Your Mirror Image?

By Francine Russo

Jenny Moran, 41, a sales executive in Ocean County, N.J., admits to being obsessed with her weight. But she was shocked when her 3 1/2-year-old daughter suddenly began weighing herself several times a day. "I never thought she was paying attention," Moran says ruefully.

Moran has reason to be concerned. Study after study has found that mothers who are fixated on their body image are more likely to have daughters with eating disorders than less self-conscious moms. Sure, you can blame the media for imposing a parade of surgically enhanced pop icons on your impressionable child, but the real danger to her self-image comes from closer to home: you!

Research shows that 80% of American women check out--and disapprove of--their reflections minutes after waking. On any given day, 45% say they are dieting. Scarier yet, a 1992 study found that 46% of girls 9 to 11 say they are "sometimes" or "very often" on a diet, and experts agree that the numbers have probably increased since then.

"We model our mothers," says psychology professor Lora Jacobi, who teaches a class on eating disorders at all-women Hollins University in Virginia. Of the students attracted to her class--typically those struggling with eating issues--virtually all report that their mothers were excessively worried about their size.

Your daughters are watching you, according to Jacobi. They observe you trying on jeans, overhear you grousing to your friends. They notice what you eat. If you declare yourself "good" for eating only salad and "bad" for eating cookies, they will judge their own goodness and badness the same way.

That was the case for Kristen Cole, a publicist in Northampton, Mass., who grew up watching her mother diet. Cake was pronounced "decadent." Cole, 33, believes such behavior helped pave the way for her struggles with anorexia and bulimia, which began at 12.

To avoid passing on an unhealthy obsession, it's wise to deal with weight and eating as health issues rather than moral ones, counsels Phyllis Cohen, a co-author of You Have to Say I'm Pretty, You're My Mother. And it's better to talk about bodies in terms of their strength and abilities rather than their appearance. If you're upset about gaining weight, Cohen urges, don't turn your anger inward. Self-loathing, most experts agree, is the root cause of eating disorders.

Do you hate your hips? Your butt? Be careful what you say. Self-contempt passes from generation to generation. Just recently, on a New York State college campus, Emily, 20, recoiled when her boyfriend squeezed her, exclaiming, "I love your arms!" Emily hated them. "My mother thought her arms were fat and flabby," she explains. "She'd never wear anything sleeveless. I thought that I was like her."

For your daughter to accept her body, you have to accept your own, insists Linda Perlman Gordon, a co-author of Why Girls Talk--And What They're Really Saying. "You must believe that you are more than just a pretty face."

What if you don't believe that? Start working on it. Try to like your body, and don't hide it from your daughter, suggests Boston family therapist Carleton Kendrick. "When she sees you in your bra and panties playing with the dog, she gets the message you're comfortable with your body and your sexuality," Kendrick says.

Also, let your kids know the things about yourself, apart from your body, that you're proud of--your resourcefulness, for example, or sense of humor. And, perhaps most difficult, don't communicate that you buy the distorted cultural messages that make thinness the essential ingredient for success, power and sexuality.

It's a tall order for most of us. If you can't overcome your hang-ups about your body, tell your daughters that it's a problem--your problem. With self-awareness and care, Kendrick says, you can avoid infecting them. Cole is now healthy, lean and active, a mother of two girls, 3 and 5. She tells them food is for energy and sweets are fine in moderation. "I keep the same Oreos in my cabinet as my mom did," she says, "but I took away the idea that some food is harmful." For her daughters, that may make all the difference.