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With school set to start in just a few days, I've been doing plenty of back-to-school shopping with my 13-year-old daughter. Pants, shirts, skirts...she needs it all, and each trip to the fitting room feels fraught with opportunities to make -- or break -- the positive feelings she currently has about her body.
Generally, she feels good about the way she looks. But I've noticed a little phenomenon that I think most women can relate to. If she tries something on and the fit is a bit too tight, she's hesitant about trying on a larger size.
Sound familiar?
I know I've been there...in that place where trying on a larger size than we "normally" wear feels like a judgment or a criticism or even a step down a slippery slope into feeling bad about a body we felt just fine about a few minutes before. It's an interesting experiment in the power our thoughts have in shaping our body confidence: Moving up a size in a garment can knock the wind right out of our sails. But when the pants fit in a size smaller than we normally wear? Suddenly, we're downright confident.
It's the same body. The only thing that's different is an arbitrary label sewed in by a manufacturer who's never even seen us.
Size -- and whether it matters -- is an interesting discussion. Watch this TODAY show video of "plus size" model Lizzi Miller (by now, you may have heard about Miller's photo in the September issue of Glamour magazine). In this interview, she talks about women who feel bad about not fitting into a size two because that's what's portrayed as the norm in this country -- even though the "average" American woman more likely wears a size 12. My favorite line of the interview is when the size 12-wearing Miller -- who is healthy, confident and stunningly gorgeous, I might add -- simply says, "My normal is this."
That's the key, I think, to developing a long-lasting healthy relationship with your body and what it looks like. When we take good care of ourselves with healthy eating and exercise habits, we find our "normal." And when we find our "normal" -- when we know what a healthy body looks like for us -- it becomes much easier to separate ourselves from outside judgments about what's right for us, whether it's clothing sizes, photos in magazines or the latest fad diet that our best friend is trying.
And as for those size tags? If they bother you, snip them out with a pair of scissors. After all, it's about how you feel in those jeans.
