My Daughters Are on TikTok. So I Joined Them.

It was bound to happen.

My daughters have entered the world of TikTok. My 14-year-old lip-syncs short videos in a language I don’t fully understand. My younger one plays with filters that turn her hair blue. They text the little videos back and forth with their friends who write the word “slay” over and over again. I keep an eye on things as best I can. They are participating in the culture of their time.

But this past week, with all the attention on #SkinnyTok—that toxic corner of the platform where thigh gaps, calorie math, and “body checks” reign—I felt the familiar grip of fear. What kind of parent was I, allowing them access to a world that could shape how my daughters see their bodies, one that echoes the messages I’ve spent a lifetime trying to unlearn?

So, I joined them on TikTok.

Not to police or preach, but to partake, and to show them that this medium doesn’t have to belong only to those who seem to have it all figured out. It can belong to us, too.

I started making silly videos in the basement, where my bodybuilding journey began and where I still work out. Bringing them into the process they’ve long watched me undertake, rep by rep. We made clumsy clips of us lifting together. My older daughter suggested we get matching outfits from Marshall’s (we look like Oompa Loompas); my younger daughter quickly got bored on an incline bench, goofing around in overalls and Crocs. Our production values leave much to be desired. But I’m pulling them into my world, and they are showing me theirs.

According to a study by Common Sense Media, parents play an outsize role in how children perceive their bodies. Another study found that five-to eight-year-old children’s perception of their mothers’ body dissatisfaction predicted their own body dissatisfaction.

The sport I love, bodybuilding, can sometimes be relentlessly self-focused, self-critical, aesthetic-driven. But it also gave me something I never had as a teenage athlete: the chance to build myself up. Strength has become my north star. My devotion to eating well, to setting goals and chasing them, to being an athlete in midlife—these are messages I want to pass on.

Recently my older daughter quit ice hockey, a sport I’d admittedly become rather obsessive about as a hockey mom. When she told me in a rinkside parking lot-–minutes ahead of a tryout–-that she was done, I thought I had failed, that I’d let her succumb to the statistic of how, by age 14, girls are twice as likely to drop out of sports than boys. But this summer, she announced her intention to join her school’s field hockey team.

Maybe quitting was her way of expressing how she really felt—boldly enough to risk disappointing her parents. Or maybe, just maybe, the messy nights of my cramming in a workout when I was tired, the sound banging plates from the basement in the wee hours of the morning, sent a message: Trust your gut. Be strong. Be full. Take up space.

So this past week, all of us started going down to the basement together, filming little bits of our journey.

The workouts are far from perfect. Their technique leaves something to be desired. The kids get bored after a while.

But they are getting stronger.

And if we can share that message together—even in the form of a 15-second video—maybe TikTok isn’t something to fear after all.

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