When Mazzy was a baby, I remember reading a few articles that said you weren’t supposed to tell your daughter that she’s pretty. One reason being that focusing on looks can make a girl think that image is what is most valued and all she has to offer. That made sense to me. As a kid, my mom told me I was beautiful all the time. I loved hearing it, but I ended up not believing her, while still thinking beauty was vitally important.
And so, over the years, I have mostly avoided making such statements to my girls.
Then the other day I found myself thinking about my own insecurities and realized that I wasted so much of my young life wondering if I was attractive or not. That doubt played into my confidence, the boys I dated, the clothes I wore, the career path I took and my comfort level commanding attention in front of a room.
Would I have made better choices if I had been more secure with what I looked like?
I decided I should tell Mazzy how beautiful she is; not because I want her to focus on her looks, but because I don’t want her to have any doubt. My hope was that the absence of doubt would free her up to focus on more important things.
So, last night, while brushing Mazzy’s hair after a bath, I told her. “You know you are beautiful, right?”
She gave me a weird look.
“I mean, I just don’t want you ever to wonder.”
She looked at me weirdly again.
“Mom,” she said. “Everybody is beautiful.”
And then I hugged her close and said, “Yes, you are right” and for a moment, I felt like, maybe, just maybe, focusing on appearance will one day seem as antiquated as I felt, telling my daughter she was beautiful when she didn’t even need to hear it.
How right she is! Growing up as social media took off I felt like I had to fit the media portrayal of beautiful (which, spoiler: is impossible!) Now that I’ve grown more confident in my skin I realize being unique makes us beautiful. Mazzy’s figured it out early on, such wise words from an 8 year old!
Very wise indeed.
Thank your for sharing this, Ilana!
I don’t know how to combat the societal focus on appearance but I can tell you that it was really damaging to have a mother who criticized my weight (with only the best of intentions, of course) and never told me I was beautiful…
You absolutely have to tell your daughters they are beautiful…as long as you also compliment them on other things about themselves beyond appearance and the stock, overused “good job” or “you are so smart”– I like to focus on kindness, effort, creativity, on top of telling my son how handsome I think he is. If they don’t hear they are beautiful from their parents, I fear they will think they aren’t, and while we don’t want the girls of the next generation to think that appearance is all that matters, we do, I think, want our daughters to know that their parents think they are beautiful and perfect exactly they way they are, because society and the mean girls will do its damnedest to tell them otherwise.
This is really lovely, Ilana. I struggle with the same issues, and I love your perspective on it—of course I love Mazzy’s perspective on it, too ❤️