How to really make the feminist foremothers shudder

So apparently lots of little 5-7 year old girls think they are too fat. And this is a UK article, not an American article, so there's none of that "McDonald culture" to explain!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/03/08/do0801.xml

The little girls are mimicing their mothers not only in their high heels but also in their obsessions and insecurities, apparently, which is a sad state of affairs. But it just reinforces an opinion that has slowly but surely been settling in over the years for me, that we women are really our own worst enemy. Generally I tend to believe that, when dealing w/ characteristics of large groups of people as a group, nurture plays more of a role than nature. So I have wondered from time to time if this whole "women are timid, less confrontational, less likely to be asservtive, yadda yadda" would fade away over time as younger embolded generations of women grow up. I have found it an annoying but unavoidable fact that there do seem to be more women who are timid and self-conscious than there are guys who are that way. Not as bad in the USA as in, say, China, but all the same, any discrepancy at all is a bit annoying. This article just goes to show that we ourselves are making it worse.

If I ever have daughters I will particularly encourage them to play sports, because I think in addition to all the benefits it has for both sexes (discipline, social skills, health, independence) it has particularly good benefits for girls, because it forces them to be a little more assertive, which carries over into the rest of life. It also takes a traditionally male area of life and allows women to have a little claim on it - to feel like there is no area of our common lives that a man can boldly venture and a girl shouldn't.

I was going to throw in the whole "Marilyn Monroe was a size 12" thing in here, but thought I should check up on it first. It appears that at her heaviest, she was indeed a modern size 12 . . . but I'm not sure how persuasive that is in saying we've gotten higher standards as a culture, since her lightest was 30 pounds lighter.

But that's not really the point.