My mother always told me that I was the most beautiful girl in the world. She would sit me in front of a mirror and French braid my hair, while gushing on and on about how gorgeous I was. As a kid, I believed her.
But a lot of girls don’t believe it when they are told they’re beautiful. As a result, there have been a slew of programs and campaigns set into motion in an effort to make girls feel good about their appearances. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, for example, was launched in 2004 in an effort to redefine the definition of beauty and make a woman’s body a source of confidence instead of anxiety. And to sell soap.
The campaign is often showcased through advertisements featuring women of all shapes, sizes, and races, professing their love for their bodies as they slather themselves in Dove-brand cosmetics. It’s a campaign with its heart in the right place; its goal is to make women feel good about themselves. But it also reveals something incredibly problematic.
Girls are told they’re beautiful–from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, from school health teachers, from their mothers and fathers–in an effort to make them feel worthwhile. It is done as a method of counteracting the constant reminders from popular culture that girls are not good enough–that they need to use these diet tips or buy those shoes or wear this eyeliner in order to be beautiful. And that’s great, because it works to show that all women are pretty and worthy, but it still enforces an incredibly problematic ideal.
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.
Why I'm Not Going to Tell My Daughter She's the Most Beautiful Girl in the World
by Emma Levine