The sexual objectification of little girls

[Sarah Ibarruri]

28. I appreciate you explaining what you went through as you grew up

About clothing for girls: It is so sexualized that I frequently see no difference between girls' clothes and the clothes of any starlet, or someone walking the street trying to make a few bucks. It shocks the heck out of me.

That must've been incredibly difficult, growing up with a mother that placed a priority on looking good. You're an amazing woman to fight so hard to not pass on what was passed on to you.

I have TWO friends whose mothers were obsessed with their looks and weight. Both of their stories are so alike, it's almost enough to drive one insane, though one was from Tampa, Florida, and the other one was from Jacksonville, Florida.

Both mothers looked and behaved in identical ways (you'd have thought they were sisters, but they weren't). They were constantly on diets, when they said hello, the first topic of conversation always was whether they lost weight or not, whether the other person lost weight or not, etc. They were always concerned about how they looked in their clothing. They spent their life at the hairstylist. Their looks were everything!

If these women went to dinner with someone, they would eat 1/4 or less of the meal, and take the rest home or just leave it. They were overwhelmingly obsessed about fat and sweets. They looked in the mirror endlessly, trying to catch some little bit of 'fat' that might have suddenly appeared.

And of course, since they were both so alike, they also both tortured their little girls with warnings about not getting fat. They sure as hell didn't do this to their sons though! Makes me so mad!!

These mothers' girls BOTH developed anorexia (the sons did not develop eating disorders). One of these girls nearly died. One day I got the courage to ask the one that nearly died, why she lived that way, and felt she had to look so skinny. She told me that she couldn't BEAR the idea of ending up fat because 'no one' would love her if she were fat, since she wouldn't look good. The proverbial self-objectification. I asked her if she realized that was wrong to do, and she remained silent.

Anorexia and other eating disorders are linked to sexual self-objectification according to the APA.