How I talk about body image with my daughters--and why I think mainstream advice on girls and body image is devastatingly wrong
Caring about being pretty is the gateway drug to low self-esteem in a patriarchy
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You’re not pretty.
It’s the foundation of so much of the horror I write about. It leads to eating disorders, to suicide, to an inability to make lasting friendships with other women, and to chronic preoccupation with one’s appearance.
It’s also one of the main reasons women settle for low-value men. We worry we’re not good enough, and that we can’t do better. Men weaponize this to extract free labor from us, to further devalue us, to keep us continuously chasing male approval via a beauty ideal rather than rallying together to fight back against it all.
The overwhelming majority of women are keenly aware of how negatively pretty culture—the pressure to be pretty coupled with the belief that one is not pretty—has impacted them. We desperately want to avoid passing the same harms onto our daughters.
There’s a stunning lack of research on this issue. Plenty of programs have sought to reverse negative body image, but very few have compared interventions for preventing it in the first place.
I think stopping beauty culture from entering our daughters’ minds is one of the very best gifts we can give to the next generation. But how do we do it? Here’s how I’m talking to my daughters about beauty and body image.