This is Annie Fox for Family Confidential, Secrets of Successful Parenting.
We are back from our summer hiatus and eager to start a new season of the podcast.
We hope that you and your family had a successful summer in any and all ways that you define
success.
My guest today is Naomi Katz.
Naomi is a writer and teacher and has been working with young women for over 15 years.
She is the author of Beautiful, Being an Empowered Young Woman, and the founder of Beautiful
Project, a curricular initiative dedicated to building self-confidence among adolescent
girls and young women.
Naomi works with educators, parents, mentors, and young people.
Her work is a call to attention, to recognize that we are the creators of our culture.
She focuses on empowering ourselves to take action into our own hands, to understand that
we are the builders of our culture, and that we drive the changes that we wish to see beginning
with ourselves and echoing into our communities.
Before we get to our podcast, I'd like to apologize for the fact that this podcast is
audio only.
My guest Naomi Katz lives in Israel and the distance was wreaking havoc with Skype and
the internet connection.
But the audio is great.
Enjoy.
Hi, Naomi.
Welcome to Family Confidential.
Hi, Annie.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thanks.
It's so nice to see you and I appreciate you staying up late because I know you're all
the way in Israel and here I am on the west coast of the U.S. and it's not even nine o'clock
in the morning, so we're going to make this happen.
Right before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about the inner critic
that we all have inside of us, alive and kicking, that makes it kind of hard for us to move
past a reflective surface or in the situation of a Skype recording session to get past not
looking at our image on the screen.
So I'm wondering if you can, because we're going to be talking about a beautiful project
and how we're all kind of prisoners of this inner critic, how can we learn to tone it
down just a bit?
I think the first thing we need to do is really admit and recognize its existence and also
admit and recognize the extent to which that inner critic really affects us and affects
our self-image and to pay attention to the way that that critic makes us talk about ourselves
because language is really powerful.
And so even if I see myself and I see something I don't necessarily love, which happens, I
can talk about it in a way to make an improvement or I can talk about it in a way that's really
disdainful of myself and that's just painful and then I just carry that pain with me for
the rest of the day or week or year.
So of course it's really difficult to see my own image while I'm speaking to somebody
else but it's really an exercise in accepting, accepting who I am, how I look, what my body
looks like, what my hair looks like and just understanding that each of us carries our
own beauty and to recognize that instead of feeding the inner critic, which is sometimes
what we do culturally.
What you're saying is wise and I know from my own experience and from talking to middle
school and high school age girls, even younger, that that critic is so powerful.
I think that obviously the external messages that we as girls and women get are not helping
to do anything else but to embolden that critic.
And so when you say to know that you are beautiful and how, you know, it's so much easier to
find fault.
Well, I think that what you're saying about the external messages is really important
and it's something that we don't really give enough credit to even though those messages
are everywhere.
And so to recognize and to talk as adult women amongst ourselves and with our friends and
also with our daughters and students really honestly about the impact of those external
messages, the impact they have on making us feel bad about our bodies and our appearances
in general, the way that they teach us to sexualize and objectify ourselves.
And once we can be real about that, about the impact of those messages, then we can
also say, okay, how do I really want to see myself?
How do I really want to carry myself in this world?
Because I don't want to carry myself through this world with judgment all the time.
Sometimes I admit it happens.
I think that the more I can be real about the way things affect me, the more I can improve
my own personal situation and subsequently the relationships that I have with other women
because that's critical, not intended to be a play on words, but those relationships
are really crucial.
And the more I judge myself, the more I'm likely to judge the other women around me.
And I need those women as my friends.
We all need each other and particularly adolescent girls need their friends.
And so to really be real about the impact of that criticism.
That's mind-blowing what you just said, that the idea that the more critical we are of
ourselves, the less likely we are to be, to feel connected, bonded and on the same team
as the girls and women around us.
So when I'm imagining a sixth grader, new to middle school, feeling insecure as most
11 year olds are on lots of levels, and there she is maybe with some friends from elementary
school, but with a whole bunch of new girls and everybody's eyeing each other.
And there's that discomfort, am I measuring up that question?
What does that girl do for herself in that moment to kind of hold those feelings at bay?
What are your suggestions for her?
And most of the people who will be listening here will be parents and teachers and counselors
who work with this age group all the time.
So I think helping prepare girls and boys for those discomforts and for that awkwardness
and for that moment when we're almost invited to judge ourselves, to help them be aware
that that moment may come and to prepare them by cultivating tools to deal with that moment
can be really, really useful.
And so, for example, to recognize, okay, I see these other girls around me and in my
opinion, maybe they're more beautiful, skinnier, attracting more attention from the boys, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera, how do I feel?
And what do I do with that feeling?
I don't necessarily have to feel self conscious, but if I do, does that completely stop me
from reaching out to other girls and meeting new friends?
Does that completely stop me from raising my hand in class?
So one thing that I have noticed in many different contexts with various ages of people
with whom I work is that we're not so necessarily good at even naming the emotions that we feel
around these different situations and then dealing with those emotions.
So to prepare kids and really let them know, okay, this might happen and if it does, then
what might you do?
What are your options in that moment?
A lot of girls will tell me they just feel like they want to hide.
They just want to remove themselves in the situation, which I interpreted as saying,
I want to remove myself from this judgment.
I also find that it's interesting that middle school age girls and boys as well perceive
maybe more judgment coming at them than there actually is.
I joke with them and say, I think what is often the case is that other kids in your class
are so busy worrying about how they look, they are less likely to be looking at you.
They're always looking over their shoulder and you've got this mass of insecurity and
measuring up, it's unhealthy to say the least.
As someone who works with young girls and young women, I'm wondering, what's the first
step of just giving them other options?
They know that I want to hide or sometimes there's a defensiveness.
They will bring down another girl nearby to deflect attention from themselves.
Well, at least I'm not as ugly as she is or at least my hair is prettier than her.
Any other people down with the idea that will raise my self-esteem doesn't work, but the
idea that there are other options, there are healthier options, there are options that
actually can buoy your spirits and that you can get into the habit of going there instead.
How about some other options from the ones that we typically might go to out of defense
or fear?
Sure, I like to work with girls kind of looking at the situation on two different levels.
One is the personal level and in that moment where I want to hide, I want to shut down,
I want to run away, to stop.
We don't really stop that much in our society.
We're always kind of go, go, go and if we stop for a second and I've worked with students
teaching different breathing exercises or journaling exercises, we're really just taking
a pause even if it means, you know, even if you're in school and in the middle of a whole
situation of kids, just go to the bathroom and breathe for a second and remove yourself
briefly from that situation to kind of recollect yourself.
And in that case of recollecting yourself, connecting back to a set of tools that we're
cultivating over time to be able to help you deal with that moment.
And then that brings me to sort of the second level, which is that I really work with girls
and women to look at the language that we use to talk about ourselves and understand
the culture that we create around ourselves because we create the culture in which we
live.
Absolutely.
There are external forces and the media has a huge influence, but really I create the
dialogue in my circle of friends, in my family, in my school classroom by the way that I speak
and by the way that I interact with other people and that's really empowering and strengthening
to recognize that.
Now you're talking about leadership.
You're talking about change.
You're talking about one person in a circle of girls who has this realization that she's
contributing to or allowing, permitting this destructive culture within her circle of friends
and that if she has a mindfulness about it, that she can in a way educate and lead her
friends away from that toxic language.
Absolutely.
And it doesn't have to feel like something heavy that some girls will say, well, I'm
not a leader or I'm quiet, it's okay.
The way that you speak about yourself in the secrecy of your own room in front of the mirror,
the way that you speak to your friends, the way that you speak to your parents, those
all have an impact and really can change the culture in which you live.
So let's talk a bit about what happens when we stop trashing ourselves and each other
and what are the potential joys and benefits that we could get as a community of women?
Well, one of the things that I have really worked to cultivate in my own life and really
try to inspire my students and my mentees and my peers to cultivate is really deep trusting
relationships with other women.
Because of the way our culture is and the tendency that we have to compete with one another
and to judge one another, we lose really important relationships, particularly our elder women,
but just in general with other women or girls in our lives.
And so if I can stop or at least recognize the impact of the judgment, then I can cultivate
different kind of connection with the people around me.
Because if this other girl in my class is someone who I admire, I can react to her by
thinking, why am I not more like her?
And then probably will want to judge her or I can say, you know, she has some qualities
that I really respect and admire.
I'm going to see if she wants to come over to my house or eat lunch with me.
And then I open a new door because if I really cultivate relationships of trust, then I have
a sense of support around me that can really help me in all different kinds of situations,
including that difficult moment that we spoke about earlier when we all probably want to
run away and hide.
And if you feel like you've got someone who understands someone that you can be totally
honest with, then you run to that person, not away from the other people.
You feel like you can stand your ground and that you're not alone.
I love what you're saying, Naomi.
It speaks to me on so many levels and I would be really interested in talking just for a
couple of minutes now about the role of moms and how they can help their daughters move
more in this direction.
Thank you for asking me that because I think that the role of mom cannot be overestimated.
And I, my mom passed away three years ago and I thank you and I bring that up because
I recognize in my childhood and in my adolescence, amazing, she was, but now even more than ever,
I see that she has taught me that helped me be the woman that I am today.
And that relationship of inspiration coming from our moms is true for every girl and every
woman because our moms are our primary role model of what it means to be a woman.
And so, for example, one question that I get a lot is, well, how can I talk to my daughter
about body image when I myself don't feel so great about my body?
Good question.
There is a question and I understand I face the same thing.
And the thing that I really feel supports me most is to be honest, to look together at
those images that are painful and cause me to be judgmental and say, you know, I don't
like those images.
I don't want to dress in that super sexual way.
I don't really appreciate the kind of femininity that she's portraying, not necessarily in
a critical eye, but just to say it doesn't represent who I am as a woman or how I want
to be as a woman or for us to just understand each of us ourselves and our relationship
with our daughters to understand how do we want to carry ourselves or how do we carry
ourselves as women and be as honest and true with that in ourselves.
And that will be reflected back to us in the girls that we mentor, whether there are daughters
or our students or our nieces or whoever they may be.
And so what you said at the beginning, the idea of being honest with your own response
to your reflection in the mirror, to be more aware of that inner critic, though at the
time we had that, that piece of the conversation we were talking about girls, it sounds also
that for moms to be the kind of positive leaders and role models and mentors that their daughters
need from them, they need to be part of that process themselves.
Absolutely, because we're all affected by the way that women are being portrayed today
and the more we can talk openly with ourselves and with our friends, and here we come back
to the kinds of relationships we as adults women have with other women, the more we can
talk openly with others, the more we can talk openly with our daughters and with our mentees
and with our students.
And the same is true about what we were saying about relationships, because if I model close
friendships with other women to the young women around me, they will recognize the value
of that as well.
If I model relationships with elder women to the young women around me, they will see
the importance of that too.
And another piece of it that I can't resist mentioning is the way that we initiate our
girls into womanhood, because when we talk about adolescence, we're really looking at
that moment when a girl is making that transition from being a girl to being a woman or a boy
becoming a man, and in our culture, I wonder, what does that mean anymore?
What does it mean to become a woman today?
Does it mean to become a mom?
Does it mean to put really sexualized pictures of yourself on social media?
Does it mean to have a boyfriend or to have a girlfriend?
So what kind of womanhood do we want to introduce our girls into and how?
That's a whole other question, and it's one that I would love to explore with you at another
time because what you just described sounds to me like from motherhood to needing a boyfriend
to posting sexualized pictures on social media, all of those have to do with other.
And the idea of who we are as women while we're transitioning into becoming a woman.
Should I think first and foremost, be a question of who am I not in relation to other people,
but who am I in relationship to myself?
In relation to myself and also in relation to my mom.
What have I learned from her and what qualities do I want to emulate and what qualities would
I like to be different?
How am I different from her and in that process really understanding how do I define myself
as a woman, what you're saying Annie is absolutely true and really, really important to think
about.
Great.
Okay.
Well, we've got just about another minute Naomi and in that time I would love for you
to give our listeners and viewers an opportunity to learn where they can learn more about your
work on the web.
Great.
Thanks.
I want to visit my website, beautifulproject.net and I would also be really happy if any of
women who are listening want to participate in my next event, which is actually a virtual
women's circle.
You can find more information on the site where we will talk really about this almost the
same issues that we're talking about today in this interview.
What does it mean to us to be beautiful and what does it mean to us to be a woman?
You can also check out the blog and various other aspects of the website, please.
Thank you so much for the work that you do Naomi.
It's groundbreaking and I know from my experience with 21st century girls that they need more
and more of these kinds of opportunities to talk and explore and to stretch their definition
of what it means to be beautiful, what it means to be a girl or a woman.
So I thank you very much for your work.
Thank you so much.
Have a beautiful day.
This is Annie Fox for Family Confidential.
To learn more about my work with tweens, teens and parents, visit annifox.com and check out
my parenting book, Teaching Kids to Be Good People, Progressive Parenting for the 21st
Century.
And my latest book for tween girls, the girls Q&A book on friendship, 50 ways to fix a friendship
without the drama.
And please rate us on iTunes.
It helps other folks find the show.
Family Confidential podcast is produced by Electric Eggplant, creators of books and apps
for parents, kids, tweens and teens.
And tune in next time when my guest will be Dr. Jennifer Freed.
Dr. Freed is the founder of AHA, an organization based in Santa Barbara that improves attitude,
increases social harmony and bridges the achievement gap for teenagers.
Until next time, happy parenting.
