The following video has been going around on Facebook. It’s a real eye-opener about the ugly reality of the beauty industry, and a reminder that not every beautiful face you see in magazines is the real deal.

Take a look at the video:

I know my daughter is only six years old, but I’m already worried about the things she might do as a tween/teen to make herself look beautiful. I’m nervous about the extremes she might take to get a guy’s attention. I’m concerned that she’ll have low self-esteem and that she’ll never feel pretty ‘enough.’

The video above is encouraging because it shows that any ‘ordinary’ woman can be made beautiful, whether via makeup, hair extensions or Photoshop. Young women should not feel like they will never measure up to the high standard of beauty that our culture has held, because it turns out that—underneath all that makeup—most models are just like the rest of us.

But while this video is a great tool, it is OUR responsibility as parents to give our daughters all of the love, support and encouragement we can give them, so that they never have to feel validated by their looks alone. We mothers and fathers need to be vocal about our appreciation for our daughters, even (nay, especially) during their early childhood years. We need to tell them over and over again how smart and talented and funny they are… THEN we tell them how pretty they are. Only when a young woman receives this kind of affirmation will she learn that good looks are not the end-all be-all, but simply a nice little bonus.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 3:36 pm and is filed under parent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.