Girls & eyebrows - Body shaming impact on children (malayalam)

Interesting incident !
It was just one of those days ..
Maya returned from school, we spoke about her day.. She was getting dressed she looked into the mirror and goes:
Amma... I don't like my unibrow. It looks bad. I hate it.

I was shocked because I am really conscious about not talking about any thing body related in this house. In fact everyone is instructed not to make any comments. So I was thinking where did this suddenly come from .

I asked her

Baby, why all of a sudden ? Did someone say something ?

She told - No Amma...no one I know has it.. just me.it looks so wierd.

I told - baby I have it. See.in fact we have always spoken about us having the same kind of eyebrows right?

We had a long conversation about appreciating the body,how everyone's body has something unique about it..
..we also spoke about some of my insecurities - which will be posted on the subscriber feed for subscribers so go check it out.


Anyway, We've had similar conversations a lot of times. And I've realised that even when we parents don't bully or shame children at home they'll somehow develop some kind of insecurities from somewhere and the only practical thing we can do is have healthy, body positive conversations with them continuously, consistently, patiently.

Anyway, at night before bed she came to me and told

Amma.. I love myself ok. I love my thick eyebrows and I love that we both have the same eyebrows ..

I was happy hearing that. But she added one more line :

Amma, I felt really good that I can talk about some bad things I sometimes think about also.

I just told her - baby eyebrow no eyebrow just know i will always love you ok..

I later realised - it's not about the momentary body insecurities we have. We will still have some insecurities no matter how many motivational talks we listen to. Can we share that vulnerability with someone and not feel judged ? I think that's what matters at the end of the day instead of pushing confidence into the child all the time, right ?

Swati Jagdish
Psychologist
Sexuality health educator