How to Talk to Girls about Body Image During the Olympic Games

Girls are most likely to compare their bodies to those of celebrities (such as athletes). This can start a lot earlier than you might think! If you have a preteen daughter, ask her:

• Do you compare how you look to celebrities?
• Does seeing or reading about celebrities make you feel differently about the way you look?
• What do you like the most about how celebrities look? Do you feel like you should look like that?  

Pick a successful athlete and compare how she's portrayed while competing and when she appears in advertising.

If you have a teen or tween daughter who's using social media, you can ask them the following questions:

• What makes a picture look good? What things about a picture make it likely to get more “likes” or get shared more often?
• What are some of the tricks you or your friends use for making pictures look good? What are things you can do with just the camera and what are things you can do with editing software or with tools the social network gives you (filters, etc.)?
• Do you think your friends change their photos before posting them? Why do you think people post them?
• How do you feel when you see a photo of yourself or one of your friends that’s been changed? If the photo looks thinner, sexier, or otherwise more attractive then you think you are in real life, does that make you feel better or worse?
• Do you or your friends rate, comment on or talk about each other’s photos? How does it feel to get a low rating or a negative comment? How does it feel to get a high rating or a positive comment?

Girls are also under pressure to look not just thin but sexy, too, and athletes are no exception: female athletes are often photographed in what Mary-Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, calls “hyper-sexualized poses.” Professor Pat Griffin notes, “When it was once enough to feminize women athletes, now it is necessary to sexualize them for men. Instead of hearing, ‘I am woman, hear me roar,’ we are hearing ‘I am hetero-sexy, watch me strip.’”

Encourage girls to compare male and female athletes' uniforms, the amount of coverage different events get (do women's events get more coverage if they show more skin?) and the ways that female athletes are filmed, photographed and described by commentators or journalists.
Pick a successful athlete and compare how she's portrayed while competing and when she appears in advertising. How are the images similar and different? How are they sexualized or made stereotypically "feminine" in advertising in ways that they weren't when they were competing? What might have led to the changes in how she's portrayed?

Read more:

• How to Talk to Your Kids about Body Image During the Olympics
• How to Talk to Boys about Body Image During the Olympics