Undoing the Shame of Our Body Image Struggles: Hillary McBride

What would our lives be like if we spent less time thinking and talking about the way we look? What If we stopped comparing our bodies and bemoaning our “flaws”? Researchers report 85–95% of women are extremely dissatisfied with their bodies. How can we change this for ourselves? How can we pass down positive messages about female bodies to the next generation of women? Hillary McBride is a therapist and researcher who writes about these questions in her book Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are. According to Hillary, we inherit harmful stories about our bodies, and may even pass them onto our daughters without even knowing it. Hillary points out other ways we come by this language: through systemic misinformation and misogyny that envelop us daily, pushing us toward an unattainable standard of beauty. This conversation has everything to do with dispelling our shame and celebrating our womanhood. It reminds us of the power of legacy and the freedom we gain by owning our stories and our worth. And at the end of those stories, we each get to define what’s beautiful, accepted, and good.