How moms can build confidence in their daughters
As a mother, it's important to let your teenaged daughter know that she is so much more than just her appearance.
When you have a daughter, body image can be a concern.
Many mothers themselves have struggled with their own body image issues or insecurity, and it’s not uncommon that your daughter will share those same insecurities about themselves.
In Beyond Beautiful, Anushka Rees explains that it is common for girls to feel bad about how they look, not because of vanity but because of a brutal culture. She explains that body image is not simply related to thoughts and feelings women have about their bodies, but all the things they do/don’t do because of it. This can include dieting, straightening or relaxing hair, declining an invitation to a pool party because of feelings of self-consciousness, or even undergoing painful surgeries in order to fit in with conventional definitions of beauty.
Some young girls miss out on socialising because they are afraid of how they might appear in photographs. Others believe they would be happier if only their hair was longer or they could lose weight. Some believe they will not find love if they don’t control their appearance.
Rees explains that a young girl’s self-esteem often drops drastically at age nine, when compared to boys. This is due to social messages about body image. This self-esteem will often never reach pre-puberty levels until women reach their fifties.
Busting beauty myths
Rees explains that girls or women don’t feel unhappy because of their hair, eyelids, thighs, or weight. They feel unhappy because of the social messages they have received about their bodies. In the Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf explains that these images have been created to market expensive products to women as well as to keep them self-focused rather than empowered.
Girls embrace the beauty myth in order to feel loved, happy and worthy. In the process, they feel dissatisfied, unhappy, and alienated from themselves.
What can we do for our daughters?
Socialisation is everywhere. However, style consultant Janine Carly James, who assists women to develop their own unique style explains that many of her clients’ body image issues are passed on from their mothers. Janine explains that this is often based on a mother’s feelings of anxiety due to cultural expectations. She advises mothers to focus on aspects of their daughters unrelated to beauty.
You could focus on your daughter’s strength, creativity, humour, kindness, courage, or love of music. Let your daughter know that she is so much more than just her appearance.
Share body-positive messages with your daughter
Shelley Anand has a book called Laxmi’s Mooch. This is a story about a little girl called Laxmi, who realises that she has hair all over her body, including on her upper lip. Laxmi not only learns to accept her body as it is, but to embrace it.
Shelley Anand explained that while adults are often told to embrace body positivity, children should be included in this message too. Very often, by the time a girl reaches adolescence, she has been exposed to a number of cultural messages about ‘beauty’. Alternate messages or conversations plant the seed for change. By encouraging your daughter to embrace her body as it really is, you’ll add new insights into culture.
Be an example: Accept all body types
Lisa Fipps has written a stunning and very moving book called Star Fish about a girl called Ellie, who makes waves at her fifth birthday by jumping into the pool. After this, she is teased by her peers. She learns to hide, to try to make herself small, and that there are different ‘rules’ for ‘fat’ people. This book makes an excellent choice if you wish to overcome a culture that shames big people. It also reveals the pains imposed by diet culture.
One of the most insightful phrases in this book comes when Ellie is clothes shopping and the store owner tells her that her mother used to sew her clothes. Ellie muses that the store owner’s mother helped her to feel comfortable in her own skin, rather than encouraging her to adjust to a limited and unjust world.
Teach your daughter to challenge beauty myths
While it is tempting to encourage your daughter to diet or to adjust her body image in order to prevent teasing or cruelty, it is more helpful to work towards social change. Help your daughter to challenge beauty myths. Show her the fallacies behind a perfect image.
By creating curiosity in your daughter, you can help her to see that beauty myths are never constant and change over time and culture.
Show your daughter the value her body will provide her, not as an object, but as a sensual means of living within the world. Bodies enjoy touch, taste, beauty, sight, and scent. They help us to make sense of feelings and to interpret the world around us. Their abilities and appearances matter more than their image. There will be lots of people who don’t get it. What matters is that your daughter does.
Let your daughter see her own strengths
Companies make money from keeping women ashamed and then marketing their products, pills, and potions. These products often don’t work, which leaves both women and girls searching for the next solution, in search of happiness. The more people come together to challenge beauty myths, the less power they will have.
Help your daughter to see her strengths, even if she doesn’t believe you. Help her to feel confident with who and what she is, and not what she isn’t. Little by little, women’s voices will join together like droplets in a river, creating a new force that gives women and girls value for who they truly are.
