that something is wrong with their body.


• More than 43% of 12 to 15 year-olds have been told by their physicians that they are overweight.

Chapter 1 of the book is entitled, “Pretty Packaging.” Within that chapter, you find that an author named Joan Jacobs researched girls’ diaries and journals from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. In her book, The Body Project, she reports that she found that “before World War I, girls rarely mentioned their bodies in terms of strategies for self-improvement or struggles for personal identity.” She states:

“When girls in the nineteenth century thought about ways to improve themselves, they almost always focused on their internal characters and how it was reflected in outward behavior. In 1882, the personal agenda of an adolescent read, ‘Resolved, not to talk about myself or feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self restrained in conversations and actions. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more than others.” She notes that for girls in that time period, “character was built on attention to self-control, service to others, and belief in God.”

What changed after World War I? Mirrors were introduced into the home. And as they became popular, women began scrutinizing their bodies and comparing them to other women’s bodies. In the 1920’s, on the heels of the introduction of the above-the-sink bathroom mirror, cosmetics became popular. And then the compact sales soared, because they allowed women to scrutinize themselves and repair any damage while out and about.

Shortly after, bathroom scales were introduced into the picture. Brumberg writes that when young women left home in the 1800’s, they would write to their mothers happy about healthy weight gain and voracious eating habits. When the household scale followed in the footsteps of the bathroom mirror, by the 1920’s, women began worrying over weight gain and food restriction (dieting) because a common topic. As Vicki Courtney writes, the shift from virtue to vanity has been on a runaway train ever since.

She spends a good portion discussing the Photoshop makeovers and airbrushing of magazine covers and billboards, and how detrimental it is to our perception of beauty. Right around the time Kaylee and I read this chapter, someone posted this video on my Facebook page:




It is SUCH a vivid example of exactly what Vicki Courtney was addressing.

So, I was driving down the road this afternoon and heard this song on my Christian radio station. I've heard it before, but I've never tied it into all of this until I read this book. I've posted the lyrics below, because the lyrics are IMPORTANT.

Jonny Diaz - More Beautiful You
From the album More Beautiful You

Little girl fourteen flipping through a magazine
Says she wants to look that way
But her hair isn't straight
her body isn't fake And she's always felt overweight

Well little girl fourteen I wish that you could see
That beauty is within your heart
And you were made with such care
your skin your body your hair
Are perfect just the way you are

There could never be a more beautiful you
Don't buy the lies disguises and hoops they make you jump through You were made to fill a purpose that only you could do
So there could never be a more beautiful you

Little girl twenty-one the things that you've already done Anything to get ahead
And you say you've got a man but he's got another plan
Only wants what you will do instead

Well little girl twenty-one you never thought that this would come You starve yourself to play the part
But I can promise you there's a man whose love is true
And he'll treat you like the jewel that you are

Chorus
So turn around you're not too far
To back away be who you are
To change your path go another way
It's not too late you can be saved

If you feel depressed with past regrets
The shameful nights hope to forgets
Can disappear they can all be washed away
By the one who's strong can right your wrongs

Can rid your fears dry all your tears
And change the way you look at this big world
He will take your dark distorted view
And with his light he will show you truth
And again you'll see through the eyes of a little girl

My daughter is wonderful, and smart, and amazing. Her heart is so big that I’m amazed you can’t see it beating out of her chest. She is deeply spiritual, loves the Lord, loves Christian music, loves her youth group. But, she’s a child of this world. She reads Teen Vogue and changes clothes six times a day and stresses over the color of lipgloss she’s wearing. And she’s 13.

Children are on such a rapid maturing schedule in this society that it’s scary. She has friends whose boyfriends are already pushing for sex, and they’re 13 and 14! She has friends who feel like they’re overweight and they cut themselves with razor blades as a self-induced punishment regularly. She has friends who stick their fingers down their throats and throw up every meal so that they can stay in those size 0’s.

Right now, Kaylee is still communicating things like this with me, but there’s going to come a day when that will end and she’ll be communicating things like this with her friends, working problems out with her friends. She will need to have the base that we’re providing her with God, love, open communication, and the compilation of information like what is found in this book to make her way through those precarious teen years.

If you have a daughter, I strongly urge you to get this book, read this book, read this book WITH your daughter. She needs this information and she needs to know what she’s facing in the world.

Check back here for an overview of chapter 2!







My personal blog: Hallee the Homemaker
Find me on Twitter: @halleeb