Beauty Is.

When Nae was 3 days old, I had an epiphanous moment. She had woken early in the morning for a feeding, it seemed silly to go back to sleep after I fed her, and she was ready to start her day. The house was quiet, A. and Grandma were still sleeping down the hall. I laid out a blanket on the floor, placed Nae  on the soft pink fabric and lowered my aching body next to her. And then we just stared at each other in one of those moments seemingly frozen in time. I was overcome by her perfection. It brought to my mind all of those feelings I'd had about myself growing up. I thought about how my perfect, beautiful daughter would feel about herself as she grew up. I realized, in that still and quiet moment, that there wasn't anything that would change how completely beautiful she was. And in that moment a bit of healing took place for me: beauty was no longer a Hollywood-fixed image in my mind, but a fact. My daughter is beautiful. I am beautiful. People are beautiful.

Now I'm sure by this point at least half of you are thinking that I'm putting too much emphasis on beauty, particularly because I'm raising a girl, and shouldn't I be placing more emphasis on other qualities; her intelligence, her spunk, her strength? Well, sure, all of those things are very important, and of course I don't want my daughters growing up believing that beauty is all-important. That being said, it's going to come up because it's saturated our entire society, it grips us, dazzles us, and misleads us. I've seen it happen, and it's happened to me. J has shared briefly her battle with anorexia and I have had my own struggles with disordered eating. It is everywhere. So as parents, and especially as mothers of daughters, we need a plan to confront society's misinterpretation of beauty and bring truth into our daughters' lives.

My plan mostly centers around things I try to always do, or rather, never do. I never talk about how I feel about my own body. I try not to talk about food as being "good" or "bad" and I try never to chastise her for her food preferences or choices. I never talk about anyone else's body, either--or at least I try really hard not to: "Oh, isn't she gorgeous/ugly" is never a phrase that exits my mouth. The rest of this post might seem to contradict that last statement, but what I said I said only because I had a very controlled environment and a willing participant.

Yesterday morning Nae, still in her pyjamas, her hair uncombed and teeth unbrushed, came up to me all gussied-up: bracelets to her elbows, lip gloss carefully painted over her mouth, wearing my highest heels, and asked me, "Mommy, am I beeeeautiful?"

Honestly, it was a sucker-punch to the stomach. It always is... every time she comes up to me, dressed to the nines, with such a simple, innocent question. Normally, I say something like "Of course you are, Sweetie!" But this time, I picked her up and told her:

"You are always beautiful. You are beautiful when you first wake up, and you are beautiful when you're fast asleep in bed. You are beautiful when you are happy and you are beautiful when you are sad. Your clothes don't make you beautiful. Clothes aren't beautiful. Clothes are plain or comfortable or fancy or fun. Clothes aren't beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful just because God made you, and He made you just right."

Then we talked about all the people in her life, "Is Emma beautiful?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"How about Grandma? Is Grandma beautiful?"

"Yes!" She said.

We went on like this for awhile. I tried to include people she knows of every skin tone, body shape, age, hair color, makeup and style preference that I could.  There was no doubt in her mind that all of these people were truly beautiful, so I'm not sure she understood the point of the exercise, which is perfect, because that was the very point.