Will I Be Pretty?

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I actually drafted this about 6 months ago, never finished it until today. I have a lot of other crazy things on my mind, about which I will perhaps post fairly soon. For now, this.)

I put this piece up on my Facebook status some time ago. It has stuck with me, partly because of what a great piece of work I think it is and how very well it was performed, but also because I of course have two daughters myself. This has resonated for me a lot with respect to them.

I've sort of reached a point in my life when "pretty" isn't nearly the issue with me personally that it was when I was a girl and a young woman. I think a number of things have converged to make that happen. I've lived enough life, exciting or not, that "pretty" has sort of receded in my head as a priority. I spent nearly five years as a single parent, two of them as a single parent of two kids. I experienced what in OB/GYN circles is called a "geriatric pregnancy" (let's face it--from a strictly biological standpoint, nearly 37 years old is a little long in the tooth to be doing that sort of thing for the first time). That will rather dramatically and permanently realign not only your perspective, of course, but frankly your body parts. I'm nearing an age now when I can realistically expect the Magic Estrogen Fountain to start shutting down pretty soon. And last but most certainly not least, I have been lucky enough to marry an excellent guy who thinks I'm not too bad to look at.

But for my girls, "pretty" hasn't had a chance to recede as an issue. I don't even fully know to what extent it's even had a chance to emerge as one. The Magic Estrogen Fountain that's going to start shutting down for me hasn't turned on for them yet. But Abra just finished the third grade, and is likely only about a couple of years or so from getting boobs. Boobs I tell you! Holy crap, three years ago she was skipping off to Mrs. Murphy's Kindergarten class, and that was just yesterday I swear. I don't know how soon Thalia will stumble or charge into puberty, because of course I don't know her biological history at all. But whether it starts for her in four years or eight, it'll start.

And I wonder how best to help them have a healthy perspective on who they are while they (and I) also deal with the hormone-induced psychosis that sometimes is adolescence. Because the fact is that they *are* genuinely physically beautiful girls. They're quite...well, pretty. I love looking at them. Abra's drop-dead gorgeous face and luminous smile, Thalia's deep exotic eyes and incredible muscular body, I find them fascinating. But of course that doesn't make them who they are. Except in the society we occupy, on some level it does. And, you know, they're not cosmetically perfect. Who knows what random stupid-ass thing will turn into an issue for them later? Abra has the physique now of a piece of spaghetti, but her maternal genetic blueprint pretty well dictates that won't be the case forever. Some day, girl's gonna have herself a butt. The downy hair on Thalia's face is just slightly darker over her upper lip than on the rest of it, and God knows what crap the nasty boys--or girls--in middle school will yell at her from their lockers if it winds up even slightly resembling a mustache. Plus, of course, she's different. She's not white and she's not African-American, and probably 98% of the schools' populations in our district fall into one of those two categories. She's not the only Asian kid in her school but there aren't many of them. Right now kids don't much care about that except with slight fascination. Check back in three or four years and see if that's still the case.

They both have an astonishing amount to offer, of course. They're whip-smart, outstanding students. Both of them do very well not only in academic subjects but in music and art. Abra is a socially sophisticated girl with, at the moment at least, a lot of friends. She can talk up a blue streak like her mother but is also adept at arts and crafts (and hair arranging!), very unlike her mother. Thalia is a meticulous drawer and drafter and a jaw-dropping athlete, is friendly and caring, and her classmates seem to find her sort of intriguing. Both of them are funny, creative, and downright interesting people. Who, at least in the eyes of their admittedly biased mother, are also physically beautiful. Other people may or may not agree with that assessment. But what makes me sad is not that they might disagree with that assessment but that it's even important. But it unquestionably is.

It's a little unrealistic to assume that their parents can single-handedly equip them with such a healthy self-image that they can completely disregard what the world thinks of their legs, their eyebrows, their hair, their teeth, butts, and boobs. I don't remember my mom particularly emphasizing any of those things to me. She did her best to emphasize academic performance, piano practicing, ethical behavior, all that stuff. Certainly, unlike the at least fictional and perhaps real-life mother of the artist I linked, neither she nor any other mother I knew growing up would have ever forked over for a nose job for their teenager unless her face had gone through a windshield, even assuming they had the money to fork over. She believed that "smart" was a lot more important to my self-image than "pretty" was, and I think gave her reinforcements accordingly.

Still, I absorbed and internalized the "pretty" bullshit nonetheless. It to some degree shaped what I thought of myself for a number of years. I was not considered a Pretty Girl when I was in high school. Looking back I'd say I was of perfectly average physical attractiveness, I guess, but for someone who was reasonably OK-looking I got a lot--and I mean a LOT--of "Ugly Bitch" insults. I had many friends, most of whom were pretty popular themselves, and I was in quite a few activities and a cheerleader to boot, and I think I was able to shrug off a lot of it. But despite the fact that it didn't send me into some spiral of drug-abusing depression or a string of abusive relationships, I'm sometimes surprised at how much of it I internalized despite my best efforts not to.

Even if neither one of them ever in her whole life gets teased in any way about her looks, there's still so much for girls to wade through. Boys, too, of course, but as a parent I don't have to deal with the boy bullshit. I have to deal with the girl bullshit. For now, I'm just trying to enjoy my beautiful daughters.