How Do I Teach My Daughter to Love Her Body?

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How do I teach my daughter to love her body?

Good question, I don't know. It's actually terrifying. I have no experience liking my body before age 29. I failed in elementary school. I bombed in high school. College was a blurry mess. I can't sit here and pretend to have any idea how to make sure a young person today could possibly navigate the social media world we live in without constantly being bullied to the edge... and then pushed over.

Sometimes when Gigi is sleeping, I'll look at her pink cheeks and her scuffed knees and think, I made those with my body. Every piece of her; I'm like a sorceress. I'd be crushed if she hated one bit of herself.

So, what do I do to help her love her body besides smash the televisions, pull her out of school and then wait until she's asleep to sit in the bathtub crying and breathing slowly into a paper bag?

The last thing I tell her every day is that she's beautiful. After I tell her she's brilliant, hilarious, curious, creative and daring.

We wear lipstick when it rains. Injecting a moment of charm into something dreary makes us happy, and that's an empowering thing. We own our happy moments, we don't need to wait for others to create them for us.

I walk around naked. Eventually this will be super creepy. But right now, I'm helping build the normality of what she sees.

I tell her she is deserving, no matter what. Of friends, family, love, opportunity and life. None of that will ever hinge on her body.

We have love affairs with women. It's not seedy or inappropriate; it's inspiring and mentally empowering. Big women, small women, the women who change the world, we pore over their beautiful minds and bodies.

I let her love food. Indian, Japanese, Lebanese, Italian, even vegan, she experiences it all. Early on, food became an enemy, and I spent two decades fighting against the very thing I secretly loved. I won't allow her that abusive relationship.

I walk every day in her shoes. She doesn't see me when I pose, or hold my arms just so. She sees me when I belly laugh, or tell a story with my hands. She sees me when I sing uninhibited in the car or shave my legs in the sink before date night. She sees me shrug off a compliment or break down beneath an insult.

But more importantly, she sees me stand back up and she sees me dance.

How do I teach my daughter to love her body? By the loving the hell out of mine.

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After the media focused on her alleged weight gain in September 2012, Gaga hit back at critics by baring her body in photographs, sharing her struggles with an eating disorder, and inviting her fans to join her in a "body revolution."

Adele says she tries not to worry about her body image and doesn't want to be a "skinny minnie." "The first thing to do is be happy with yourself and appreciate your body -- only then should you try to change things about yourself."

The actress took to Twitter to say, "I'm not trying to be hot. I'm just trying to be a good actress and entertain people."

After the March 2012 frenzy around Judd's "puffy face," the actress fought back in The Daily Beast, calling the media out for making women's bodies "a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others."

Tate's essay about body image and motherhood not only broke the Internet; it has sparked a movement of "moms who stay in the picture."

On her informed, thoughtful blog "The Beheld," Autumn writes about beauty, body image, appearance and her two -- that's right, two -- mirror fasts.

Gruys went on a year-long mirror fast during which she did not study her reflection in mirrors or other reflective surfaces, or look at photographs of herself.

"I am always in support of someone who is willing and comfortable in their own skin enough to embrace it," the singer said in a recent interview.

At the 2012 New Yorker Festival, the magazine's TV critic, Emily Nussbaum, asked Lena Dunham, producer, creator and star of the hit HBO show "Girls," why Dunham is naked in so many scenes. Dunham responded, "I realized that what was missing in movies for me was the presence of bodies I understood." She said she plans to live until she is 105 and show her thighs every day.

Chung responded to critics who suggested that her slight frame made her a bad role model for young women, saying: "Just because I exist in this shape doesn't mean that I'm, like, advocating it."

The NYU student started the amazing Body Love Blog, where she posted this picture of herself and wrote an open letter to those who feel entitled to shame others for the size or look of their bodies.

This 5-foot-tall, 200-pound singer spoke openly about her weight to The Advocate, saying, "I feel sorry ... for people who've had skinny privilege and then have it taken away from them. I have had a lifetime to adjust to seeing how people treat women who aren't their idea of beautiful and therefore aren't their idea of useful, and I had to find ways to become useful to myself."

Follow Brittany Gibbons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brittanyherself

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