As I matured, I realized that my preference for the male physique sort of wandered a bit from the proverbial Ken, but somewhere deep in there, I still thought\u00a0I\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>should look like Barbie. At 12 years old, I was 86lbs and 4’11” and was convinced I’d shoot up a foot (or almost) and somehow only gain 15-20lbs, while developing bouncing, softball sized breasts, not developing an ass, and somehow my powerful soccer legs would suddenly resemble pencils. At 13, I increased my height to 5’1″ and instead of gaining that 15-20lbs, puberty hit and well, I gained 40.. putting me at 125-135lbs at 5’1″. I wasn’t fat, my muscles grew with me, as did my ass, but the breasts, not so much. BUT I FELT FAT, and as I HAD AN ASS, was told by the only boy I thought I wanted anything to do with (a fellow soccer fiend), that my ass was fat. Oh, if only he’d kept his mouth shut, the naive idiot. Who knows, maybe after growing up, he still prefers an ass made of only bone – to each their own I guess.<\/p>\n I grew a lot when I was pregnant, out and up. I’m 5’3″ish now, and I don’t know what I weigh anymore because it changes so often that I only pay attention if I start to feel sluggish for days at a time. I imagine I’m somewhere around 120lbs, which according to the THEY, qualifies me as overweight. I wear a size zero. Maybe a one on bloated days. I am not overweight, I am healthy. My breasts fill an A – so I attained SuperBounce Ball status, not softball… And when my milk came in, they still barely filled a B, and I don’t have to wear a bra unless I want to.<\/p>\n I still have an ass. I still have powerful legs that are not spindles, and a powerful back and upper body and ribcage that requires me to look for bras in the all too commonly needed 38A (everyone is this size, that’s why I can’t ever find any I say). My butt looks like that Barbie on the right.. not the left. So do my thighs. My calves don’t fit into most jeans because the muscle is too pronounced. Oh, and I have stretch marks on my stomach and thighs from growing a healthy human, nurturing and sustaining the life of that little human and, gasp, being a grown woman.<\/p>\n I don’t want my daughter to think she SHOULD look like anything other than exactly what she looks like, at any point in her life. I want her to know that she is beautiful and to care that she is healthy and vibrant and thriving<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I can prevent a lot of incoming messages via the media for a while still, and I can gently discourage Barbie and the like, with explanations that my kid can somewhat grasp at her age.<\/p>\n I can build her up and infuse her with esteem and positive self image.<\/p>\n And I’d like to be able to give her the option of imaginative play with human replicas. I have an issue with Barbie. Now, if we manufactured barbies that looked like actual humans, of all different shapes and sizes, I’d be much more interested in my daughter\u00a0having them to play with. There was a time in my childhood when, in my innocence, I thought surely I’d grow up to look just like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559,539],"tags":[407,409],"class_list":["post-1335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-honoring-ourselves","category-humanity-whole","tag-self-image","tag-self-esteem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.childhoodrevered.com\/sentient\/parenting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.takepart.com\/sites\/default\/files\/Barbie3_0_0.jpg\")
http:\/\/www.takepart.com\/article\/2013\/07\/03\/barbie-nickolay-lamm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"