The Life of a Girl (Who's Always on Show)
Help your daughter navigate a world that's constantly judging her looks
Eight-year-olds at Sephora. Six-year-olds on diets. Four-year-olds who want to be pretty more than anything else.
Our daughters start absorbing beauty standards long before the teen years. As much as we make a conscious effort to focus on what girls can do and think and create, the world is constantly telling them their looks are still the most important thing about them.
This isn’t to suggest that boys don’t feel appearance pressures; they absolutely do. But there’s no debate that girls and women face a higher level of scrutiny about their looks, at every stage of life.
Raising a girl who feels good in her own skin was tricky enough prior to social media and disturbing trends like #SkinnyTok. And yet somehow things feel even worse lately.
Ubiquitous marketing of weight-loss medications, the fawning over the latest celeb cosmetic surgery, and the proliferation of AI models have moved the appearance goalposts to riskier and more unattainable levels.
I’m hearing from parents whose pre-teen girls aren’t just worried about the size of their bodies. They’re also starting to obsess over the size of their pores, the shape of their eyebrows, and even the angle of their jawlines (thanks, Kim Kardashian).
Head-to-toe body insecurities can take over a girl’s brain space, free time, and identity.
Rejecting beauty ideals, however, often comes with its own harsh consequences. And not everyone has the same leeway to opt out of participating in appearance expectations. Some level of conformity to grooming standards can offer social acceptance and connection and even basic respect and safety.
Adorning the body with makeup, hairstyles, clothing, and jewelry can also be a way to express yourself and celebrate your physical being. In other words, caring about your appearance doesn’t have to be at odds with a positive self-image.
But it all feels so tricky and precarious for girls, who get constant reinforcement that they’re being judged, objectified, and sexualized no matter what.
In a world that tells girls their worth is determined by appearance, what can parents do to protect them—or least to minimize the damage?
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do have some big-picture thoughts and a few practical strategies to consider as you help your daughter balance on this tightrope—or bow out of this circus trick completely.
When girls express interest in beauty, don’t shame them.
If you’ve been divesting from beauty culture yourself, it can be tempting to pooh-pooh your daughter’s request to experiment with things like makeup or hairstyles. Adult dismissal of a child’s curiosity isn’t likely to steer them away (in fact, it’s more likely to backfire) and they can feel like something’s inherently wrong with them.
Be honest: saying “looks don’t matter” ignores reality and undermines trust.
You can absolutely share that you think everyone is beautiful in their own way or that appearance isn’t the most important thing about someone. But pretending that looks don’t matter—especially during the adolescent years—makes us look completely out of touch. And that means girls are less likely to come to us for support in the future. Middle school may not be a beauty pageant, but it can certainly feel like one sometimes.
Pay attention to how you talk about people’s looks.
Moms are under a lot of pressure to break cycles around negative self-image. But I want to make a special appeal to the dads who are doing this work because we know that the way fathers talk about women’s looks can have a deep impact on their daughters’ sense of self-worth. Even off-hand comments about how “hot” a celebrity looks—or criticizing how they’ve “let themselves go”—sends a powerful message to girls about where their value lies in your eyes.
If your daughter expresses insecurity about her appearance, consider alternatives to the old standby, “But you’re beautiful!”
Rushing to reassurance shuts down the conversation and still reinforces the importance of outward appearance. Consider asking her to tell you more about where her feelings are coming from. Validate that it makes sense to compare ourselves or to feel like we’re falling short, especially in this culture. Empathize with the desire to be desirable. Sometimes all she needs is to feel heard. She may like being reminded you think she’s beautiful inside and out, but don’t miss the opportunity for listening and connecting first.
Plant seeds for critical thinking and media literacy.
If your daughter is taking her cues from online images and videos, seize the opportunity to build skills for resilience. Ask her (with genuine curiosity, not judgment) what is so appealing about a particular influencer. Invite her to unpack advertising with questions like, “what ideas or feelings are they trying to sell along with the product?” For older adolescents, consider posing this thought experiment: “If we all felt okay about our looks tomorrow, what kinds of companies would go out of business?”
Negative self-image can undermine a girl’s mental and physical health, making her more vulnerable to things like substance use, unsafe sex, depression, and eating disorders. If you get the sense that appearance pressures are really getting under your daughter’s skin, pay attention, keep asking questions, and get support.
Additional Resources
Journalist Elise Hu has a powerful five-minute TED Talk about the “technological gaze.” Watching with your teen or tween could be a great conversation-starter:
Psychologist Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD provides great resources for parents of girls. This letter she wrote to her daughter might give you some new language for talking about beauty trends:
Writer Chrissy King’s response to the Skims brand facial shapewear offers some brilliant critiques of the beauty industry. This passage in particular might resonate with older teens:
“Today it’s your jawline. Next week it will be your cheekbones. The week after that it will be your arms. And the next week something else. Beauty standards are a continuously moving target designed to keep us chasing and chasing, never satisfied, a bottomless pit of hunger, seeking ‘perfection’.”
