This is a rant, so if you don't want to read my soapboxing, feel free to click on someone else's blog.
I have been going to the pool a lot lately. One to watch my kids take swimming lessons and two to take my kids back for open swim. While there, I have noticed two very disturbing things.
1. There are a lot of very image conscience mothers, wearing very skimpy swimming suits. A lot of them do have the bodies to get away with wearing what they are wearing but I am concerned about the message they are sending to the younger generation. I have watched my 5 year old daughter watch them. I am trying to teach modesty and having respect for one's body and these woman, some of them mothers of my children's friends are letting it all hang out there. At one point, I overheard a mother tell her daughter, who couldn't have been more than 13, that her bikini suit was so darling on her! She is so lucky to have a great figure to show off to everyone! I shop at a grocery store, where they cover up the Cosmo magazines and other such publications when the covers have girls in outfits that are too revealing but I take my kids to the pool and they see just as bad or worse and it is not by young girls who don't know any better. It is by the mothers. These mothers are raising daughters and sons and it bothers me to see this provocative behavior. It is great to be in shape and maintain yourself but what sort of immodest messages are they promoting? We can still see your amazing abs in a one piece bathing suit.
2. Speaking of being in shape, the amount of very large overweight young children at the pool is depressing. I am amazed to see young children with rolls and rolls of fat and then see the food they are eating at the pool. There is a snack bar and these children are buying one sugary/fat filled snack after the other. These poor children are not being monitored by their parents and I now understand why they are calling childhood obesity an epidemic. It is very, very sad. The health problems these poor children are being set up for is scary.
Ok, I'm off the soap box, you can come back now.
7 comments:
These things both worry me too. :( I also think there are sooo many cute suits that are modest these days... plus, with young girls especially you just don't know whose watching at the pool and that makes me nervous for them.
I enjoyed reading your soap box. Having 3 boys, I won't have to worry about bikini's in my house. But it is disterbing what our kids see in public.
Being self conscious in a bathing suit myself, I'm always amazed at how little people wear at pools or waterslides. And I'm not talking about the people who look great in a bikini, people. I'm talking about people who should NEVER wear bikinis. Do they not know that there are other suits that would look much more attractive on them? Maybe they are oozing with self esteem to think they can pull something like that off.
(Not really what you were irritated by, but still along the same lines, right?)
Paige: I soooo agree with you.
Gotta get on this bandwagon. One of my biggest pet peeves is little tiny girls wearing bikinis. To me, it's sexualizing a child and it bugs me big time. I was so frustrated trying to find a cute one piece for my daughters this summer. It's so hard to teach modesty to young girls when they see the opposite all around them. I want my girls to respect their bodies not see them as a way to attract boys' attention.
Jeanne: AMEN!
may i join you on your soapbox? another thing i've observed at my pool is the many, many grown women SLATHERING themselves in baby oil and baking their skin. come on people! are you kidding me? i'm hiding in the shade, hoping i don't get any new freckles and these people are acting like skin cancer doesn't exist. i'm appalled.
and yes, our NY pool has lots of skanky bathing suits and overweight people, and the combo of the two is the most disturbing of all!
Post a Comment