Jill Zimmerman Rutledge - Picture Perfect. What You Need to Feel Better About Your Body

Picture Perfect. What You Need to Feel Better About Your Body — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Picture Perfect. What You Need to Feel Better About Your Body" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...31

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Picture Perfect is dedicated to Dr. Vivian Meehan, president and founder of ANAD (Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders), with admiration and love. And to the memory of my beloved Cocoa.

I would like to thank Susan Cohen; Talia Shalev; Michele Matrisciani, Andrea Gold, and everyone at HCI; Martha Hansen; Dan Daly; Judith Barnard; Neela Bindu; Lynn Freedman, M.Ed., R.D., L.N.; Shana Silver; Karen Pierce, M.D.; Erin Melley, PA-C; Laurie Casas, M.D.; Josie Tenore, M.D.; Robert Zimmerman; Jane H. Zimmerman; Andrew Rutledge; Daniel Rutledge; Jonathan Rutledge; and Robert Rutledge.

Introduction : From Me to You

Dear Reader,

Did you pick up this book and wonder if its for you? If you agree with any of the following statements, youll probably find Picture Perfect helpful.

I feel pretty good about myself, except Im not happy with how I look.

Kids at school tease me for being too fat (or too thin); I want to learn how to ignore them and feel better about myself as a person.

I think I might have an eating disorder.

My friends and family tell me I look fine. But I feel as though theyre just trying to be nice, and the truth is that Im ugly.

Im a perfectionist about how I look.

I hate some parts of my body, for example: my stomach, my thighs, my butt, my face, my chest, my arms.

I cant stand it when I feel bloated after I eat or around my period.

I want to feel better about my body.

Girls problems with body image, or how we think and feel about our bodies, are getting a lot of attention from researchers these days. In the past few years, several studies have shown that most teenage girls dont have a great body image. But recent findings tell us that its not just teens who worry about their bodies80 percent of ten-year-old girls say theyre afraid of being fat, and most of those girls feel better about themselves when they are dieting. Even girls in first grade have reported that they wish they were thinner!

I wrote this book to help teen and preteen girls with the hard issue of body image. As I was planning it, I thought how helpful it would be for a girl to have some good coping skillsso she could feel better about her body instead of feeling unhappy about it. So she could accept her body type, just as she accepts the color of her eyes or her birthday. So she could feel like her body is only one part of the beautiful person she is.

I chose my title, Picture Perfect, because it means two things. First, it addresses the fact that our culture tells girls they must be picture perfectperfectly thin, perfectly groomed, have perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect grades, perfect friendsto be considered successful. Since no one is actually perfect, this message often spells disaster for a girls body image.

But picture perfect also means that we can picture ourselves, flaws and all, as, well, perfect. Thats because no two people are exactly alike, so only you can be perfectly you. In that sense, you are valuable and attractive, and if you try to be someone else, you take away from being perfectly you. We can try to be healthier, kinder, smarter, more creative, and so on. But if we dont appreciate our specialness and uniqueness, we cant really achieve the goal of being the bestincluding the most attractivewe can be.

In each chapter of Picture Perfect I explain a major problem that stresses girls out about body image. Then three girls tell you how theyve learned to deal with the problem. (Ive used true-life stories Ive heard from girls in my practice over the years, but the names and identifying information have all been changed and rearranged to protect their privacy.)

I invite you to talk to yourself in Picture Perfect. I encourage you to give yourself positive messages that I call Special Statements. In my very favorite story, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy had a Special Statement that helped her deal with the bewilderment of Oz. Dorothys Special Statement allowed her to feel grounded when her world was spinning out of control. It calmed her feelings, so she could envisionand wake up inher safe, secure life in Kansas. Dorothys Special Statement was Theres no place like home. Of course, we all need to find special, positive words to say to ourselves when we feel upset and confused, and this is especially true when we feel bad about our bodies. Every girl needs a Special Statement to boost her body image!

All the girls in Picture Perfect have their own Special Statements, which they share with you. The girls Special Statements are words they say to themselves to think more positive thoughts, to ground themselves, and to stop feeling so bad about their bodies. Their Special Statements counteract their negative body-image thoughts and feelings by giving them benevolent, productive body-image messages to hold in their minds.

A Special Statement of your own can help you to stop putting your body down, too, and help you envision a better body-image picture of yourself. Many of the girls in Picture Perfect take their Special Statements to a deeper level by creating new habits and activities that support the positive messageswhich they share with you.

So try out the girls Special Statementshave fun experimenting with them. Some may work for yousay them over and over to yourself! Some may not, and thats okaymaybe you know a friend for whom they can work instead. Share them with her! Make up your own Special Statements. Thats the best wayto find your own Special Statements that make you feel special and good about yourself!

Think about this: When you frame a picture, you have lots of decisions to make. You have to decide whether or not a particular frames shape or size or color brings out the best in your picture. You have to think about the pictures composition and perspective, and whether to display it in a horizontal or vertical frame. You have to choose where to display your picture: do you want to see it every day when you wake up, or do you want to put it in a special drawer and take it out on a whim? And when you grow tired of the same old thing, you can simply change the frame. Presto! You have a new picture.

Like framing a picture, you also put your thoughts and feelings about your body in a certain framework. If your frame is drab and negative, youll see yourself as too fat or too thin or too tall or too shortnever quite right. And when you see that picture 24/7, you automatically feel bad about your body.

Next page

1234567...31

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Picture Perfect. What You Need to Feel Better About Your Body»

Look at similar books to Picture Perfect. What You Need to Feel Better About Your Body. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Joann Deak

Girls Will Be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters

Jill S. Zimmerman Rutledge

Prom: The Big Night Out

Juliana Foster

The Girls Book: How To Be The Best At Everything

Tracey Turner

The Girls Book 3: Even More Ways To Be The Best At Everything

Emily Larson

The Best Baby Names for Girls: The Ultimate Resource for Finding the Perfect Girl Name

Christine Wheeler

The Tapping Solution for Teenage Girls: How to Stop Freaking Out and Keep Being Awesome

Virgie Tovar

The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color

Brittney Cooper

Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood

Kara E. Powell

Mirror, Mirror. Reflections on Who You Are and Who Youll Become

Julia V. Taylor

Body Image Workbook for Teens. Activities to Help Girls Develop a Healthy Body Image in an Image-Obsessed World

Lois Walfrid Johnson

Girl Talk. 52 Weekly Devotions

Hayley DiMarco

Sexy Girls. How Hot Is Too Hot?

Discussion, reviews of the book Picture Perfect. What You Need to Feel Better About Your Body and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.