Chapter One: Body Image Basics There are a few core questions all mothers have: Why is my daughter so focused on her body? Why does she have such a negative body image? Do all girls have body image issues? Which girls are most vulnerable? Is my daughter one of them? There are three core facts that are at the heart of all these questions. First, there are more factors than ever before (cultural, relational, sexual, social) that contribute to your daughter''s having problems loving the way she looks. Second, while there are many factors in your relationship with your daughter that will influence her behavior, how you see your own body (and communicate that) is the biggest influence on how your daughter sees hers. Third, your relationship with your daughter is part of an ongoing process. In spite of all the discouraging and difficult things that may happen between you, time is on your side. You will find many ways over the next few years to help your daughter see her body and herself in a positive light. For many reasons, your daughter''s focus on her body is only natural. Teenagers who are starting to separate from their mothers and fathers need to consolidate that separation by taking full ownership of their bodies.

This long process -- a girl''s gradual separation and her growing autonomy -- starts as early as ten or eleven and goes all the way to late adolescence, from seventeen to nineteen. What does this mean? Well, from our experience it means that during these years she will spend half her time looking in a mirror and the other half fighting with her mother about some aspect of her looks -- whether her skirt is too tight, whether her eye shadow is too bright, whether piercing her navel is a constitutional right. Most mother-daughter skirmishes are about control issues. Most of these control issues are about separation. And the battleground where they are all waged is the body. The question "Whose body is it, anyway?" comes up over and over in different ways. The more you understand these issues and what your daughter is going through, the easier it will be for you to protect her from potential problems, to solve existing ones, and to exert a strong positive influence on what is an inherently bumpy passage. Easier, by the way, is a relative term.

You may find that you feel paralyzed by your fears of a passage that you don''t really understand and by a daughter you understand less and less. You may feel anxious and worried just knowing you''re being pushed away by your daughter. You may react to her crushing contempt by feeling both angry and scared that she''ll move even farther away from you. Or you may believe that her disdain and her anger are so fixed that you can''t do anything to change them. But while her attitude may go (in a matter of minutes) from the hysterical to the hostile, and while her "Leave me alone!" or "Get out of my life" statements aren''t exactly conducive to a heart-to-heart talk, you can''t give up or bail out. Mothers matter more than anyone else to an adolescent girl, and everything you are both going through is part of a process your daughter needs to go through to figure out who she is as a separate and unique person. This ongoing struggle is crucial both in contributing to and in resolving body image issues. Remember when you thought giving birth to her was hard? There are understandable reasons behind your daughter''s struggles.

From her point of view, the mother she once knew is now someone who seems to understand her less and wants to control her more, so instead of loving you blindly and unconditionally as she did when she was younger, she now sees her relationship with you as ambivalent, combative, and puzzling. For her to successfully separate and gain autonomy, she needs to take some of the luster off the idealized image she has of you and replace it by criticism that often borders on contempt. From a mother''s perspective, the child you once knew has morphed into another being whose behavior is mystifying and often disturbing. As far as you''re concerned, this would be the part in the movie where someone from outer space has replaced the adorable, loving child with an evil alien adolescent twin. It may be a small comfort, but in these moments and moods your daughter, the teenage alien, feels every bit as alienated from herself as she does from you. Remember your own adolescence? You know from your own experience how hard it is to reconcile the person you are with the person you really wanted to be -- how hard it was when you realized that your breast size was never going to be perfect or that your hair would never be shinier than it was. Adolescence is when our dreams and fantasies of "When I grow up, I''m going to be." come into sharp focus.

For your daughter, it''s the first time that these girlhood dreams are hitting smack into reality. This is when she suddenly realizes that she''s not the best dancer or the star soccer player. She envies other girls who seem to have it easier or starts comparing herself (unfavorably, of course) with models, athletes, rock stars, and movie stars. The frustrations that stem from her disappointments cause her to devalue who she is. She''s suffering from a very real sense of loss; it''s painful for her to give up childhood dreams. It''s especially painful for her to have to give up the idealized way she saw you when she was little. All those images of perfection that once seemed possible now stand in stark contrast to her new, distinctly imperfect, reality. Her face has zits.

Her mother has flaws. Her life isn''t going to be made into a movie starring Beautiful, Perfect Her! The result is lots of anger that she directs against herself and sometimes you. Her body is the place these feelings settle, so she takes things out on her body. Her revenge might be something as mild as cutting gym to something extreme, like starving herself. She critically examines every part of her body: "I hate my butt." "My legs are gross." "If only I had less flabby arms." Every day the mirror brings new disappointments and frustrations.

And out of her obsession with what''s outside comes her new internalized beliefs: "I hate my body" and "I hate the mother who gave me this body." Suddenly the expression "painfully aware" makes perfect sense. Your daughter is painfully aware of who she isn''t, and she hasn''t yet figured out who she is. So she needs to explore, experiment, fail, and succeed by trying on many different personas. ("I''m a Goth," "I''m a hippie," "I''m into boys.body piercing.Buddha.") What''s important is that you see this role playing for what it is and that you don''t panic.

Now is the time to pick your battles wisely. Is she making a harmless statement about her autonomy or is she doing something that could be harmful? By not saying no to everything, by not overreacting, by being the grown-up in the relationship, you''ll be able to help your daughter get through this experimentation. You''ll help her understand it and you''ll be there to cushion any crash landings, help her right herself, and help her learn from her failures. While she''s trying out different roles and hair colors (usually the ones that don''t wash out), your daughter also feels compelled to find some way to defend herself against her pain, her losses, her uncertainty. Her answer is not to find other things to focus on, but to concentrate even more on her body and to think in a new (and decidedly distorted) way about it. She is more proactive (good news) and less rational (bad news). She now believes that if she can just fix what''s on the outside, she''ll feel better about what''s on the inside. Every mother knows this adolescent logic: "If I dye my hair pink, I''ll be a knockout.

" "If I can look like the girl in the MTV video, then I''ll be happy." "If I shave all the hair on my body and put on self-tanner, then I''ll look so cool." It''s almost impossible for your daughter to understand that part of the process of becoming her own person is finding a place for her childhood dreams and wishes and knowing that they don''t have to be lost forever. This is a very important part of your input as a mother. You can help by keeping her grounded in reality -- reminding her of what her real assets, skills, and strengths are. Your consistent reinforcement is like the lifeline in a tempest. She may whirl furiously around, saying, "You don''t know what you''re talking about," but your stability and positive, consistent validation of her will prove the most valuable asset in helping her separate and gain a positive self-image. Every small, calm, rational gesture you make toward her is helping her achieve her larger long-term goals: to aspire to more realistic dreams, to gradually integrate all of her experiences, to successfully cope with her new reality, and in time, to attain a well-rounded sense of herself.

Your job, as always, is to keep a grip on reality and not feel decimated by her fitful progress, her distorted thinking, her inability to really hear what you''re saying to her. Even if you have the patience of a saint, it''s hard to hang in there through your daughter''s inscrutability or toxic anger, her hostility, her deeply hurtful personal attacks. It helps to know that as profoundly painful as it is for you, your daughter would have a hard time growing and maturing without expressing some of these feelings. If you think your job is hard, your daughter''s is even harder. In order to grow up, she has to do two contradictory things -- separate from the mother with whom she has had a lifelong bond and continue to identify with her -- both at the same time.