If I've discussed this before, please forgive me, my mind is feeble from study...
Since it's practically the end of the school year at all the local elementary and middle schools, the rec center is overrun with classes of students bussed in to go swimming, play basketball, climb rock walls and otherwise stop driving their poor teachers insane for a damn minute already. As such, the locker rooms have been overrun with girls just entering puberty. Not surprisingly, this magical time is accompanied by a lot of body comparison, as many studies and my own anecdotal evidence suggests.
More than once this week I've overheard one little girl exclaim to a peer "it's not fair, I'm so [fat, flat chested, short, tall, skinny, ugly, whathaveyou] compared to you!" and it reminds me of my own envious, misspent youth. I've talked at some length in the past about my own body issues and how far I've come on the road to body acceptance, but I think more generally, there are a number of things we need to teach kids.
First, kids need to be taught to love their bodies. Whatever your spiritual affiliation, I believe that we can all agree that, extraordinary measures aside, we really only get the one shot at this earthly vessel, at least in this lifetime, so we may as well feel affection toward it, even if it isn't always the physical manifestation of the us we envision in our mind's eye.
Next, it's important to understand that loving your physical being doesn't equal complete acceptance of exactly what you look like right now as your forever body. It's good to set goals and seek to be the best you that you can be. The sticking point for most people (including me, often enough) is that we tend to overemphasize the "best" part at the expense of the "us" part. Though the majority of us simply don't have it in our DNA to set a world record in most athletic pursuits, there's nothing preventing us from setting and breaking our own personal bests.
It's also important that we reject the one size fits all approach to fitness and activity. Not everyone has to run distance or lift heavy. Not every kid has to play basketball or join the swim team. It's crucial to find something that speaks to you, and I believe that such a thing exists for everyone, if only they'd try enough things to find it. Along this same theme, it's important to be okay with being a beginner at something. Lots of people suck at this, but you would really think that children would be exempt, since they're beginners at life, let alone soccer or tennis. They're not. Largely because PE teachers, coaches and parent praise those who already can do without taking the time to acknowledge the progress of those who have not yet done. It's not how you train a puppy, nor should it be how you build up a student.
Finally, it's important to teach children the power of their own efficacy. As discussed above, everyone has their own ability cap, but realistically, few people even truly try to reach theirs because they don't believe in their own capacity to affect change. This train of thought is harmful because it breeds learned helplessness and does nothing to help us develop our own agency. It is paramount to feel that we are capable of influencing our own destiny, even if we have to rewrite our objectives every now and then.
Obviously, this isn't going to stop teen girls and boys from being uncomfortable in their own skin all the time, we all have things we'd like to change about ourselves, but just acknowledging the depth and breadth of our potential and being willing to engage in exploring them is, in my opinion, an integral part in being who we want to be in the world and within ourselves.
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