Attempting to make girls feel good about themselves by telling them how beautiful they are enforces the idea that beauty is the sole quality that gives women worth.
This is not an ideal I want to pass down to my future daughter.
There are a multitude of qualities I want my daughter to have. I want her to be kind. I want her to be intelligent. I want her to be hardworking. I want her to be a million things before she is beautiful, and I want her to value those things above her physical appearance. I want her to feel accomplished and wanted and valid because of the content of her heart, not because of the size of her waist.
Don’t get me wrong–I will tell my daughter she is beautiful. She will be. But she must not believe that she needs to be.
The problem with telling girls that they should feel confident in themselves because they are beautiful negates everything else they are capable of being. Beauty can’t be everything. It can’t be the route to self-confidence. It can’t be the route to self-worth.
Instead of saying all women are beautiful, we should be saying who the heck cares how beautiful you are? Think about it like this: some men are handsome. Some men are more handsome than other men. Yet, those less-handsome men are not told that they are all equally as handsome as each other, because being handsome is not the most highly valued male trait. There is no Dove Campaign for Real Handsomeness. Instead, men are attributed with being intelligent and powerful and professional and rational. And women are pretty.
My daughter probably will not be the most beautiful girl in the world. But she will still love herself; she will still be confident. I will make sure of it.