Teaching your daughter about body image

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Teaching your daughter about body image

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So it’s interesting to talk about my mother because part of my parenting is about continuing her legacy for Easton. And I come from a family of fabulous women. Some of them have passed away way too early because of obesity. So body image was a really big issue in my childhood. One was that I was around women who felt so confident and so self-assured that they’d strut around the house naked, and I would be mortified. So I’m a completely modest person in general because I was exposed to these women who were bodacious. But I was also raised to have a clear understanding of beauty and self-appreciation. And I’m not one of these women who looks in the mirror and sees a love handle and thinks with self-loathing, inner voice, inner monologue, this has to be removed. I have to not eat today. I’m going on a juicing cleanse. I look at it and I say, I’ve been having fun. I look a little bit softer. I still look beautiful. Is this a beautiful I like? Am I going to change it? I think I’m going to go play tennis today. I think that would be good for my health. Why? Because my mother, my aunt, who were beautiful women who thought they were beautiful passed away at the ages of 60 and 67 respectively because of serious weight issues. But in my childhood, I was also raised to understand that not just these simple phrases of beauty comes from within but that you are beautiful outside. Every single person is beautiful outside. There is no ugly. There is only beautiful. And each of us has a blueprint that is unique to ourselves. So you can’t look at someone else’s body type, shape of their jaw, color of their eyes, and say, that’s divinely beautiful. That’s a Barbie doll. That’s not beauty. That’s just one person’s version of beauty. Beauty is so completely multi-dimensional. And that’s how I was raised, so I think I have very healthy body image. And I look at my daughter’s body, and she has come from camp for the summer, and some kid has maybe said to her that she’s not skinny, and I hear new words being introduced – fat, skinny, ugly. Those are not in my vocabulary. Just because of my childhood. And I say, Easton, I think that maybe those little girls, maybe they heard that from their mom. But they should think that they’re beautiful because they’re beautiful just being different. So I don’t mean to simplify it, but to just say that the self-torture that women do to themselves really has to end. I think my mom had a very high consciousness about it. Unfortunately for her she didn’t have a high consciousness about her health, so she died very young because of that.

See Elisabeth Rohm's video on Teaching your daughter about body image...

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Elisabeth Rohm

Mom, Actress, Author

Seen to many as a supermom, actress Elisabeth Röhm has been successfully juggling a full time job as a mother and actress over the past few years. Not only is she a successful film and T.V star, she also has a published book, and a weekly celebrity mom blog on People.com that reaches over a million readers—it is amazing that she stays beautiful, healthy and positive while managing to be consistently by her daughter’s side. Currently, Elisabeth plays "Amanda" on the new CBS TV series Stalker.
 
These past couple years were eventful as Röhm was seen in several feature films. She starred in Warner Bros.’ thriller Transit across James Caviezel, produced by Joel Silver. She teamed up with Kyra Sedgwick and Vincent Donofrio in Chlorine. Elisabeth shot the Lionsgate feature by Brian A. Miller, title Officer Down, as well as Darkroom, an independent feature directed by Britt Napier and produced by Michael A. Liberty and Ron Stein (The Kids Are Alright). Last year, Elisabeth also starred in David O. Russell’s critically acclaimed film, American Hustle, co-starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, and Jennifer Lawrence. Röhm, along with her cast won the SAG Outstanding Performance by a cast in a Motion Picture Award. 
 
Elisabeth was also seen on the Lifetime TV Show, The Client List, as “Taylor Berkhalter”. Her character is a mother who is in continuous competition with Riley (Jennifer Love Hewitt). She also has written a book, Baby Steps: Having the Child I Always Wanted (Just Not as I Expected), that came out just last year. Elisabeth has always been very open about her struggles getting pregnant and going through the challenges of IVF. The book tells the often hidden truth behind infertility. As she struggled with infertility, she kept it to herself, but now for the first time she reveals the whole story, learning about and accepting her infertility, the disappointment, the stress and the shame. 
 
Born in Europe, yet a U.S. citizen, Röhm was raised in New York City. Her first childhood interest was riding horses, for which she trained intensively. By the time she entered Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, her goals shifted to writing in the form of fiction and history. It was during college when Röhm fell in love with acting. After receiving her degree, she quickly found work on the soap opera One Life to Live and followed it up with a long line of recurring appearances on the WB television show, Angel. However, most know Röhm best as the “A.D.A. Serena Southerlyn” on the NBC staple series, Law & Order where Dick Wolf, creator/producer of Law & Order praised her as “one of the finest young actresses working in television.” She went on to star as “Alex Mason,” a love interst to Michael Vartan’s character, in the ABC drama Big Shots and later returned to NBC as a new addition to the cast of the cult-favorite Heroes.
 
Röhm has also starred in numerous films including Abduction alongside Taylor Lautner and Sigourney Weaver, Miss Congeniality 2, starring Sandra Bullock, and Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry.  She starred in Kreutzer Sonata, an independent project co-starring Danny Huston and starred opposite James Caan in the film Barry Minkow. You can expect great things from her entering the next couple years. 
 
The desire to seek new challenges is not unusual for someone so multi-talented. Röhm is writing a cookbook (brilliantly titled “The Wooing of the gay Man and the Actress”) as she loves to cook, sings, and continues to ride horses; she also includes hiking, biking, skiing, yoga, traveling and studying architecture among her hobbies. Being that she believes in health and being active, she is developing a gym franchise and has already invested in Circuit Works located in Brentwood, CA and is a co-owner for a juice bar called REJUICE located in Santa Monica. She supports The Red Cross, The Go Red Foundation, Healthy Child Healthy World and as a whole does what she can to support children and women in need globally.
 
Röhm welcomed her first child, a girl named Easton, on April 10, 2008. She retains residences in New York, Venice, CA, and in Holland.
 
More Parenting Videos from Elisabeth Rohm >
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