The only thing sadder than an adult woman wasting brain space day in and day out thinking:

• her arms are too fat

• her cellulite is gross

• her stretch marks are ugly

• her peach fuzz is too much

• her body is too awkward

… is a 12-year-old girl thinking any one of these things. Bright-eyed and excited for her first day of middle school but sweaty with self-consciousness about changing in the locker room for P.E.

… is a sweet 15-year-old dreaming of her first kiss — that magical, awkward, moment you never forget — hijacked by the fear that her skin isn’t smooth enough.

… is an ambitious 18-year old young woman on a new campus in a new city, with new dreams, independent for the first time, all of our collective hope in her backpack, but hiding in black and baggy sweatshirts because we’ve told her she’s “too big” for certain clothes.

If you’re alarmed by what women believe today, just remember we were being taught it as girls. We didn’t wake up as 30somethings feeling too fat or too hairy or too bump or too splotchy for the first time. We spent 3 decades being groomed to think these things.

And unless we opt out of the game and write a new one, we’ll spend the next 3 waxing and dyeing and sweating and starving and filling and plumping and toning and smoothing so much so that all the young girls who come after us will see when they look up is how they should look instead of how they do look.

If you’re alarmed by what we believe today, don’t teach it to the girls of tomorrow. If you’re tired of the narrative, tell a new one. If you wished you saw your body represented growing up, be that body for someone else who’s growing up right now. We hold the weapon that can slash and burn the instructions to the whole mother-effing game. What are we doing? LFG.