Pay Attention


On Girls, Boys, and Appearance

I went to a dinner party at a friend’s home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time.
Little Maya was all curly brown hair, doe-like dark eyes, and adorable in her shiny pink nightgown. I wanted to squeal, “Maya, you’re so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!”
But I didn’t. I squelched myself. As I always bite my tongue when I meet little girls, restraining myself from my first impulse, which is to tell them how darn cute/ pretty/ beautiful/ well-dressed/ well-manicured/ well-coiffed they are. What’s wrong with that? It’s our culture’s standard talking-to-little-girls icebreaker, isn’t it? And why not give them a sincere compliment to boost their self-esteem? Because they are so darling I just want to burst when I meet them, honestly.

The above is from Lisa Bloom’s How to Talk to Little Girls at the Huffington Post, which has been making the rounds.

In response, Hugo Schwyzer writes: 

But we also need to remember that fashion isn’t the enemy. Cruel and narrow standards and impossible ideals are. Ignoring subjects like clothes and hair does nothing to equip our daughters and little sisters (and, let’s face it, ourselves) to deal with the pressure to look good. All it does is leave many girls feeling shallow for still caring about beauty.

It’s not evidence of superficiality to take an interest in clothes or shoes or make-up. Girls can care about fashion while also caring about books, about sports, about nature, about making a difference in the world. We need to get past the myth that an interest in beauty makes you vain and frivolous. Girls need to be reassured that it’s okay to care about clothes and hair, but they also need reminders that they are valued for so much more than their looks. Let’s lose the false choice that says we either validate little girls for their brains or for their beauty. We need to be fearless about praising both.

Both pieces are probably worth checking out in full, and I wanted to add my own thoughts.

I notice how people interact with my daughters, and how it changes depending on how they’re dressed. While they’re usually dressed in obvious “girl clothes,” we do sometimes dress them in clothes from the boys’ department because that’s the only way to get a t-shirt with frickin’ dinosaur or a robot on it.

When they were younger and had shorter hair, I noticed that people would treat them differently when they thought they were boys. They’d rough house with the a little, or mention football or baseball. When they’re dressed more girly, the remarks tend to be about their appearance. 

So I think there’s a lot of merit in thinking about how we talk to girls, and in making a point of addressing their minds more than their appearance. If we’re stopping at the superficial level of their hair and clothes, then that’s unquestionably a bad thing, and if your interaction with a child is by it’s nature superficial (like a remark in the grocery store), then you can also talk about the weather.

Really, you can talk about the weather with kids. A kid’s day is much more tied to the weather than an adult’s.

The other side of this, the side that Schwyzer addresses, is that appearance is important in our society, and possibly in all societies. People notice how we dress, groom, and take care of our bodies. It matters more to some than others, but nearly everyone uses appearance to form their first impressions of us. His point is that we can’t ignore this, that we need to have conversations about it, and that it’s ok to have an interest in it.

I agree, and I think it’s important for our boys, too.

I was a fat, awkward kid. At least that’s how I remember myself. I look at old pictures now and realize that I wasn’t always, but that’s my self image from my early pre-teen years on.

I can also remember, a handful of times, overhearing negative remarks about my appearance from other kids, and even from adults. I remember how much those comments stung, and how I internalized the ones from trusted authority figures. They formed my self image, and by the time I was in high school I made it a point to willfully reject anything that smacked of fashion. It being the grunge-era, I had some social feedback for this choice, but even alt-kids had a style that I lacked.

I remember telling a friend that I was never going to look good anyway, so why bother worrying about clothes? 

At the same time, I really wanted to change. I wanted to look better, and to dress better, but I had no idea how to do those things. Beyond criticizing me, or teasing me, I’m not sure anyone outside of my parents had ever talked to me about how to look or dress better.

And come on, mom and dad? Uncool.

I don’t blame anyone. I don’t think I got worse treatment than anybody else. My point is that, as a boy, I was hungry for that sort of conversation. So even as we dial back the conversations about appearance with our girls, we might want to dial them up with our boys. 

  1. stephenharred posted this