A Father Showed His Teen How To Be Comfortable With Her Body With One Simple Trick
The dad modeled radical self-love to his daughter, who held on tight to that lesson.
TikTok From a young age, little girls are exposed to harmful gender stereotypes and negative body image. And when these girls grow into teenagers and young women, they are even more impressionable.
Fortunately, some parents are swift to intervene, instead teaching their daughters about having a healthy relationship with their bodies. Such is the case for one creator whose experience with her father changed her overall outlook on how she views her body.
A father encouraged self-love and acceptance in his teenage daughter, all by using a simple and effective trick.
Intuitive healer and mindset coach, Meiling Choy, explained the way her dad made her realize just how close she was with her parents growing up. And it was all because her father was shirtless inside their home.
"I actually realized this a couple times growing up and I would share stories about my parents and my family, and people would be like, ‘Wow, you're actually really close with your parents, that’s weird,’ and I’m like, ‘What? That’s not weird, that’s normal for me,'" Choy began the video.
She then went on to add, "So, I’d come home and I’d ask my dad. I was like, 'Hey, there’s kids at school who have never seen their dad shirtless. Why is it that you walk around shirtless sometimes?'"
Choy shared how her father’s decision to go shirtless at home was actually a tool to help her build body confidence.
Choy reported that the answer he offered was "the best thing he could have given me." She described her dad as "6'3, sort of on the bigger side." But, added Choy, "What he told me was just priceless. He said he would take his shirt off to show me subconsciously that he was comfortable in his skin even though he wasn’t the fittest person."
As Choy explained, her dad went shirtless "so that when I would see myself in a mirror, I wouldn’t want to hate myself. If my dad could be really open about it and comfortable, I would adapt to that ideology."
Karolina Grabowska / Pexels
Choy’s dad was practicing self-acceptance to show her how to love her body, despite any insecurities she may have had. She then ended her video, saying that her father’s modeling of self-love is “definitely a parenting move that I will keep in my back pocket.”
Learning to love ourselves for the entirety of who we are is a challenge, but it's not an impossible task.
Author and activist Sonya Renee Taylor defines radical self-love as a different entity from self-acceptance. Taylor claims that radical self-love acknowledges that humans’ “inherent existence as love is a political act.”
Taylor states that "taking back my experience of being 100% worthy and powerful and divine in the body that I have as it is right now... is an act that interrupts a system that profits off of us not believing that."
She also offers a profound statement as proof that radically loving our bodies and our whole beings can alter the world on a collective level, noting that “as we learn to make peace with our bodies and make peace with other people’s bodies, we create an opening for creating a more just and equitable world.”
"Radical self-love is our inherent state of being as worthy and enough," she explains. She believes that "if we don't take intentional time to dismantle these negative ideas inside of ourselves, then we're only going to reaffirm those ideas in the world."
As Choy's father showed her when she was a teen, radical self-love is rooted in our right as people to exist, just as we are.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.