Back Be Better

As parents, most of us do our best to teach our children good eating habits. We offer them a variety of healthy foods simply because this is what is best for their bodies. We teach them the importance of being healthy, not necessarily because we’re concerned about obesity, but because we want them to have a physically healthy body.

We try to teach them self-esteem and how to find and see the beauty within themselves. Because having an emotionally healthy body has a direct effect on their physical health.

But, is the media helping us with what we are trying to teach our children? I recently viewed this photo online. At first glance, I thought this was a picture of someone starving or suffering from anorexia. I was terribly wrong. This is a picture of an actual model wearing a creation from the 2007 Spring/Summer ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris, France.

Is this a good example of what people should look like? The media is telling our children, by using models that are beyond thin, that this is what we should strive to look like. This is a dangerous message to our children, many of whom are too concerned for the way they look already.  

We, as parents, need to teach our children what healthy is, what healthy means and what healthy looks like. Because it certainly does not look like this. This is our responsibility. A responsibility that we cannot leave up to the media to teach.

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