A teenage girl and her body: what a parent can do

July, thirty degrees. A thirteen-year-old sits on the terrace in a hoodie and says: “I’m not going to the pool.” Her mother asks why, when all her friends are going. “No reason. Just don’t feel like it.” Last year she spent every day of the holidays at that same pool.

Her mother knows it isn’t “no reason”. But she doesn’t know what to say. If she says “but you’re beautiful”, her daughter will roll her eyes. If she says nothing, she feels she is leaving her on her own. If she asks directly, she will get “leave me alone”.

In this post I want to write to parents about exactly this: the relationship a teenage girl has with her body, and what a parent can do about it. This isn’t about eating disorders — I wrote about the early signs to watch for in Early signs of an eating disorder in a teenager. Nor is it about self-image in general, which is the subject of Self-image in the teenage years: what parents can do. It is about something everyday, and therefore often overlooked: how, within a few years, a girl moves from a body she lived in to a body she watches.

A body that arrives before she’s ready

In girls, the first physical signs of puberty often appear around the age of nine or ten, and in Europe the first period arrives on average at around twelve to thirteen — earlier for some, later for others. This means that many girls are physically in puberty while in their thinking, interests and feelings they are still children. The body arrives before the readiness for it.

In 2007, Jane Mendle, Eric Turkheimer and Robert Emery reviewed the research on what it means for a girl to enter puberty earlier than her peers. The findings were fairly consistent: girls who mature early have, on average, more problems with low mood, with eating, with risky behaviour and with dissatisfaction with their bodies. The authors stress that the reason is not just hormones. A large part lies in how the people around her start to respond: older boys, adults who treat her as if she were older, classmates who look at her differently. A girl who at eleven looks fifteen gets responses she can’t process at eleven.

Late maturing isn’t always easy either. A girl who at fourteen still hasn’t had a period, while all her classmates talk about theirs, may feel that something is wrong with her. When puberty starts very early or is very late, though, that is a question for a doctor — a paediatrician, GP or gynaecologist — not for guesswork at home.

When people start looking

In 1997, psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts described what they called objectification theory. Its central idea is simple and uncomfortable: in a culture where women’s bodies are constantly evaluated, girls gradually internalise the outside gaze. They start to look at themselves the way someone else would. They called this self-objectification.

One of their later studies showed this almost as if in a laboratory. Young women tried on either a swimsuit or a jumper and then took a maths test. Those in swimsuits scored worse on the test; among men there was no such difference. The attention that goes into monitoring how you look is missing somewhere else.

For a teenage girl, this means that somewhere between eleven and fifteen something quiet often changes. She no longer runs just to run, but thinks about how she looks while running. She no longer just sits, but watches how her stomach looks. She doesn’t raise her hand in class, because everyone would look at her. Part of her attention has moved from what she is doing to how she looks while doing it.

A parent can’t stop this process. Girls live in a world where they are evaluated, and they will notice it whatever happens at home. But a parent can influence how much of that gaze also comes from home — and how much space their daughter has where she doesn’t have to look any particular way.

What she hears at home

For decades, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer and her colleagues have followed adolescents and their families in Project EAT in Minnesota. One recurring finding is that weight talk in the family — when parents encourage their daughter to diet, joke about weight, or talk about their own weight — is linked to greater body dissatisfaction and more unhealthy weight-control behaviours in teenage girls. In 2013, Jerica Berge and colleagues showed that what you talk about matters too. Conversations centred on weight and size were linked to more dieting and unhealthy weight control; conversations centred on healthy food, without mentioning weight, showed no such link.

Most comments teenage girls hear at home are not malicious. They are jokes, concern, compliments. “Have you lost a bit of weight? It really suits you.” “Careful you don’t end up like your aunt.” “You can eat that, you’re still young.” A compliment on losing weight is particularly insidious: your daughter reads in it that she was less acceptable before. I have written in more detail about how to talk about bodies, weight and food with a child in How to talk to your child about bodies, weight and food without doing harm.

Relatives are a particular problem. Grandma at Sunday lunch, an uncle who jokes, a cousin who was “always the slimmer one”. A parent can’t control these people, but can show their daughter that they are on her side. A short sentence like “We don’t talk about Nina’s body”, said calmly and without a row, tells her more than a long explanation after the guests have gone.

Parents as a mirror

A teenage girl doesn’t learn about her body only from what her parents say about her. She learns from how they talk about themselves. A mother who sighs in front of the mirror, “God, I’m so fat”, isn’t criticising her daughter. But her daughter learns from this that the body is something to be judged, that the verdict is often harsh, and that this is simply how women talk to themselves in front of a mirror.

Interestingly, mother and daughter are often going through a similar period at the same time: the daughter in puberty, the mother in her forties or fifties, when her body is changing too. How this affects the way you see yourself is the subject of Self-image and ageing: when your body and roles change. A mother with a difficult relationship with her own body is not a bad mother. But it is good for her to know it — and not to voice her distress out loud in front of her daughter.

With fathers there is often a different trap: silence. When a daughter grows up, many fathers withdraw physically. They no longer hug her, no longer sit her on their lap, no longer cuddle her. Often out of respect, embarrassment or uncertainty about what is appropriate now. But a teenage girl doesn’t read this as respect. She may read it as a sign that something is wrong with her body — that it has become something to be avoided. Better than withdrawing is a question: “Is it still okay if I give you a hug?” And respecting the answer, whatever it is.

Brothers are part of this mirror too. Jokes about a sister’s body are not “just banter between siblings”. A parent can stop them without a lecture: “We don’t say that in this house.” The teenage girl learns not only that her brother isn’t allowed to, but also that her home is not a place where she will be judged.

A body that can do things

For a long time, the goal with body image was thought to be reducing dissatisfaction. In a 2015 review, Tracy Tylka and Nichole Wood-Barcalow showed that positive body image is something other than the absence of a negative one. It includes appreciation of the body, acceptance even of the parts that aren’t “right”, a broader understanding of beauty — and the ability to weigh up messages about what a body should be like and simply let some of them pass.

One path towards this is paying attention to what the body does, not how it looks. Jessica Alleva and colleagues developed a programme in which young women, in three short writing exercises, described what their bodies allow them to do: move, sense, create, care for others. After the programme they were more satisfied with their bodies and looked at themselves from the outside less. The study was not done with teenage girls but with young adult women, so we can’t simply transfer it. But the direction makes sense at home too.

This is where movement matters. In puberty many girls give up a sport they loved, often precisely because of their bodies: changing rooms, swimsuits, kit that clings, eyes on the pitch. If your daughter stops a sport, it’s worth asking why — and looking for movement where she doesn’t have to be on show. Dancing in her room, cycling, a hike, climbing. The aim isn’t burning calories, but the experience that the body can do things.

Periods, clothes and the bathroom door

A relationship with the body is also built in small, practical things. Periods are one of them. If at home you talk about them as something normal — no whispering, no “that time of the month”, no embarrassment about pads on the shelf — your daughter gets the message that her body isn’t something to hide. It’s good to talk about it before it happens for the first time. If she has severe pain, very irregular cycles or another concern, the place to go is a gynaecologist or GP.

Clothes are a common source of arguments. A parent who says “you’re not going out like that” sometimes has a good reason. But how it’s said matters. “It shows too much” tells your daughter that her body is the problem. A conversation about where she’s going, with whom, and what she needs to feel safe tells her that your concern is for her, not her body. Since this is often also about boundaries and how to set them without a fight, the short explanation of boundaries in the knowledge base may help.

And the bathroom door. A teenage girl needs privacy — to change, to wash, to look in the mirror without someone walking in. Respecting that privacy is no small thing. It is one of the ways a parent shows that her body is hers.

What it sounds like

This is how a conversation might sound after a Sunday lunch at which grandma remarked that her granddaughter had “filled out nicely” (a composite, not a real person):

“Did you hear Grandma?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Mum, really.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I should have.”
“She’s always like that.”
“She is. But it’s not okay. Next time I’ll say we don’t talk about your body. Would that be alright with you?”
“… Yeah. Just don’t make a scene.”
“I won’t. One sentence.”

In this conversation the mother doesn’t say “but you’re beautiful” and doesn’t explain that grandma doesn’t mean any harm. She acknowledges that something was missing and asks her daughter how it should go next time. That is more than comfort: the teenager gets the experience of an adult standing by her.

What a parent doesn’t do matters too. They don’t try to convince their daughter that her feeling isn’t justified. They don’t say it “will pass”. And they don’t try to fix her self-image with compliments. A teenage girl who feels bad in her body doesn’t need someone to tell her she’s beautiful. She needs someone to believe that it’s hard for her — and that this hard thing can be said out loud without shame.

Exercise: a week without judging bodies

You can start this exercise today. It isn’t meant for your daughter, but for you and your home.

1. Just observe for a week. Note down every time something is said at home about bodies, weight or appearance — about your daughter, about others, about yourself, about people on TV. Don’t correct anything, just count.
2. Look at what you noted about yourself. Choose three sentences you often say about your own body that your daughter hears. Ask yourself what you would think if you heard them from her.
3. Replace one. Instead of judging how you look, say something about what your body is doing or how you feel. “I’m tired” instead of “I look awful”.
4. Agree with the other parent. In your home, other people’s bodies aren’t commented on — not your daughter’s, not the neighbour’s, not the actress’s. Agree, too, on who will say what when a relative does it.
5. Add one shared activity with no measuring. A walk, a bike ride, dancing in the kitchen — something you do together without counting steps, calories or kilos.

The results won’t be visible straight away. Your daughter may not even notice that anything has changed. But a home where bodies aren’t judged is one of the few places where she can take a break from the gaze she feels everywhere else.

Where this doesn’t apply

I want to be honest: parents are not the only influence, and in the teenage years often not the strongest. Peers and screens have great power. You can do everything right and your daughter may still be unhappy with her body, because she spends all day comparing herself with classmates and with girls on screen. This is the subject of Bodies on social media: what constant comparison does and Social media and teenage girls: the comparison you cannot see. Home can’t erase the world — but it can be a counterweight.

Sometimes discomfort in the body isn’t just a question of body image. It can be a sign that something has happened that the girl isn’t talking about — an unwanted touch, harassment, abuse. It may be connected to questions of identity that she is only beginning to explore; this is the subject of When your teenager tells you who they love: sexual orientation and support at home. Or it may have a physical cause — skin problems, hormonal changes, pain — that a doctor needs to look at. If something seems wrong, it is better to ask than to assume.

And sometimes a poor relationship with the body is already becoming an eating disorder. Then conversations at home are not enough and action is needed. You’ll find a short explanation under eating disorders in the knowledge base, and what to watch for in the post I mentioned at the beginning.

When to seek help

Help makes sense when your daughter withdraws from activities that mattered to her because of her body, when her relationship with food changes, when she talks about herself with disgust, or when self-harm appears. The first port of call is your GP or paediatrician, who can refer you on, and the school counselling service. Your daughter herself can call the TOM helpline free and anonymously on 116 111 in Slovenia.

If she talks about not wanting to live any more or is harming herself, don’t wait: the mental health crisis line on 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (every day from 7 pm to 7 am), the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 in Slovenia (24 hours), and in an emergency 112.

When the patterns I have described seem to run through the whole family — in the way people talk about bodies, food and appearance — family therapy can help. Its focus isn’t “the teenager’s problem”, but how the family talks together and what each member can do about it.

What to remember

• In puberty the body often changes before a girl is ready for it — and early maturing brings particular risks.
• A teenage girl learns not only from what you say about her, but also from how you talk about yourself.
• Compliments on weight loss and jokes about bodies aren’t harmless. A home where bodies aren’t judged is a counterweight to a world that judges them.
• Attention to what the body can do helps more than persuading her that she is beautiful.
• If the discomfort persists or shows up in eating or self-harm, seek help — starting with a doctor.