Pretty is as Pretty Does

Recently, as I checked my daughter’s browsing history on my iPad, I saw a Google search that made my stomach turn. Tears immediately filled my eyes and I wanted to throw the device across the room and shatter it into a million pieces. How could her innocence be lost, she is just eleven years old! I had done all I knew to do to protect her, to shield her, to raise her right. But there was her search right before my eyes: 

How can I look beautiful?

I felt like someone had knocked the wind out of me. I questioned how she could arrive at the conclusion that she is not beautiful. I always speak positivity to her about her mind, body, and spirit. I never criticize myself or other women in front of her. I never push her to dress or look a certain way, other than being age appropriate.

Truth is I knew this day would come. I mean come on, what little girl doesn’t go through that awkward season where she questions everything about herself? I just hoped somehow, someway, my daughter would beat the odds. But she didn’t, she went down the same rabbit hole most young girls go down.  

Why do our girls succumb to this self-loathing and pressure to be beautiful, and who defines what beauty is for them? 

My daughter is one of the only blonde-headed girls in her class at school, and she gets asked from time to time why she doesn’t have any eyebrows. No matter how many times I explain to her that blonde girls have light eyebrows, she despises them. That might sound silly to some of you, but I believe that’s where it usually starts, some kid, whether innocently or not, points out a difference in their physical appearance and the insecurity subtly sets in.

What was it that someone said about your appearance that you were never able to let go of?

My daughter wears a size 11 shoe and is taller than most of the kids in her class which can be equal parts empowering and awkward for her.  And while she is healthy and active, she is not a size zero and she knows it. And her body is in that awkward stage of change.

See what just happened there? I just detailed for you all the ways my daughter doesn’t match up with our traditional standard of beauty. Moms, even with our best efforts perhaps we are subconsciously reinforcing the world’s standard onto our little girls.

The fact is, our attraction to beauty is literally coded into our brains at birth. Whether in people or things – we all crave beauty. The beauty of a sunset over the ocean. The beauty of a mountain waterfall. The beauty of Miss Universe. The beauty of a famous actor. While slight nuances and preferences differ from person to person, the definition of beauty is stamped in our brain from birth, studies prove that. 

So, if we know it is our human nature to crave beautiful things. How can we help our children gain the emotional intelligence that will allow them to find beauty in the everyday? To see the internal beauty that always outshines the external beauty? The beauty of a kind gesture, the beauty of a word of encouragement, the beauty in our spirit.

That is difficult to do in a world that recklessly pursues beauty at all costs. We live in a world that covers magazines and movies with size-zero women who have had this nipped and that tucked and all of it airbrushed. We live in a world of men obsessed with the physical appearance of women. Little girls pick up on that early on and it changes them and for some it never leaves them. So, what can we do?

I don’t presume by this writing that I can change our size-zero culture. But what we can do is love our young daughters, nieces, sisters, and friends through the rocky years of feeling like they must measure up to a worldly standard of beauty – a standard that is unattainable for most. Yes, I tell my daughter all the time that she is beautiful. But more than that I tell her she is smart, strong, thoughtful, tough, funny, hard-working, sweet. I remind her she was perfectly created by God himself.

But in the moments when all she can see is the braces, the acne, and the light eyebrows I hold her tight and speak truth to the lies. I validate how she feels, and I explain that these years are tough on most girls. I look her in the eye and remind her that this world can be a tough place, but that God will empower her. Most of all I assure her she won’t do life alone, she will do it with an abundance of unconditional love from me and the people closest to her.

And I won’t just do that for my daughter, but for all of our daughters. And for all of the women who were once little girls and never grew to see their own beauty. I will speak truth to their lies as well.