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Weighing In on HUGE

August 16, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Have you seen ABC Family’s latest summer blockbuster, HUGE? It’s the story of a group of teens at a weight loss camp, otherwise known as fat camp. When I first heard about it, I was intrigued, skeptical and disgusted all at the same time. Another show focusing on what is wrong with teens today and yet another blatant example of the media exploiting social issues to their advantage. Due to a regular Monday night commitment, I haven’t been home to watch it, but as I said, I was intrigued, so I had been taping it. Last week I sat down to a HUGE marathon and have to say, not only was I pleasantly surprised, I actually loved it.

HUGE is well written and the characters are engaging, interesting and so lovable - even though none of them would ever claim that to be true. There are so many layers to the premise of this show. Yes, it’s about body image and all that goes with that, but it is about so much more; relationships, mother/daughter dynamics, friendships, fitting in, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, addictions and 12 step recovery, surrender, spirituality, self-esteem, confidence, families, resentments, forgiveness, prayer, religion, affirmations, gratitude, divine guidance, sports, teamwork, leadership, trust and learning to speak the truth.

The ramifications of such a powerful show are, dare I say, HUGE! I can’t say that I’ve laughed out loud, but I have cried and have identified with so many of the raw emotions that these characters are dealing with. The main character, Will is played by Nikki Blonsky and she is so full of anger, resentment and resistance to change. She is afraid that if she gives in, she will be succumbing to society’s expectations of who she should be. She is caught between the message of self-acceptance and trying to swallow the implications of what that means in an environment that is forcing you to shrink to an acceptable size.

Jess Weiner, Global Ambassador for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund and teen girl advocate has been blogging about HUGE before it even aired and has created a weekly Conversation Guide for each episode. As a Hollywood insider and a voice for change, Jess has interviewed the creators and all the cast members. The writers, Savanah Dooley and Winnie Holzman along with Nikki Blonsky all said that they hope this series becomes more than a show about body image and that people will really resonate with the characters. I’d say that their focused intention has made manifest and together they have created a powerful vehicle for compassion and change. Just like The Cosby Show initially began as a show about a black family, or Will and Grace started out as a show about being gay, both of them became so much more and gave us the opportunity to see past the initial label. HUGE has the potential to be way more than just a show about overweight kids.

As a teen girl advocate myself, self-esteem and empowerment has been the theme of my work for the last fifteen years as well as the focus of my own healing journey for my entire life. I’m not working to fix anyone, but rather to help young women look within for their power, voice and truth. At first glance, HUGE may appear to be just another show about fixing what’s wrong with teens today, but after watching my HUGE marathon I am excited and filled with so much hope. Finally something good on TV that just might actually make a difference.

Definitely check out HUGE on Monday nights on ABC Family and also check out all the other cool interviews on Jess’s blog. The latest is with Ari Stidham, the guy who plays Ian. His advice to any girl that has an issue with her body? “Confidence. Love yourself because you’re a human being. Don’t love yourself because you look a certain way. Love yourself because you were put on this Earth for a reason. And um, that’s attractive.” OMG Ari, I couldn’t have said it better if I tried!!!

Girls Helping Girls

October 30, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

You don’t have to look very far to get a glimpse of what’s wrong with girls today. Pick up any magazine, peruse your local bookstore, google “teen girls” or turn on the television and view the vast array of in-your-face perspectives of the dark side of growing up girl in today’s image-obsessed culture. Shows, magazines and even the very self-help experts themselves, portrayed as counter-culture saviors to assist today’s young women maneuver their way through the pitfalls of adolescence, all focus more on the problem and what’s wrong vs. the solution and what’s right with girls today.

All of this can be very overwhelming and there are days that I feel like throwing my hands up in the air and asking “What’s the use?”

Last week, like an answered prayer, I got the shift in perspective I had been asking for and I was filled up with hope watching two young women demonstrating everything that’s right with girls today. I was invited for the second year in a row to speak to 1500 7th grade girls at the Young Women’s Leadership Conference in York, PA. I was the opening keynote speaker, presented a workshop on body image and then closed the conference with a message of hope and a take action challenge for the girls to find their power within and to dare to step up and make a difference in this world.

The event was held at York College and this year, students from SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) were to present a 15 minute program to the girls during the conference as part of a community outreach project. The conference planner had told me that in years past, these presentations hadn’t gone over very well and the girls didn’t pay attention. So I offered to coach the girls who were in charge of the project to help them create a presentation that would engage, inspire and challenge their audience. Trust me, 7th grade girls can eat you alive if you don’t gear a program that answers the questions What’s in it for me? and Why should I listen to you?

It was such a privilege to work with Nicole Smolenski and Shablis Glover, the SIFE project directors. They were so open and willing to be coached because they really wanted to succeed and more importantly to make an impact on younger women. They remember what it was like to be in 7th grade and they know how hard it can be desperately trying to fit in while secretly hoping to stand out.

Shablis Glover, Kathleen, Nicole Smolenski

Nicole and Shablis entitled their program “Dressing the Girl in the Mirror” which dovetailed off my talk, “Loving the Girl in the Mirror: Reflections of Your True Self.” They took every suggestion I gave them and ran with it. They created a phenomenal PowerPoint presentation that showed similar outfits, each created from name brand stores along with their whopping price tags and then demonstrated how to create that look for less. But they didn’t just tell them – they showed them.

The girls teamed up with a local consignment store and then enlisted the help of their fellow SIFE members as models and created a fashion show that totally rocked the house! It was so amazing and these models of every shape and size really worked it! They showed the girls how cool it can be to be yourself and how to step out in confidence without the designer labels. It was just so powerful to watch girls helping girls and it was such a privilege to be a small part of making that happen.

Click here to see more pics of the fashion show and to see the photos of me presenting to the girls click here!

It’s moments like these that remind me why I do the work that I do. Amidst a world of twittering publicity hounds all vying for the media’s attention in the hopes of becoming the next “big thing” we can sometimes get caught up in all of it and lose our way and wonder how on earth we can begin to be heard and make a difference. And every now and then I get a note like the one below that helps me to know that my voice and my message of hope is being heard… and for that I am so grateful.

My daughter, was a participant in your Young Women’s Leadership Conference the other day in Pennsylvania.

I would like to thank you for inspiring my daughter! She has been talking non-stop about you and your message. She has been through a lot in the past few years… her father & I divorced, her father is not as involved in her life as she would like, I remarried to a wonderful man with three sons, and her Aunt, to whom she is close, was recently diagnosed with Stage IV Breast Cancer. My daughter is a trooper, but often times she internalizes things & then “blows up”. However, in the past couple of days, she is smiling, she’s positive, she is repeating what she heard at the conference & it is amazing!!

Thank you for being such an inspiration & for connecting with my daughter at such an impressionable time in her life!

Teen Halloween Alert: Scary Trick

October 14, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Contemplating what to dress up as for Halloween? How about a lollipop?

A recent ad for Ralph Lauren has sparked a huge controversy all over the internet. The image displays the already thin model, Philippa Hamilton wearing the latest of Ralph’s fall designer duds, but the photo has been digitally altered to the point where her waist is actually smaller than her own head! And yes, she actually looks like a human lollipop!

Mothers scrambling to find the latest L’il Lollipop costume for their daughters!

“NO! you say, “Not Ralph too?” Yup – even Ralph. But wait, it gets worse, Ralph actually sicked his lawyers on the sites that first commented on this travesty. The blog Boing Boing, who was the first to bring this to light received copyright infringement violation notifications – but would not back down. Boing Boing editor, Cory Docktorow wrote “So, to Ralph Lauren, GreenbergTraurig, and PRL Holdings, Inc: sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn’t give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better.” And then went even further saying they would continue to push back and inform the public about this to ensure that they got a good look at Ralph’s practices and promised to feed his models soup and sandwiches to fatten them up!

And it worked! Ralph conceded and finally fessed up and issued this statement:

“For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.”

So girls, as you make this oh-so-important decision about what to be for Halloween, spend some time contemplating who you want to be in life. Decide now to be a leader, to be brave and let your voice be heard. Let the media and the world know that you refuse to buy into society’s standards and illusions about beauty.

Here are 6 simple things you can do to change this travesty and take charge for yourself and for women all over the world:

Raise your awareness about the media’s manipulation by visiting sites like About Face that aims to combat negative and distorted images of women.
Question today’s standards of beauty and decide for yourself your own definition of beauty – to me Confidence is Beautiful!
Raise your voice and let companies know that it’s not cool to distort women’s bodies and to warp young women’s minds into thinking that fake is real – because it’s not.
Gather strength in numbers and use the power of a group to boycott companies and magazines that distort the truth by using this topic for a school project or community outreach program.
Love and appreciate your body – exactly the way it is. Make a list of all the things you appreciate about your body instead of focusing on all of your faults.
Be compassionate for women of all shapes and sizes. You may never know what inner battle is going on inside someone else. You could be the one who builds her up or tears her down. Now that is real power!

The timing for this media brouhaha was perfect as I am preparing a Body Image program for 1500 7th grade girls at the Young Women’s Leadership Conference in York PA. It’s hard to think about world peace and becoming a leader when all you can think about is how much you hate your thighs. It’s time to change all that and to teach girls that real beauty comes from within.

Stop buying into and accepting this Trick and then open your arms to the Treat that you will experience by daring to become Your Very Best YOU!

Posted in Body Image | Self-Confidence | Self-Esteem | Teen Girls |
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The Quest for the Perfect Breasts

October 7, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

It’s October and time again for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I am all for finding a cure for breast cancer and any kind of cancer for that matter, but what I am not all for is focusing on the disease itself. The Law of Attraction states that whatever you focus your attention upon is returned to you multiplied. So if that is true, why on Earth would we want to set aside a whole month placing all of our focus on the disease of breast cancer? (But no, if you focus on that picture above, you will not grow bigger boobs – that’s not how the Law of Attraction works!!)

So I’m proposing “Love Your Boobs Month!” As a matter of fact, another teen empowerment specialist, Jess Weiner just wrote a fabulous article this month in Seventeen Magazine about Making Peace with Your Boobs! (Great minds think alike apparently!!)

I’m a 53 year old woman with the chest of a pre-pubescent 12-year-old. My cup size is 34 nearly A and I have to shop in the girls department for beginner bras! It has taken me a lifetime to learn how to love and accept my breasts exactly the way they are. I even did a stand-up comedy routine at a comedy club about my quest for the perfect breasts. I made fun of all the names of bras like The 18 Hour Bra for example – who the hell wears a bra for eighteen freaking hours at a time? Another was a bra called Sweet Nothings and I lamented, they may be nothing to you, but I fed two babies with these sweet nothings!

When I was 15 years old, my mother was taking me and my siblings out for dinner. I came downstairs all dressed up and ready to go and my mother took one look at me and said “Can’t you stuff? I don’t want to be seen with a flat-chested daughter!” My own mother didn’t even love and accept me just the way I was, so how was I supposed to love myself?

I’ve been teased mercilessly all my life for my flat chest. In Junior High School a boy called me a Carpenter’s Dream, which translated meant – flat as a board and easy to screw! One might wonder why I didn’t just say “screw it” and get a boob job. Well first of all, I never had a spare ten grand lying around! But seriously I just never, ever wanted to go to such extremes to fit in and be just like everyone else. I knew that my life lesson was all about self-love and acceptance and two pounds of rubber and silicone wouldn’t change the inside of me – the part that never felt good enough.

On the bright side, I was an aerobics instructor for ten years prior to my current career as a Confidence Coach and Inspirational Speaker and Author, and being flat-chested certainly had its advantages back in the day of “feel the burn” and “pump it up.” Whenever I’d turn up the music and increase the intensity, all the big-boobed women in class would moan and grab hold of their racks for dear life – mine never moved the entire time!

Some day, when I get a spare minute or so, I want to write and star in a One Woman Play called Boobs, Jugs, Hooters & Tits and donate all of the proceeds to Healthy Breast Research. Imagine if everyone took all the money they’ve spent on boob jobs and put it towards programs that foster inner beauty and self-esteem? The thought of it makes me well all up and get all misty eyed. Fortunately for me, I always have some tissues on hand – looks like Mother always did know best!!

Yes ladies, it’s definitely time to make peace with da girlz!!

Heal Our Young Women ~ Heal the World

January 20, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

While millions of Americans journied to our nation’s capital to be a part of history in the making, while workers watched the inauguration online through CNN & Facebook, while people from around the world observed the 44th President of the United States of America take his oath of office and pledge his allegiance and service to our great nation, many girls across the country still were unable to shift their focus away from their own inner battles to embrace the power of this day.

In the middle of watching the streaming video from CNN in partnership with Facebook, I received not one, but five emails from teen girls who were all asking me advice on how to be thin, how to be more confident, how to get a guy to like them, how to stop being so shy and quiet – and basically how to be anyone else but who they are.

After watching the whole inaugural celebration starting with Denzel Washington’s opening yesterday to the Reverend Lowery’s impassion benediction today, I have been renewed with such an incredible feeling of hope and confidence. My burning passion to help teen girls to heal their inner conflict has been reignited and I am on fire to continue to do my part to help young women find their voice, their power and place as the ones who will heal the world.

As the Rev. Lowery implored God to help Americans make “choices on the side of love, not hate, on the side of inclusion not exclusion, tolerance not intolerance.” I implore you to help me, help our young women to learn how to choose love over fear – and it must begin by helping girls learn how to love themselves.

In that effort, I am pleased to announce that a publisher has expressed interest in my book “Loving the Girl in the Mirror: Reflections of Your True Self.” The book will focus on aspects of the self: self-knowledge, self-image, self-respect, self-esteem, self-talk, self-care, self-acceptance and ultimately self-love. It will also deal with and help to heal the negative aspects of the self: self-doubt, self-sabotage, self-injury and self-loathing.

I am so grateful to the girls who have dared to reach out to me and ask for help. I love receiving your emails and although I cannot personally respond to all of them – I do respond to many of them and am taking a part of each of them into the essence of this book.

Within the coming weeks, I’ll be announcing a Mother/Daughter Empowerment Workshop Series that I’ll be hosting in my home called Kitchen Counter Conversations. One of the most sacred and powerful relationships in the world is the bond between a mother and her daughter. Yet it can also be one of the most troubling relationships and the source of so much stress and frustration for both the mother and the daughter. Through this endeavor we strive to teach mothers and their daughters how to form a co-creative alliance and partnership that creates a solid foundation of strength and confidence to help girls better handle the challenges “out there” by having the home be a safe and peaceful place for rest, renewal and respect.

So please check back for more information on the series and the book.

Yes We Can!

Dare to Shine in 2009 ~

Kathleen

Teen Girls: Body Image & Self-Confidence

July 20, 2008 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

This video is a response to a girl named Ashley who is 19.

Ashley wrote:

Dear Kathleen,

I have always taken pride on my amount of confidence compared to other people. But I noticed lately that I’ve been gaining a lot of weight and now I feel unsure of myself. How do a I get out of it?

View my response to Ashley and learn a powerful tool called a Vision Board that will help you attract what you want.

Posted in Body Image | Self-Confidence | Teen Girls | Video |
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Teen Girls – How to Attract the Right Guy

July 17, 2008 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Today’s video is about how to “attract” the right guy into your life. I want to thank Isabel who emailed me with her powerful question/challenge about boys.

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