On one of the hotter days of the summer, my eldest daughter (almost 9 yld) asked my permission to wear a crop top. my automatic first reaction was to refuse but then I stopped to ask myself why not?
As a young girl, I’ve always dreamt of wearing crop tops, and the last time I wore one was when I was about the same age as my daughter. After that, I began feeling ashamed of my body, which in retrospect – was perfect.
You are never born with that shame, you absorb it from your surroundings, from your education, and that cute little shame becomes without a doubt a monstrous negative body image for a lifetime.
My eldest daughter is blessed with a beautiful figure, so when you come to think about it, why not let her enjoy it? It is my job now to teach her how to find her own voice in the world, how to ignore judgment and comments from the outside world, and especially how to love herself and make her own choices.
Now, when she is on the verge of adolescence, she will check her and my boundaries anyway – if I refuse her request, she will rebel and do it anyway.
So I said YES and enjoyed her happiness.
In general, raising a girl is like time traveling to your past and fixing all that was wrong with your life as a child.
This reminds me of a stand-up special I caught on Netflix not long ago with Leslie Jones. She spoke about time traveling to her past 20yld self and forward to her 90yld future self. Her future self tells her: “go back to your time, you have no business here. You are still so young and full of life, go, enjoy that. You still have a long way before you reach 90”.
That was when I realized how much energy we put into our past selves. how obsessed we are with thinking how we would have done things differently.
We never stop to think about ourselves from an older and wiser perspective. the one that will ease our minds and tell us how beautiful and young we still are today (in your 40’s or 50’s).
We need to be reminded constantly of how far we’ve come already, and how there is so much more waiting for us in life. Now is the time to still enjoy your body, your life, your life wisdom.
After all that, even I might go back wearing crop tops once again.
