Teenage boys get body-shamed, too
Boxborough author Jarrett Lerner helps them, and any childhood outsider, feel less alone
Boxborough dad and prolific author Jarrett Lerner writes kids’ books for clever underdogs and outsiders, like the “EngiNerds” series, about a group of brainiacs who’ve been friends since kindergarten, and “Geeger the Robot,” a robot who attends school for the first time and learns to make friends. He also wrote “A Work in Progress,” a fictionalized account of his own middle school experience in Wayland with disordered eating and body dysmorphia. Now, Lerner goes to classrooms to talk to kids about the writing process — and he shares his experiences with body image and alienation, too, putting a male face on an issue that’s often stereotyped as a girl-only problem.
Acne, braces, FOMO, hormones: Middle school is awkward no matter who you are. Thanks to Lerner’s books and talks, kids feel a little bit less alone.
Your books focus on the underdog. How come?
I think whether or not I’m approaching a topic and a narrative with a more humorous or a more serious lens, one of the big themes is definitely feeling alone and lonely. One of my overall themes is friendship, or more broadly community: finding your people and being open to helping others, providing friendship, receiving it back, and how wonderful that can be. All of my books are about the beauty and power that comes from connecting with other people.
Middle school is rough. Kids can feel like outsiders. Your book “Work in Progress” is about this, and it came from a personal place.
It’s my own story, fictionalized. I was anxious about sharing the book with my agents, with my editor, even with my wife. But the reaction was always: ‘You need to keep exploring this; you need to make this a book.’
Embarking on making the book was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my career, certainly, but maybe in my life. Several times, I wanted to give up or abandon it. I definitely didn’t think I could begin touring with it and doing school visits, getting up in front of hundreds of kids and adults and talking about it. But I found that being vulnerable, honest, and asking for help — discussing that really challenging stuff and not shying away from it — has been the most rewarding thing in my whole career. The statistics and numbers are really heartbreaking.
I might spend 20 to 25 minutes talking to kids about the genesis of the book and my experience, using poems and images from the book. The last 15 to 20 minutes of the session is them asking me questions or sharing. That has been the richest, most rewarding part of it all. I use the book as a way to create the environment and space for a conversation.
I feel like my generation, our generation, would have been laughed off stage to see a grown man get up and be vulnerable in front of an auditorium. But this generation is so much more willing, and even eager, to discuss this stuff. They’re so much more comfortable discussing tough things.
Recently, a girl stood up in front of the whole gym full of sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders and talked about how she gets bullied on the bus on the way to school every day, and how her friends had been trying to help her. It’s amazing. It has been really rich and rewarding to get kids to reflect on their own experiences and develop even more empathy toward each other.
What happened to you in middle school?
I was body-shamed, and in sort of a public way, in elementary school. I was publicly called fat in a really dismissive and derogatory way. Now, the term is much more nuanced and complicated. It’s been embraced by a lot of people. But the way that it was used back then, and toward me in this instance, I was meant to know that it was not a good thing. In the book, I talk about how the character felt like he’d committed a crime by looking this way.
It led to me developing a very big insecurity, which grew and grew. Larger people in all the movies I was watching were always the butt of the joke. The covers of magazines were all about losing weight, or they were glorifying people who were already super thin or disordered eating, which is now much more known and discussed.
Eventually, I understood that my body was upsetting to people. I decided that I was going to change it through increasingly drastic measures, until I achieved what I wanted to achieve. I lost a lot of weight by terrible means.
I decided that I was only going to eat half of my bagel instead of my entire bagel for lunch. Then, more rules and routines started getting built around food, and the act of eating. Eating in public became something that was much more distressing for me. Then certain foods got ruled out. I was eating less frequently throughout the day. I describe disordered eating as anything that gets in the way of you giving your body what it needs. I talk to kids about how our body tells us exactly what it needs, if we listen: sleep, food, diet, exercise, and all that stuff. I was denying my body what it needed and eventually getting to the point where I was hardly eating at all.
What I found, distressingly, was that even once I got closer to what I was wanted to be, and what I thought would make me happy, the goal posts just kept moving. I was not more comfortable around people. I didn’t like myself any better. In fact, I was more critical and more upset with myself, and more disgusted by myself.
I also was over-exercising, which is another way that disordered eating can crop up in people, using exercise as a means to punish your body or atone for what you ate. But I was never achieving the sort of happiness, satisfaction, or peace that I imagined would come with it.
Body image is something that you don’t hear boys talk about as much. What do you wish more people understood about being a middle-school boy?
Boys are human, just like girls. We experience the full range of human emotions. I think boys are much more loath to or terrified to admit that and to discuss it. I don’t hear this as often when I’m in schools, but when I was in school, the thing that I heard most often from other boys and men was: “Man up.” And “manning up” meant denying the fact that you had any sort of emotion. You had to be stoic and strong; nothing could affect you. You could not be rattled and shaken or nervous or scared.
I hope that I can redefine for boys. Being vulnerable, asking for help, admitting that you have emotions? That’s all human. The more we can do that, the happier we’ll be, and the more authentic and rewarding our relationships will be.
Everyone can relate to feeling like the main character at some point, especially in middle school: feeling lost and misunderstood, struggling to get a grip on your identity, who you are, what’s important to you, and what voices outside of yourself you should listen to and care about the most, whether it’s peers or parents. And lastly, specifically about this issue, it’s never a phase. It’s not something that lasts for a year, and then they grow out of it. When it’s not dealt with, it often gets worse and just thrives, right on into adulthood.
While I try to talk about my personal experience, I try to branch out and say: You might be insecure about your body and the way that it’s taking up space around you. It might present itself as being a certain weight or having a certain shape. But just as many kids might be upset about the shape of their nose, their freckles, or their height.
More often than not, the way that we talk about our bodies is antagonistic. In the book, I have the character learn how to skateboard. Skateboarding is something that saved me. Because skateboarding is an example of an activity where my brain and body must collaborate and work together. If I’m on my skateboard, and I’m not respecting my body and working with it, if I’m antagonistic toward it, I’m going to fall on my face and hurt myself. Skateboarding is what led to me developing an appreciation for what my body can do.
All of us have our own teen memories and baggage. How can parents use this to support their kids in middle school?
As a parent, I think modeling vulnerability, and being open and honest when you’re having a tough time or struggling, can go a long way. You’re not going to force them to talk to you about something. But I think, if you create a relationship and put in that groundwork every day, you can create the sort of relationship and environment when they’re with you in the safety of your home in which they’re going to be so much more willing to open up. I think sharing your own vulnerability makes an inviting and welcoming space for others to mimic. Give kids the space and environment in which they can come to you, and they know that it’s OK for them to struggle and be confused, scared, nervous, and to feel alone. It’s normal, and their parents experienced it, too, and became thriving adults. All of that stuff goes a long way.
Specifically about body image and eating disorders, I would say to be very mindful and cautious about how you’re behaving around food and eating. Small, seemingly benign comments can really cause a lot of damage. Teenagers are notoriously ravenous. They’re growing; their bodies need more fuel. So a kid eats dinner, and then an hour later is looking for a snack. A comment as benign as: ‘You just ate; you need more to eat?’ can really lodge in someone’s head and cause a lot of issues.
And I wouldn’t be a good author if I didn’t at least have one book recommendation. Virginia Sole-Smith has a book that came out last year called “Fat Talk,” which is all about parenting in the age of diet culture. That book is a tremendous resource.
I don’t want to be cliché and say that life automatically gets better after middle school. But is there a way to put this time of life in perspective?
I think middle school is a time of extremes. It’s when we’re changing the most rapidly. Kids are often trying on a number of different identities, a number of different friend groups, and trying to figure out who they are and where they fit. Unfortunately, the only real way to make any progress and to figure that out is a lot of trial and error.
I was very fortunate to find my people at the end of middle school, and that carried on into high school. These people understood and accepted me for who I was. Anytime I tried to change myself, because I thought it was necessary to get approval or to be a certain way, they let me know that they didn’t want me or need me to twist and contort myself.
You might not find [your people] in middle school. But they are out there, and you will figure it out. There are people out there who will love, accept, and want to be around you because of exactly who you are.
I would be remiss not to say, again, that I’ve been so impressed by this generation of kids. Hanging out with them never ceases to make me hopeful because they’re so open and comfortable.