I don't care what you say.............I am Oprah obsessed.........

She has had some really good shows on lately. I watched the one with Pink last week and while I'm not a huge fan of hers, I really liked the message that the she was stating and that the show was commenting on. There is an absolute problem with the marginalization of women in today's culture. Have you seen a hip-hop video lately? Ads that have nothing to do with women show them half dressed while promoting some crappy product. Since I was in Padre these past couple of days I actually had time to watch some MTV. The ads on that station are ridiculous. I know I sound like such an old stick-in-the-mud and if it was just me, then I probably wouldn't think anything about it. Now it seems that I watch everything through the filter of my own daughter's eyes. I don't ever want her to think that she is not good enough, not beautiful, not worthy of anyone's time.
Today's show was about a 3 year old that was obsessed with her looks and a 4 year old who feared getting fat. I think at this age kids just have a lot of questions and they can become 'obsessed' with anything if their parents don't move them on past whatever seems to be hanging them up at the time. At our house, we seem to have lots of conversations about death these days. It, of course, starts with me telling her about my mammaw and that we had to go to her funeral. It was the first time we talked about what death meant. So sometimes she'll just bring it up out of the blue. And we'll talk about it and we'll move on. But, I think that she could become obsessed about it if we just focus on it and don't move on to other topics.
So.....the point of today's show was that, we as mothers bring our own insecurities to our relationships with our daughters and we certainly don't want them to feel the pain that we felt growing up. But, somehow it still seems to manifest in them the same way it was in us. And the best quote (from Naomi Wolf) that I got out of the show was this:

'A mother who radiates self-love and acceptance actually vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem.'"

I thought that was brilliant. We don't always love the way we look. And we even compare ourselves to what we 'should' look like or what we want to look like. We obsess over skin care products, hair products, clothes, exercise, eating right, whatever. But, if we can put that in the back of our mind and love what has been God-given and radiate that self-love then that is a powerful thing to pass on to our daughters. Just something that I have thought about all day today and had to pass on to you.