It turns out body shaming starts long before it should.

Do you remember when you started to question your body’s appearance? I do. I was about 11, 12 years old when someone in my class started talking about “big” and “little” kids. After that, I became more aware of my body, and that was not a good thing.

Well, it turns out I wasn’t the only child who began paying attention to her weight before hitting puberty.

The study

The journal Child Development recently conducted a study that examined how soon kids are exposed to weight shaming. Brace yourselves… Apparently, the shaming starts in first grade.

That’s right. Kids who are about six, seven, or eight years old are judging each others’ bodies. And you guessed it. Overweight kids bear the brunt of the verbal cruelty.

“The study included 1,164 kids across 29 schools in Oklahoma, and showed that obese children were neglected by peers, while severely obese children were outright rejected and were more likely to show early signs of depression,” Teen Vogue reports.

“Children who are ostracized, as occurred with the severely overweight children in our study, suffer great harm, with feelings of loneliness, depression, and aggression, and these children are more likely to skip school and drop out later,” Amanda W. Harrist, professor of child development at Oklahoma State University and study researcher, adds.

Younger generations have it really bad

Remember how I said I began feeling “body pressure” when I was 11, 12 years old? Kids now have it a lot worse.

A recent Yahoo News survey asked 1,993 American teens and adults, aged 13-64, when they first felt ashamed of their bodies. The group’s average answer was between 13 and 14 years old. But the younger generations are feeling that pressure earlier, apparently.

“In the survey, teens ages 13-17 reported that their first bout of body shame occurred as young as 9 or 10 years old,” Yahoo News reports.

Kids feel body shame via classmates, television, and social media, and one in four Americans said their parents contributed to their body-conscious feelings.

“For the majority (60 percent) of survey respondents, that initial experience of body shame was because someone—most often a classmate or friend—made a comment about their physique,” Yahoo News adds.

“Other triggers included seeing a photo of themselves (30 percent), closely followed by comparing themselves to someone they know and trying on clothes (28 percent each).”

I feel for all the kids growing up in today’s society. Let’s just hope the body positivity campaigns that have gained popularity over the past few years can make a lasting difference and decrease the shame.

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Image of kids playing via Shutterstock

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When it comes to self love, some of us have a better handle on it than others because those lucky souls have learned to accept themselves for who they really are. And it’s a lesson that we could all benefit from.

We all have those times when we feel like we’re not good enough–not smart enough, not pretty enough, not eloquent enough. We think that if anyone found out who we actually were behind the projection screen, they’d hate us. So we hate ourselves instead. That’s when comparison thinking gets more pronounced. Everyone else is richer, more fashionable, and more together.

We’re all human, that’s why we have these ups and downs. As if sometimes we could take on the world and other times we’re completely worthless.

What’s your take on self love? And how susceptible are you to self shaming in your life?

Why not take steps to stop shaming yourself? These steps will help you get started:

-Stop worrying what other people think so much.

The projection of who people think you are isn’t real anyway so stop worrying so much what people think about who you are. Self love comes from doing the best you can in life and then letting the chips fall where they may. Some people are going to like you and some aren’t. But trying too hard to maintain control is a waste of time. Love yourself enough to stop worrying so much what people think.

-Perfection isn’t perfect.

You’re never going to be perfect so striving for perfection all the time is just another stressor. Everyone has baggage. Everyone. And trying to be the most beautiful at-ease specimen just isn’t realistic. Regardless of what Facebook or Instagram tells us, we all have personality faults, big and small, and we all crumble sometimes.

-Love all of you.

Loving the positive qualities in yourself is easy but true self love comes from loving positive and negative qualities. You’re a mixed bag so accept the whole lot. Who says that the qualities you deem so shameful are really even that bad? One tool for creating this all around self love is through meditation. When thoughts or feelings come up in meditation, resist the urge to label them as bad or good. Instead, just notice that they arise during meditation. This way, you won’t have such a reaction to the qualities that cause self shaming in your life.

-Stop the negative talk.

What you say to yourself matters. We can be our own worst critics. Notice when you start chastising yourself for one reason or another and cool it. Words matter, so what you say to yourself and about others shapes your perception of the world over and over again. Be aware of your inner monologue.

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Heart in hands image by Shuttershock

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ColumnWhat’s the best way to fight back against body-shaming bullies? Put your ass into it!

The fastest way to make a girl feel bad is to make fun of her body.

Forty-seven percent of girls in 5th-12th grade say they want to lose weight because of magazine pictures, according to The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Related Disorders.

You can veto women’s magazines from your home, but short of forcing your daughter to live under a rock, it’s impossible to keep girls from absorbing societal messages about what they are “supposed to look like.” And, with added pressure from classmates, it’s easy to understand why so many people (20 million women and 10 million men) have eating disorders.

Carleigh O’Connell, an awesome 14-year-old from New Jersey, found that some of her classmates spray-painted a rock with: “Carleigh’s ass.”

The message Carleigh was supposed to receive, internalize and—possibly—struggle with for decades to come is that her butt is too big. Instead, she posed with the graffiti wearing a bikini, showing off her tush and smiling.

Then, she posted the photo of herself on Instagram and asked her mom to put it on Facebook. Her mom posted it with this note (you can read her whole post here): “My daughter heard that her “rear end” “figure” “body shape” ….you can see the description for yourself in the photo ….was made fun of on a big rock at the beach. Well….it was true. She found it and knew it was hers since her name has a very distinct spelling. Many kids at school told her about it. We talked about it. And while she was upset, she told me she was going to make something good out of it.”

Cheers to Carleigh and her mom for taking control of the situation and turning it into something positive. With mean girls firmly entrenched in most schools, #thinspiration everywhere and oh-so coveted thigh gaps being photoshopped in so often that it’s easy to forget that not everyone has one, it’s hard out there for a girl.

Carleigh’s reaction and willingness to share her photo shows that one person can shift the conversation.

“I wanted to show whoever decided to write that that I was stronger than that,” she told TODAY.com. “It didn’t impact me at all. I didn’t put my head down, I didn’t cry about it. I didn’t give the kids the power they wanted.”

“It felt very empowering,” she added.

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Image: Daryl Lynn O’Connell on Facebook

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