A letter to my daughter about body image: Here’s what I’ve learned

As we climbed into the car after pre-school, she touched her hair tentatively and said to me, "Mumma, do I have boy hair? The other children say I have boy hair because my hair is short and curly. But I’m not a boy, am I Mumma?”

“I wish my hair was long and straight and pretty like the other girls, so I looked like a girl."

In that moment, my brain froze. I wanted to scream from the depths. I wanted to undo time so that I could have done something – anything – differently so I could have protected her from those words.

I took a deep breath and somehow managed to pull myself together to do what I’m trained to do – we talked about her strengths and how everyone is different, and how brilliant that is because it makes the world interesting and wonderful.

We talked about how some people have fast-growing hair, and some don’t (like her) and that’s normal. I tried to play it cool so that it (I desperately hoped) would all be long forgotten by the time we got home.

But no. Over the last few weeks, she’s repeated the statement again, and again. It’s obviously something she’s given a lot of thought to and, to be honest, it makes me want to cry. I’m her mum, it’s my job to support her self-worth and to protect her. She’s still so young. There are meant to be years before she’s faced with the clutter of messages about beauty.

I've also studied and published research on body image and eating behaviours. I’ve run support groups for people with eating disorders. I’ve worked with people trying to build a sense of self-worth and I’ve walked alongside family with eating disorders. I’ve had my own struggles with eating and loving the skin I’m in. The body image world is one I know only too well.

And yet I can’t believe, at age four, we were here already, having this conversation. And I can’t believe, as a mum, how hard that conversation is.