Heading to Prom

My daughter is looking is trying to find out how to get rid of acne before next weekend, so her face won’t be blotchy when she goes to Prom. this is her last year doing things like this and she’s really upset that she’s having a breakout. I don’t know what to do for her, except maybe frown sternly because she’s absolutely beautiful no matter what and airbrushing is exceptionally easy with Photoshop. I don’t really understand what her problem has been lately, but I know that she’s becoming incredibly insecure about her looks. I know that most teenage girls (and grown women) go through this, but I still don’t like it.

I have no experience with her issue, though. When I was in high school I was never overly concerned with my looks, as I wasn’t overly concerned with fitting in. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I started to feel insecure about my physical appearance and I’m pretty sure that was a direct result of finding out my first love was a cheating scoundrel. After something like that happens it’s normal to question why he did it and why she was so special. And then it wasn’t until my 30s that I finally decided that I’m comfortable in my body again.

It’s sad that women often find themselves feeling bad about their personal appearance because of something someone else has said or done to them. Be it finding out about an infidelity or being ignored in favor of someone more attractive or society’s fetish with super-model type women. I like the Dove campaign that encouraged young girls to find value and beauty within themselves instead of looking for validation somewhere else. I wish there were more programs like that—and less emphasis on whether this star has cellulite or this star needs to dye her roots. Girls pick up on all of that and if the media concentrated less on the physical appearance maybe our young women wouldn’t be so insecure and willing to do just about anything to be thought of as popular and beautiful.

After these insecurities are instilled in our young women/girls, they seem to carry over into adulthood. How many beautiful women in their 50s spend money on cosmetic surgery, hair color and botox in an effort to compete with their younger counterparts? Sadly, it seems that our society expects women to do these things after a certain age because as women age they’re pushed out of their jobs/careers so that the younger, more “beautiful” women can take the spotlight. Women have reasons to be frightened that their experience will be for naught when they’re no longer attractive to look at. It happens all the time. And there’s no reason for that.

I was watching “America’s Next Top Model” recently and Tyra was telling a beautiful African-American model that if she wanted to win she had to get her teeth fixed. What was the problem? She had a gap between her front teeth—a gap that the young woman thought was beautiful and would be her trademark. She was told that it made her ugly and that if she liked that look it was apparent she wasn’t serious about her chosen profession. I was appalled at the way the judges—and Tyra Banks herself—spoke to this young woman. Here was someone who overcame the odds (being an African-American supermodel) to be able to help young women succeed and find self-confidence in the beauty they already possessed. And here was that person, who could make a more positive difference (and indeed makes attempts on her talk show), ripping apart the self-confidence of another woman because her teeth were healthy but contained a gap. Why is that ok?

So, I look at my daughter and I want to convince her that’s she gorgeous and smart and talented and she’s got nothing to worry about. Except I’d be wrong and I’d be setting her up for more disappointment. I’d be encouraging her to believe that she is as perfect as she can be without medical intervention and that she is normal only to have her go out into the world and experience the kind of judgment that society will heap upon her. She’s already experiencing it. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a good idea, but there are so many other factors working against my daughter that I doubt she’ll find her own beauty until she’s older than me.

Which leads me to helping her look for ways to reduce her facial “blemishes”. I don’t want her to be stressed out at her Prom. I don’t want her to wish she’d done something different for her night and regret not being perfect (though to me her beauty is beyond measure and without flaw). She wants perfect skin for that night. She wants the focus to be on her hair and her dress. That’s important to her. Which makes it important to me.

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